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 Chicago.
So are we living up to our values? How diverse is our podcast guest pool, really?
This is the third year of data we have about City Cast Chicago’s guests. (Here’s our report for last year.) We ask each of our podcast guests a few questions about their gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood. About 90% of guests responded in 2024. The following data encompass a total of 103 responding guests who appeared on the podcast between Nov. 1, 2023 and Oct. 31, 2024. (We did not count City Cast Chicago staffers who appeared on the podcast.)
We then used census data to compare our podcast guests to the broader city and metro populations. This helps us see how well we’re reflecting the community we’re serving.
As you can see in the chart, City Cast Chicago’s guests broadly mirrored the population of the city and region. We had a higher percentage of Black guests than the city and metro area, and about the same percentage of white and Asian-American guests as the community. City Cast Chicago had fewer Hispanic guests than you'd expect based on Chicago’s population–only 17% compared to 23% for the metro area–but that represents a significant improvement over 2023, when only 12% of guests were Hispanic.
We also asked about gender identity. A 63% majority of our guests identified as female, the highest percentage in the City Cast network. About 35% identified as male and 2% identified as non-binary.
