our place in the world

A liberal arts degree guarantees you nothing, besides a sense of entitlement and the nerve to think that you could somehow start a critically acclaimed podcast. Enter Why Here, a show hosted and produced by Tristan McAllister and Benton Whitley, two queer Brooklynites and constant over thinkers who have spent their adult lives learning how little they actually know about the world around them. What manifests is a narrative as much about origin as it is about finding a destination. Through cultural commentary and interviews with friends and strangers the two uncover the complicated and inspiring stories that led us all here.

Weekly episodes now streaming on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, & iHeart Radio.

Photo: Paul Barbera

tristan mcallister

Host / Producer

The only thing Tristan ever really wanted to be was a journalist. Just ask his little sister, who was often forced to watch him stage fake newscasts and pretend he was a foreign correspondent in the TV room of his childhood home in Alaska.

These days, his roommate/Why Here co-host Benton has to humor him with their very own weekly podcast, where the two of them bond over an obsession with telling a good story and a love of icons like Whitney Houston and Céline Dion. They both agree that Christine And The Queens, Robyn, Maggie Rogers and VINCINT are fast ascending too.

Icons aside, Tristan’s real hero is his grandfather Tom, a WWII veteran and lifelong journalist who made sure no stone was left unturned and no voice was silenced. He showed Tristan that behind every person— and most everything — there’s a story.

Tristan’s work for ABC News, NBC News and CBS News means he knows a little bit about almost everything from politics to travel, which most people just find annoying. As an editor at Monocle magazine Tristan reported stories in Asia, Europe, Oceania, the Middle East and the Americas. During that time he flew more than 200,000 miles in one calendar year, which didn’t bother him because he’s obsessed with airplanes (and has a tattoo to prove it).

These days he calls Brooklyn, New York home, where he runs a storytelling and branding consultancy with a global portfolio of clients. His advertising and branding work has appeared in The New York Times and in other leading international outlets. He is still a contributing editor for Monocle magazine and Monocle 24 radio.

benton whitley

host / producer

Benton spent his childhood producing/writing/directing and, of course, starring in original musicals in his parent’s attic. These started with him lip-syncing to the soundtrack of Muppet Treasure Island, pivoted to him performing a disappearing and levitation magic act, and finished with him singing Celine Dion songs, in original keys, a capella, in full boy-belt. He quickly turned these routines into his first business, charging his family $2 to enjoy. Despite the ticket price, standing ovations were guaranteed. 

By middle school Benton's bedroom was lined with original broadway cast recordings, VHS tapes of The Tony Awards, posters of Bernadette Peters, and magazine subscriptions to The New Yorker and Variety. These interests were the direct result of Rosie O’Donnell talking about them on her TV show.  To him, she was the revolutionary leader of all things Broadway and New York City. 

Benton's high school theatre obsession (surprise) led him to University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he studied the dramatic arts, and then on to the University of Michigan, where he earned a Master's Degree in Broadway Show Queendom and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre. 

Benton is now almost two decades in of living out his childhood dreams in NYC.  In 2011 he co-founded the theatre/tv/film casting office of Stewart/Whitley and in 2023 he founded his current shingle, Whitley Theatrical, a producing and casting office. Most days he feels #blessed to work with his childhood idols casting Tony Award winning Broadway shows like Hadestown, and new musicals in development with Jason Robert Brown, Dave Malloy and the guys from Pentatonix.

No surprise to anyone, making a life in showbiz feels right for Benton. And so does this podcast. 

claudine ko

contributor

Aside from one year spent working at a pizza speakeasy, Claudine Ko has been a journalist since she started stringing for the Los Angeles Times at age 15. She's taken notes back-of-house at Le Bernardin from chef Eric Ripert, talked sex and money with playwright Edward Albee, and sat along the runways of Paris and New York.

She's been journalistically embedded among tree houses in Northern California, surfer girls on the North Shore, Club Med workers in Turks & Caicos, flight attendants in the U.K., Peace Corps in Peru, street racers in California, and competitive eaters in Chattanooga. She wrote that American Apparel story during her tenure as a staff writer and editor for Jane magazine.

She also worked at the PBS series Nova and can explain how to synthesize an anabolic steroid from a Mexican yam. Her stories have also been published in The New York Times, The Believer, The Paris Review Daily, Vice, Refinery29, New York, Esquire (Romania), Giant Robot, and many others. She lives mostly in New York and sometimes in California.