Nearly a third of all Americans listen to or watch podcasts every week — but far more often than not, it's men's voices that they're hearing. According to a new study from researchers at the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, podcast hosts skew heavily male, and so do their guests.

The researchers dug into data from over 600 of the most popular podcasts of 2024, using data from Spotify. They found that within the top 100, nearly two-thirds were hosted by men — and nearly three-quarters of all guests were male, too. Women are particularly underrepresented in the business, tech, sports, fitness, and comedy genres.

The podcast genres that were most frequently hosted by women include true crime, arts, society and culture (which the researchers put into one category), news and education.

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