citing a podcast in APA style with biblatex and biber

Question

Almost nine years ago, someone posted asking about citing a podcast in Chicago style. I came across it while looking into doing the same in APA style. The answers were a lot harder to find than expected, so in case anyone else is wondering, I'm including the question here.

The question is basically this: how do you use BibTeX to cite a podcast using modern APA-7 style? There are some rather specific requirements: the contributor's title (Host or Producer) after their name; the phrase "Audio podcast" or "Audio podcast episode" after the title of the show/episode... some more details here.

So the question is: how do I format the reference for a podcast so that package biblatex can read it? Let's suppose I have the following entry in my file test.bib:

@misc{invisibilia,
    Author = {Rosin, H. and Spiegel, A.},
    Publisher = {{NPR}},
    Booktitle = {Invisibilia},
    Title = {The Secret History of Thoughts},
    Url = {https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/375927143/the-secret-history-of-thoughts},
    Day = {9},
    Month = {1},
    Year = {2015}}

and I want to include it in the following brief document:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=apa,sortcites=true,backend=biber]{biblatex}
% BibLaTeX requirements
\DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}
\addbibresource{test.bib}
\title{Example}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
One might listen to a podcast \parencite{invisibilia}.
\printbibliography
\end{document}

How do I get the reference to be formatted correctly? I get this:

Rosin, H., & Spiegel, A. (2015). The secret history of thoughts. NPR. https: //www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/375927143/the-secret-history-of-thoughts

But it should look like this:

Rosin, H., & Spiegel, A. (Hosts). (2015). The secret history of thoughts [Audio podcast episode]. In Invisibilia. NPR. https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/375927143/the-secret-history-of-thoughts

Or, if just the podcast:

Rosin, H., & Spiegel, A. (Hosts). (2015). Invisibilia [Audio podcast]. NPR. https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/

Answer 1

Fortunately, this is doable with the APA style for biblatex—and a fair amount easier than it was with apacite.

In the most recent "Citation and References macros for BibLATEX" document (and probably before this—I just hadn't seen it before!), they use a field called ENTRYSUBTYPE to specify podcast/podcast episode, and a field called ROLE to define what each (or some) author[s] did.

In the .bib file (whether by hand or in your editor):

1. Use citation type @audio instead of @misc.
2. Add an entrysubtype = {podcastepisode} or entrysubtype = {podcast}
3. If using entrysubtype podcastepisode, you'll want to define the title for the episode and the maintitle for the podcast/show. If using entrysubtype podcast, you'll just define the title for the podcast/show.
4. Add a field for author+an:role which can be formatted as author+an:role = {=hosts} (nothing before the = sign indicates that all authors are hosts, or do the same for producers), as author+an:role = {1=host,2=producer} (the first author is host and the second is producer), or some other combination. You can apparently put anything in quotation marks after the equal sign and it'll put it in parentheses after their name (e.g., author+an:role = {1="Overlord"})... but that's not APA style!
5. You can indicate the number of the episode, as APA recommends if the podcast numbers episodes, by adding a field called number, e.g., number = {101}.
6. I already had this in the question above, but if you know the publisher, include that field as well.

Your .tex file does not need to change (I add a second citation below). Here's an updated .bib file (with one option for episode and one for podcast as a whole):

@audio{invisibilia,
    Author = {Rosin, H. and Spiegel, A.},
    Publisher = {{NPR}},
    Title = {The Secret History of Thoughts},
    Maintitle = {Invisibilia},
    Url = {https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/375927143/the-secret-history-of-thoughts},
    Day = {9},
    Month = {1},
    Year = {2015},
    entrysubtype = {podcastepisode},
    author+an:role = {=hosts}}
@audio{invisibilia_pod,
  entrysubtype   = {podcast},
  author         = {Rosin, H. and Spiegel, A.},
  author+an:role = {=hosts},
  title          = {Invisibilia},
  publisher      = {NPR},
  date           = {2015/},
  url            = {https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/}
}

And the output:

(Of course, you wouldn't normally want to include both a citation for the episode and the podcast!)