Another thing to be aware of is when to listen. Generally, at night propagation works best at or below 10 MHz and during the day propagation is best above 10 MHz. This is an oversimplification. One easy, distant target for listeners in North America is Radio Australia on 9.580 MHz around 3 to 7 AM Eastern Time. Another thing easy to receive is Russia, during the evening, on the 7 MHz band. And there are a lot of things to listen to in addition to broadcasts (hams, aeronautical mobile, ships, etc.). Just to listen to the stronger broadcast stations you can probably get by fine with an indoor antenna as long as it is not near an interference source.
Experiment with what you can do cheaply to kind of establish a baseline of what is possible. As you learn and decide what you are most interested in, you will know what to do for antennas, etc.
Many a morning I grew up listening to RA on that frequency.