How to Properly Cite a Podcast

I know that talking about text citations might seem slightly old school — especially when you start to consider APA style versus MLA style (hello, college days!) However, when it comes to giving credit where credit is due, (and not breaking any plagiarism laws in the process), citation is an important topic.

While most of us are probably quite familiar with citing books, research, images, and other creative works, in comparison, podcasting is somewhat new. This article will talk about how to cite a podcast the proper way.

How to cite a podcast APA

APA stands for American Psychological Association, and it’s used to cite sources in the social sciences genre.

Here are some more details on how to cite a podcast in APA format from Scribbr.

It’s a pretty basic flow:

Host last name, Initials. (Host). (Year, Month Day). Episode title (No. Episode number) [Audio podcast episode]. In Podcast title. Production Company. URL.

How to cite a podcast MLA

MLA stands for Modern Language Association and it’s used for citing sources in the liberal arts and humanities genres.

Here are some more details on How to cite a podcast in MLA.

Not a ton different than APA, but there are a couple of things to note, like the season number and the order of information, like the date:

Host last name, First name, host. “Episode Title.” Podcast Title, season number, episode number, Publisher, Day Month Year, URL.

Citing a podcast example

To help me with writing this article I decided to reach out to our legal counsel, David Lizerbram from Lizerbram Law.

Because I don’t think many of us are creating a “Works Cited” section anytime soon (more likely, we’re simply doing in-text citations for quotes and the like), I asked David what common practice is when it comes to citing an audio podcast.

His answer is everything I expected (and hopefully what you’d expect, too):

“There’s a courtesy of linking to the podcast and mentioned the episode where you heard the content you’re sharing — that’s best practice”.

To give you an example of what a citation for this content from David might look like (if it were taken from a podcast episode, which to be clear, it wasn’t), I’d simply include the name of his audio podcast, a time-stamp of where that content was shared, and make sure the podcast is linked, like this:

“There’s a courtesy of linking to the podcast and mentioned the episode where you heard the content you’re sharing — that’s best practice” (Products of the Mind podcast, [38:07]).

Because you’re using a timestamp, it’s best to link to the actual episode. I’d probably even go a bit further and mention the name of the specific episode to make it very easy for people to find. You could even include the date it went live as an added measure.

More podcasting resources

As creators, we invest a lot of time into creating content. Do the right thing and cite it properly, as you’d want someone to do the same for you!

We hope this will be a useful resource for you moving forward!

If you’d like to learn more about podcasting, we invite you to join our Free Podcast Course, a completely free video series on how to create and launch your podcast!