City Cast is 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?
This is the second year of data we have about City Cast Boise guests. (Here’s our report for 2023.) We ask each of our City Cast Boise podcast guests a few questions about their gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood. About 80% of guests responded in 2024. The following data encompass a total of 72 responding guests who appeared on the podcast between Nov. 1, 2023 and Oct. 31, 2024. (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 Boise city and metro population. This helps us see how well we’re reflecting the community we’re serving.
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 13 cities in the City Cast network, and unsurprisingly the vast majority of our 2023 guests were white. Our small percentages of Hispanic and Asian-American guests reflected the broader population. Only 1 percent of the Boise population is Black, and City Cast Boise did not record any Black guests in 2024.
We also asked about gender identity. A 53% majority of our guests identified as female, with 44% identifying as male and 3% identifying as non-binary.
