Rachel's English Podcast

Rachel Smith built her reputation on YouTube, where her American English pronunciation channel has amassed over 5.4 million subscribers. The podcast extends that expertise into a longer, audio-focused format where she breaks down the sounds, rhythms, and melodies of spoken American English in a way that is remarkably detailed and practical. The show is aimed at intermediate to advanced learners who can already hold a conversation but want to refine how they sound. Rachel specializes in the nuances that separate textbook English from natural speech: connected speech patterns, word stress, intonation, vowel reductions, the way Americans swallow certain sounds or link words together. She also covers American slang, idioms, phrasal verbs, and common phrases. Many episodes feature real conversations with guests, which she then analyzes moment by moment, pointing out pronunciation features that most learners would never notice on their own. Beyond the podcast, Rachel runs an online academy with over 25 courses, 600 videos, and 40,000 audio practice files, all built around a method she calls micro-skills and deliberate practice. The podcast serves as a free entry point to that system, and it stands well on its own. Episodes vary in length but tend to run 15 to 30 minutes. For learners who have reached a plateau and feel stuck sounding foreign despite knowing plenty of vocabulary and grammar, Rachel's focus on the physical mechanics of American pronunciation addresses exactly the skills that most other English podcasts overlook entirely.