20 years ago, the New American Oxford Dictionary declared "podcast" its Word of the Year. Back then, it was revolutionary—like radio, except you could listen whenever you wanted, not when some scheduler decided you should.

People quickly realised podcasts were brilliant for language learning. Unlimited authentic content, available anywhere, in any language you wanted to learn. You could listen at home on your iPod, in the car, wherever.

Then came the flashy apps with their cartoon characters, AI tutors promising fluency in 10 minutes a day, and gamified lessons that feel more like Candy Crush than language learning.

So surely the era of the podcast is dead, right?

Spoiler alert: it's not.

In fact, I'd argue that 2026 is the best time ever to learn English with podcasts.

Here's why podcasts still beat the apps, why now is better than ever, and three practical tips to make the most of podcast learning.

Prefer video? Watch the full explanation below:

Why Podcasts Still Beat the Apps

1. Podcasts Force Real Listening

When you're learning English through social media, those burnt-in captions make everything easier to follow. When you're watching Netflix, you probably default to turning subtitles on.

These visual aids feel helpful—and they are, to a point. But there's a catch: instead of improving your listening, you're actually getting really good at reading subtitles, scanning faces, and relying on visual cues. Your eyes are doing more work than your ears.

Being able to understand a film with subtitles or follow along with captioned Instagram videos is great. It means your reading comprehension is solid. But it doesn't necessarily mean you can understand spoken English when those training wheels come off.

Podcasts remove all the visual cues. No captions. No facial expressions to read. No context clues from seeing what's happening on screen. Just pure audio, the way real conversations happen when you're on a phone call or chatting with someone while walking down the street.

This forced listening—listening without any safety nets—is exactly what builds the skill you actually need: understanding English as it's spoken in real life.

2. Podcasts Allow True Focus

Modern platforms are designed to fragment your attention. YouTube surrounds every video with recommendations—cats playing table tennis, gardening secrets, whatever the algorithm thinks will keep you clicking. The platform doesn't care whether you're learning; it just cares that you're watching.

Language learning apps aren't much better. You'll still get WhatsApp notifications, Facebook messages, Duolingo reminding you the owl is getting sad—constant interruptions make sustained focus nearly impossible.

Podcasts offer something increasingly rare in 2026: the opportunity for genuine, sustained attention. You can put your phone screen-down and simply listen. No visual distractions. No notification badges demanding attention. Just you and the audio.

This creates perfect conditions for what might otherwise be "dead time"—commuting, walking, cooking, exercising. These activities occupy your hands and feet but leave your mind free to focus on language input.

Beyond the practical benefits, there's something more valuable here. In an era when TikTok has trained us to expect dopamine hits every 15 seconds, the ability to concentrate on a 20-minute conversation in a foreign language is becoming a genuine skill—and a competitive advantage.

3. Podcasts Scale Your Exposure Like Nothing Else

There are millions of podcasts about everything under the sun. Thousands about learning languages. If you're learning English, you're in luck—there are so many fantastic options.

You could listen 24 hours a day for the rest of your life and you wouldn't exhaust the available content. English Learning for Curious Minds has almost 600 episodes—that's more than 200 hours of English content.

No app, teacher, or AI tutor can give you that amount of high-quality English without serious friction. You simply can't get it anywhere else as easily.

Sure, AI tutors can be great for practising your daily routine, ordering coffee, or preparing for a job interview. But getting that amount of interesting, comprehensible, and compelling input? That's really, really hard anywhere else.

Why 2026 Is the Best Time Ever for Podcast Learning

Discovery Is So Much Better Now

The early days of podcasts required dedication. You'd fire up your desktop computer, manually download each episode, remember to sync it to your iPod, and repeat the whole process for the next episode. It was cumbersome.

Modern podcast apps have transformed this experience. Your subscriptions automatically update, new episodes appear in your feed, and everything syncs across devices seamlessly.

Perhaps more importantly, podcast discovery has improved dramatically. While it's still not perfect, the algorithms have evolved significantly. Apps can now suggest shows based on your listening history, and search functions actually help you find podcasts that match your interests and level.

The excuse "I just haven't found the right podcast" doesn't hold much water in 2026. The tools exist to find exactly what you need.

Transcripts Have Changed Everything

When podcasts first came out, basically none provided transcripts. That made them far harder to follow as a non-native speaker.

Then some podcasts, especially those aimed at language learners, started offering PDF transcripts.

Now, many podcast apps like Spotify and Apple Podcasts offer AI-generated transcripts right in the app—usually 90-95% accurate, depending on how clearly people speak.

This is a huge opportunity for language learners. You can listen, follow along, and check your understanding just by looking at the screen.

Some podcasts for language learners (like this one) go even further, making transcripts interactive or allowing you to translate them into your own language.

It's this combination—authentic, compelling audio backed up by reading the words and seeing what they mean—that makes them so powerful for language learning.

AI Fixes the Biggest Problem With Podcasts

For years, the main limitation of podcast-based learning was what came after listening. You'd finish an episode and think, "Right, now what?" The responsibility fell entirely on you to extract value, identify useful vocabulary, or turn the content into some form of structured lesson.

AI tools like ChatGPT have changed this dramatically. You can now paste a podcast transcript into ChatGPT and extract exactly what you need:

• Grammatical structures that appear in the episode but rarely in your own speech
• Quizzes based on specific language features (phrasal verbs, idioms, etc.)
• Native-like expressions you might have missed on first listen
• Explanations of cultural references or context

Want to learn more about using ChatGPT with podcasts? Here's a video you might like:

The key insight is this: AI isn't particularly effective yet at improving your listening skills directly, but it excels at helping you understand and learn from what you've just heard.

Podcasts provide authentic, engaging content. AI helps you extract maximum value from that content. Together, they're considerably more powerful than either alone.

3 Practical Tips for Learning With Podcasts

Tip 1: Stop Worrying About Understanding Everything

I get tons of emails from people asking, "How much should I understand? If I don't understand everything, is that okay? Is it too hard?"

Here's a much better question: Did you understand enough?

Did you understand enough to get the general meaning and feel like you followed what was going on, even if you didn't catch every single word?

The reality is that in a language that's not your own, until you reach the very highest levels of fluency, there will always be words you don't understand. Even as a native speaker, there will be words you don't know.

So don't worry so much about understanding every single word. Worry about understanding enough.

This is an important mindset shift. It makes it far easier to enjoy what you're listening to without constantly thinking, "Am I doing this right?"

And of course, the beauty of podcasts is that it's not a live conversation—you can press "go back 10 seconds" and listen again. Great training.

Tip 2: Focus on Expressions, Not Individual Words

Individual words are relatively easy to handle. You can look them up in a dictionary. Often, you can guess their meaning from context as you continue listening.

Expressions, however, reveal how native English speakers actually use language. These multi-word phrases are harder to look up, more challenging to guess, and far more valuable for developing natural-sounding English.

Pay attention to expressions like "what struck me was," "it turns out that," or "for better or for worse." These are the building blocks of fluent, native-level English—the phrases that make the difference between sounding like a textbook and sounding like a real person.

Anyone obsessing about "speaking like a native" should focus here. The secret isn't in individual vocabulary words; it's in the expressions that native speakers use hundreds of times per day, often without even realising it. Podcasts are full of them.

Tip 3: Mix Passive and Active Listening

Most of your podcast listening can be passive—walking, commuting, cooking, working out. That's perfectly fine and incredibly valuable for building your overall exposure to English.

But here's where you can accelerate your progress: dedicate just 5-10 minutes per day to more focused, active listening exercises. This "upgraded" listening transforms podcasts from background noise into a proper training session.

Transcription practice: Choose a short section (even just 30 seconds) and try to write down exactly what you hear. This forces you to catch every word, every pronunciation quirk, every connected speech pattern. It's challenging, but it's one of the most effective ways to sharpen your listening skills.

Shadowing: Select a 1-2 minute section and repeat after the speaker, matching their rhythm, intonation, and pronunciation as closely as possible. This technique is brilliant for developing more natural-sounding English and training your mouth to produce sounds you might not use in your native language.

Reflective writing: After finishing an episode, set a five-minute timer and write your thoughts—a summary, your reactions, questions it raised, whatever comes to mind. Then run your writing through ChatGPT or fixmyenglish.ai for feedback on grammar and expression.

The beauty of this approach is that you're training multiple skills—listening, writing, speaking—while using the same podcast episode as your foundation. And since it only requires 5-10 minutes daily, it fits into even the busiest schedule.

Start Your 30-Day Podcast Challenge

Consistency beats intensity when it comes to language learning. Rather than cramming hours of study into sporadic sessions, daily habit-building creates lasting progress.

The challenge is simple: choose one podcast and listen to it every single day for 30 days. Even five minutes counts. The podcast doesn't need to be specifically designed for English learners (though those can be excellent)—it just needs to be something you find genuinely interesting.

Why 30 days? Because that's roughly how long it takes to establish a new habit. By the end of the month, reaching for your podcast will feel automatic rather than forced. And the progress you'll make in your listening comprehension will be noticeable.

If you're looking for a podcast specifically designed for intermediate to advanced English learners, English Learning for Curious Minds has almost 600 episodes covering fascinating topics from history, science, culture, and current events. But the most important thing is simply to start—any podcast, tomorrow, now.

The podcasts are out there (see The Best Podcasts to Learn English on Spotify). The tools are better than ever. The only question is: will you actually do it?