But Why Tho? The Podcast

This week, Alex, Kate, Adrian, and Swara talk about Macklemore and Ed Sheeran, the emptiness of most celebrity activism, the dangers of taking your political leads from millionaires, and why it's beyond time to stop just talking and actually do something about the issues that matter.

This week, Alex, Kate, and special guest Andrea Shearon talk about Dolly Parton, the South, country music, and how she represented the true essence of it all through her music, her philanthropy, and her morals.

This week, Alex, Kate, and Joseph talk about getting into hobbies, especially Magic: The Gathering. They talk about startup costs, the importance of making spaces open to new people, and the value of taking and giving feedback.

This week, Alex, Kate, and Joseph Bradford of MMORPG.com and beyond discuss why modern fantasy is quite bad. They talk about the vast difference betwen Tolkein and Martin, why classic fantasy is less "black and white" than it's accused of even though it's actually good that it is, and the hopefulness that's too lacking in modern fantasy.

This week, Alex and Kate discuss the rise in anti-intellectualism and willful ignorance. They discuss how the internet has destroyed people's abilities to argue, the total loss of literacy, and especially how this has shown up in the public response to Emily Wilson's review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Plus a bunch of MTG talk!

This week Alex highlights a handful of articles from Butwhytho.net, covering everything from Magic the Gathering to marching bands to free-to-play RPG Soulframe.[EXCLUSIVE] The Women Behind Secret Lair’s Latest Philanthropic Drop Talk The Importance Of MentorshipDear EA Sports, The Next College Football Should Honor The History Of The Saturday Sound‘Soulframe’ Just May Be The Game We Need Right Now – Even In Pre-Alpha

This week, Alex, Charles, and Swara talk about what happens when genres reach maturity, what's become of superhero movies, and what they would do to fix the genre's problems if they were in charge.

The Nakba, or "catastrophe" in Arabic, describing the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine by Israel since 1948, is not widely learned. Rasheed Abueideh, a Palestinian game designer based in the West Bank, aims to change that with his new game in development, Dreams on a Pillow. Here is our interview with Abueideh, in which he explains why he decided to pursue making the game, what he hopes players will get out of it, and how people can support it.

We sat down with Lead Vision Designer Mark Rosewater to discuss the design behind Magic: The Gathering's latest Universe's Beyond set, Marvel Super Heroes. From color choices to theme to navigating canon, Mark has insight on it all.

As one of Obsidian's most successful titles, Grounded 2's most recent Beat the Heat update keeps pushing the little game that could into a model for multiplayer play in 2026. During Summer Game Fest Play Days, we spoke with Chris Parker, the Game Director on Grounded 2, about introducing new fixtures like buggies and the King Dozer, and how the studio has looked to build its franchise with player feedback at the center while evolving consistently.

Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) introduced a new seasonal model this year, and with seasons, the Bethesda-published MMORPG is rolling out the most substantial sequential updates the game has released since launch.During Summer Game Fest Play Days, we spoke with ZeniMax Online Studios' developers Nick Giacomini (Game Director) and Jason Barnes (Associate Design Director) about everything we'll see this year.

This week, Alex is joined by Katherine and Ryan to talk about the massive amount of gaming news that's come out in the past week. They talk about Summer Games Fest, PlayStation's State of Play, and Xbox Games Showcase, and all of what's exciting and worrying them from it. This episode was recorded before this week's Nintendo Direct, so we'll discuss that news in next week's episode.

This week, Alex, Charles, and Swara discuss storytelling, when happy endings can be bad but sad or challenging endings be good, and what happens to stories when they prioritize the wrong things.

Directive 8020 gives space horror fans the first real taste of the genre since Dead Space’s homage to Event Horizon. The game wields space horror to great effect, letting the story and characters carry it.We sat down with Directive 8020’s Creative Director, Will Doyle, to discuss the game’s inspirations, Supermassive Games’ approach to storytelling in the Dark Pictures Anthology series, and how their latest title shifted their narrative formula.

This week, Alex, Kate, and Matt talk about how basically everything on the internet now is either paid advertising that's inflating how much people care about a thing, or exploitative free advertising at the expense of actual marketing professionals and campaigns. It's all bad and makes products worse while making it impossible to believe that anything online is even real anymore. Plus, how AI is regenerating ads and paid endorsements as legitimate information.

This week, Alex and Kyle discuss the recent trend of physical media's seeming rising popularity. They discuss why they think people are moving towards a more analog, inconvenient age, the terrors of tech companies owning your digital content, and where community is and isn't being built around physical media purchasing and collecting.

This week, Alex and Kyle finally talk about Dropout, the College Humor streaming platform known for great comedy, passionate (parasocial) fans, and generally good-natured and kindhearted wholesomenss.

During MagicCon Las Vegas, we spoke with the team behind bringing The Hobbit to Magic: The Gathering's Universes Beyond. We discuss the importance of honoring Tolkien's legacy and how The Hobbit differs from the Tales from Middle-earth Lord of the Rings set. Wizards of the Coast:Mike Turian- Senior Executive ProducerAnnie Sardelis - Principal Game Designer Nick Marcantel - Senior Narrative Designer

This week, we have a very special episode covering everything announced at Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest in Anaheim. We discuss what we know about the new Evercold expansion and the massive amounts of updates coming to the game in Patch 8.0

This week, Alex and Jason talk about The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, whether it's "bad for kids," if characters need to grow or develop for stories to be good, and why we mix up nostalgia for quality.