Where to find Plain English transcripts

If you’ve been listening to Plain English for a while, you might want to know where to find the free Plain English transcripts that we talk about on every episode.

How the transcripts are structured

Before we show you where to find the transcripts, just a quick word on how they’re structured.

Each Plain English episode in your podcast feed is about 20 to 25 minutes. All episodes have two parts: the current events story and the expression.

But what you might not know is that every podcast “episode” is part of a larger lesson set, which actually has five parts. So when you listen to episode 625, for example, that’s just part of Lesson 625, which is bigger.

Here’s what the whole lesson looks like:

To get to the transcript for podcast episode 625, you would click on the headline that says, “Beloved snack food Twinkie goes from bankruptcy to billions.” That would be the first half of the episode transcript, the current events part.

Then, when you’re done with the first half, you can click on “Try your hand at” to see the second part of the transcript, the part where we talk about the expression.

Where to find Plain English transcripts

Now that you know how the Plain English transcripts are structured, it’s time to actually find them.

There are three ways to get them:

• Directly with the episode number
• From the “Lessons” and “Expressions” library pages
• From your member Dashboard

Let’s take a look at each of them.

Transcripts with episode number

Every episode has a home page based on the episode number. (Remember, each episode is part of a Lesson number at Plain English.)

So if you’re listening to Lesson 625, just type this in your browser:

https://plainenglish.com/625

That takes you to the lesson home page, like the image you saw above.

This is the best way to find the transcript if you already know what episode you are listening to or that you want to listen to.

(You can also find these links in the episode description of your podcast app.)

From library pages

However, if you want to explore Plain English topics, you can do that directly from the web site. This works best if you’re logged in as a free or Plus+ member, but you don’t need to be a member to find this.

Lesson Library

If you’re logged in, you can get to the lesson library by choosing “Libraries” from the top menu and then “Lessons”:

If you’re not a member, you can find the Lesson Library by entering this URL into your browser:

https://plainenglish.com/lessons

Expressions Library

You can also explore all the expressions that we’ve covered in previous episodes by visiting the Expressions Library. Choose “Libraries” from the top menu and then select “Expressions”:

If you’re not a member, you can find the Expressions Library by entering this URL into your browser:

https://plainenglish.com/expressions

From your member dashboard

Finally, if you’re a member of Plain English (even a free member), you have access to a special home page called the Dashboard. On the Dashboard, you’ll find links to the most recent lessons. Choose a lesson topic or an Expression to read the transcripts of recent episodes:

Stay in the loop with Plain English transcripts

We almost forgot! The other way to get the transcripts for every Plain English episode is to be part of our e-mail community.

When you join, JR will send you links to all new episode transcripts as soon as they come out: