Most audio courses leave about a second before the answer arrives — enough to parrot a phrase, nowhere near enough to build one. Ours is measured from how long the answer actually takes to say, and it never drops below three and a half seconds. If you need the whole gap, it is there.
Cocoon French Hands-Free
The first French course you can do with your eyes on the road.
Everything else we make needs a screen. This does not. You are handed a few pieces and the rules for joining them, and then you build French sentences out loud — in the car, at the gym, on the walk to work.
It is not repeat-after-me. Nothing is read to you to copy. By the end of the first session you say a sentence nobody taught you.
Listen to session one
6 sessions free, and a new one every week · no account, no card
Why this exists
Not just what it means — what it is related to in English if it is related to anything, and the rule for using it. You are told why the verb never changes after an opener, and then you use that rule for the rest of the course.
The pieces are small and they combine. Three openers and six verbs is already dozens of sentences, and you are asked for the combinations you were never given rather than the ones you were.
Each session is a single audio file with the silences recorded into it, so it does not stop when the screen locks. That is the whole reason it is a podcast and not a video.
Listen now — nothing to sign up for
The free sessions are an ordinary public podcast. Play one here, or add the show to whatever you already listen in and it follows you into the car.
SESSION 1
Your first French sentences
The ending that means “to”, taught through words you can half guess already, then two openers you can park any verb behind. Six and a half minutes.
Where you start
- 01Your first French sentences
The ending that is the word “to”, and the first two openers. You finish it building a sentence you were never taught.
- 02More to put after them
Six more verbs and a third opener. Includes the one that looks exactly like an English word and means something else entirely.
- 03Saying no
French wraps two pieces around the opener rather than dropping in one word. Once you can do it, every sentence you own flips to its opposite.
- 04Asking
Two ways to turn anything you can say into a question, and the word for “you”, so you can finally talk to somebody else.
- 05When, and joining it all up
Now, today, tomorrow, this evening. Then “and” and “but”, and a sentence with two halves.
After those, a new session is released free every week — the past, the future, and what comes after the verb — so there is always something new to listen to on the drive.
Or join the Club and all 14 are yours today, on your own private feed, in the same app. That is the whole difference: members never wait. Nothing is held back from them for later.
There is also a new French lesson on the YouTube channel every week, free, whether you ever join or not.
Before you press play
Questions
The things people ask before they try a course with no screen.
Is it really free?+
Yes, and it stays that way. 6 sessions are out now and a new one is released free every week, with no account and no card. There is a new French lesson on the YouTube channel every week too. A Club membership is simply the impatient option — all 14 sessions immediately instead of one a week, plus everything else in there, and it opens with a free week.
Do I need any French to start?+
None. Session one starts from nothing, and it deliberately opens with French words an English speaker can half guess. By the end of it you are saying a whole sentence.
How is this different from repeating after a recording?+
You are never asked to repeat a sentence you have just heard. You are given the parts and the rule that joins them, then asked for something you have never been given. That is a different mental job, and it is why the gaps are so much longer than you may be used to.
Will it keep playing with my phone locked?+
Yes. Each session is one ordinary audio file with the thinking gaps recorded into it, so a podcast app plays it like any other episode — lock screen, CarPlay, Android Auto, offline download and all.
Can I use Spotify?+
For the free sessions, yes. Members get a personal feed address, and Spotify is the one major app that cannot add a feed by URL — Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Overcast, Podcast Addict and AntennaPod all can.
Is this the same as the YouTube lessons?+
No, and it does not overlap. The YouTube stories are watched; this is built to be listened to with no screen at all, and it teaches by assembly rather than by story.