When we launched City Cast in 2021, we committed to tracking–and publishing–demographic information about our podcast guests. Diversity is a core City Cast value, and accountability is another. We want to have podcast guests who are diverse in race and ethnicity, gender, economic background, and geography. Tracking and publicizing guest demographics is a way to hold us accountable for representing the diversity of Boise.
So are we living up to our values? How diverse is our podcast guest pool, really?
We ask each of our City Cast Boise podcast guests a few questions about their gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood. About 95% of guests responded. The following data encompass a total of 90 responding guests who collectively made 172 podcast appearances from Nov. 1, 2022 through Nov. 9, 2023. (We did not count City Cast Boise staffers who appeared on the podcast.)
We then used census data to compare our podcast guests to the broader city population. This helps us see how well we’re reflecting the community we’re serving.
Race/ethnicity of City Cast Boise podcast guests vs. the Boise/metro population.
As you can see in the chart, City Cast Boise’s guests broadly mirrored the population of the city and region. Boise has the largest percentage of white residents of any of the 11 cities in the City Cast network, and unsurprisingly the vast majority of our 2023 guests were white. Our small percentages of Black and Asian-American guests reflected the broader population. City Cast Boise is the only podcast in the City Cast network that had Hispanic/Latinx representation greater than the local population.
The gender identity of City Cast Salt Lake podcast guests.
We also asked about gender identity. A 52% majority of our guests identified as female, with 46% identifying as male and 2% identifying as non-binary.
