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 Madison.
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 Madison guests. (Here’s our report for 2024.) We ask each of our City Cast Madison podcast guests a few questions about their gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood. About 90% of guests responded in 2025. The following data encompass a total of 122 guests who appeared on the podcast between Nov. 1, 2024 and Dec. 31, 2025. (We did not count City Cast Madison staffers who appeared on the podcast.)
We then used census data to compare our podcast guests to the broader Madison 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 Madison’s guests broadly mirrored the overall population. Madison is more than 70% white, and 74% of our guests were white. We had a higher percentage of Black guests (17%) than you’d expect based on the local population, and a slightly lower percentage of Hispanic guests than you’d expect.
We also asked about gender identity. About 50% of our guests identified as female, and 49% identified as male, with 1% identifying as non-binary.
