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 DC.
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 DC’s guests. (Here’s our report for 2023.) We ask each of our City Cast DC podcast guests a few questions about their gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood. About 95% of guests responded in 2024. The following data encompass a total of 132 responding guests who appeared on the podcast between Nov. 1, 2023 and Oct. 31, 2024. (We did not count City Cast DC 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 DC’s guests were more white than the population of the city and region. We had fewer Hispanic/Latinx guests than you’d expect, given the local population. We did increase the number of black guests on City Cast DC in 2024 to more closely match the metro population. About 23% of City Cast DC guests were Black, up from only 15% in 2023.
We also asked about gender identity. Exactly half of our guests identified as female, with 49% identifying as male and 1% identifying as non-binary.
