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 guest demographics is a way to hold us accountable for representing the diversity of Salt Lake.
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 Salt Lake’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 97 responding guests who appeared on the podcast between Nov. 1, 2023 and Oct. 31, 2024. (We did not count City Cast Salt Lake 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 Salt Lake’s guests broadly mirrored the population of the city and region. We had a significantly higher percentage of Black guests than the city and metro area, and a slightly higher percentage of white and Asian-American guests than the community. City Cast Salt Lake had fewer Hispanic or Latinx guests than you’d expect based on Salt Lake’s population, but significantly more than in 2023 — up from 10% to 14%.
We also asked about gender identity. A 56% majority of our guests identified as female, with 44% identifying as male.
