For advanced English learners

You understand the podcast. Now learn from it.

Phrasecast plays podcast episodes with a transcript that lights up word by word. Touch and hold a word you didn’t quite get, and see what it means in the line you just heard.

One email from Phrasecast when it launches. Then we delete your address. Privacy

You’re on the list. We’ll write once, at launch.

Idiom

spread themselves too thin

To try to do too many things at once, so you do none of them well.

In this episode

Sounds like they’ve spread themselves too thin. ▸ 1:24

Demo lines from VOA Learning English (public domain)

What it does

  1. Podcasts, word by word

    Pick an episode from a show you follow. The transcript lights each word as it is spoken, so your ears and eyes stay on the same line.

    They’ve got too much going on.

  2. Touch and hold what you didn’t get

    You get the meaning in plain words, the kind of phrase, and the line it came from.

    Sounds like they’ve spread themselves too thin.Idiom. To try to do too many things at once.

  3. Your phrases come back

    Save what you looked up. It stays underlined in the transcript, and returns later as short practice inside the sentence where you met it.

    Savedspread themselves too thin
    PracticeThey’ve spread themselves too .

Why I built it

Do you understand almost everything you hear, but still speak the same English you spoke two years ago? That was me. I’m an immigrant living in the US, and I listen to podcasts every day. When a host said something like “they’ve spread themselves too thin,” I understood it and kept listening. A second later, the phrase was gone, and I never used it myself. I built Phrasecast to catch those phrases: hold one, see what it means, and keep it.

Founder, Phrasecast

Coming to iPhone. Be the first to try it.

One email from Phrasecast when it launches. Then we delete your address. Privacy

You’re on the list. We’ll write once, at launch.