The growing popularity of podcasts, as audiences shrink for traditional talk shows and cable news programming, has sparked a new study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative exploring the demographics of the medium.
The November 2025 study on Inequality in Podcasting found significant discrepancies in representation across 592 popular podcasts. These key findings exploring gender and race in the podcasting world were a timely response to the Golden Globes announcing their inaugural Best Podcast category to debut at the next award show in January 2026.
Researchers explored representation among popular hosts and guests in the top podcasts of 2024, focusing on four main categories: gender in podcast hosts, race and ethnicity in podcast hosts, women of color and podcast guests.
They concluded that “white males receive the most opportunity and women of color the least,” according to the report.
“You see all these jokes online about how men should have the mic taken away from them, and they just over saturate the podcast industry,” Ariella Kohanoff, a junior majoring in political science, said. “Podcasts have just become an echo chamber of misogyny [and] sexism, so that statistic makes a lot of sense to me about why there are [primarily] men doing it.”
According to the study, 77.1 percent of hosts of the top 100 podcasts of 2024 were white, and male hosts dominated nearly every genre except true crime. Women of color made up only 7 percent of hosts within the top 100 podcasts.
The guest demographics were similar: out of 6,340 guests, 72.8 percent were men and 27.2 percent were women. Only one of the featured guests was non-binary.
Nicholas Clements-Lindsey, a first-year master’s student studying digital media management, hosts the “culturally/INCOMPETENT” podcast. Clements-Lindsey said several factors caused inconsistencies in representation across podcast genres, including location and audience demographics.
Clements-Lindsey explained that people of color who host top podcasts tend to focus on specific topics, including connections with executives and celebrities and conversations about culture.
“There’s just not a lot of organizations that are supporting enough independent artists that are trying to do these podcasts,” Clements-Lindsey said. “Now we’re going to a situation where celebrities are basically eating up the amount of podcast views, and it’s eating up all the original, independent podcasters.”
While AII’s study reflects more white-male involvement and control of podcast creation, audiences don’t fully mirror those dynamics. According to a report from Edison Research, monthly podcast listening in the United States is only marginally higher for men than for women.
“I think the lack of diversity in the podcast space mirrors the lack of diversity across institutions and media as a whole,” Liz Plank, the host of the podcast “Boy Problems,” said in a statement to Annenberg Media. “Women will listen to men without hesitation, but there is still a real reluctance among many men to engage with content made by women.”
“The Joe Rogan Experience,” the most-streamed podcast, according to the AII report, has hosted actors like Kevin Hart and politicians like Bernie Sanders and President Donald Trump. Rogan’s rise in the podcast industry has highlighted the level of political power that shows like his have on the discourse. Political commentary podcasts like Rogan’s came under fire during the 2024 presidential election.
“I feel like a lot of the people who are listening to these podcasts [are] younger men, so they’re being easily influenced, and it’s kind of hard to form your own personal opinion when you’re listening to all these people and all these podcasts,” Lani Watson, a freshman majoring in international relations (global business), said. “It’s had a negative impact on our political climate, and it’s a very divisive political strategy, because it’s spreading a lot of hatred and discrimination towards other groups that they don’t agree with.”
If podcasts fill the role of traditional news and social commentary programming, Plank said, supporting underrepresented voices could be next in diversifying the industry.
“Men are taught to see other men as the cultural default, so listening to a woman with authority or perspective can feel like a threat to the ideal of masculinity, which is a repudiation of anything feminine,” Plank said. “I hope more people invest in female voices, and I hope women also invest more in themselves. I think both have to happen for social change to really take place.”