As the title says. I listened to the interview about One DND character origins, and it seems like they want to hand out inspiration left, and right. Why the emphasis on this though? Human races can even share their inspiration with others. What's the point in all this?

It's to get you to be more involved in the mechanics. The more you think about and try to influence the mechanics, the more engaged you become, and the more engaged you become, the more you enjoy it.

One of the issues of 5e, and I guess D&D in general, is that a lot of your agency is expressed in character builds. You design your character at creation and level ups, which makes your character good at doing certain things. You then spend the time between level ups trying to use those strengths which were dictated at creation and level ups. A Rogue is always trying to stay hidden so he can get surprise attack, a Barbarian is always rushing the enemy to try and engage them, etc. Inspiration is one of the few mechanics that you consider how to use only in the moment. Also because it's so rare, people forget about it and don't even use it. This dynamic aspect of the game is also why we have spell slots, number of uses of abilities etc - to try and insert dynamism into the gameplay.

I play a 2d20 game where you can earn momentum which you can spend on other things. Similar to Inspiration in 1D&D, but you can have up to six and it's a pool between the party. Whenever you do something,.you have to consider how "hard" you're going to try at the task (how much momentum/inspiration you're going to use), which makes for a lot more dynamism in the tasks themselves. There is more agency as you try to decide how to go about a task. Your build matters...but your decisions are also even more tied to the circumstances of the moment. That's more engaging.

I boeve.1D&D is using Inspiration this way in order to pursue that dynamism. It's giving you more ways to get Inspiration mechanically (and not just trusting the DM to remember to hand it out) so you can use it. You'll use it more often, and be happy to use it, because you know you could get it back quickly enough...so long as you've used it. A Fighter at L20 will get it roughly every 5 rounds in combat...why not use it? It also encourages asking for checks, interacting with the environment, engaging with the world around you so you can do those rolls and maybe get a nat20. There is a temptation to just hack 'n' slash, but this rewards you for thinking about the world and learning more about it.

It's not perfect, but it does make sense as a step from 5e.

Also, as for emphasis, I'm not sure there is emphasis. It's just one playtest document that changed the mechanic with plenty of other stuff as well. It's just jumping out to your I think.

Inspiration as a way to encourage players to really get into the roleplay or do other cool things is a great idea on paper, but sometimes it's rare enough that you're reluctant to use it, or your DM forgets to actually award it and then nobody has any when they could have really used it.

Making it something that happens naturally as part of the game's flow makes a lot of sense in that case.  It's going to take careful balancing to avoid weird inspiration-farming builds, but that's the point of Unearthed Arcana.

Something I think I would do as a homebrew rule is make it so a d20 is rolled to set the "inspiration value" and then when someone rolls that number they get the inspiration.  Then another d20 is rolled to determine the next magic number the players want to get.  I think it'd be fitting--inspiration can strike unexpectedly in real life--and it makes it a little more interesting to have players excited to roll a 3 for once.  I totally understand a lot of DMs not wanting to keep track of yet another thing, though.

Story points, momentum etc. are trending in a lot of other crticially reknown games D&D is trying to get it to work better than it currently does under the present 5e inspiration system. it's an in game way to reward "good play" sort of merging the mechanical and storytelling aspects.  I have fully chewed it, but I don't mind it any more than the existing inspiration.  As I think mentioned above WotC tends to "go big" with initial proposals and then modulates based on feedback.

I’m not a fan of Inspiration and therefore not a fan of these changes.

Quote from IamSposta >>

I’m not a fan of Inspiration and therefore not a fan of these changes.

It really is just another lucky pool at this point but with rules as to what it does.  I do like that they've codified into the rules when you can use Lucky/Inspiration to prevent people from going well its not raw so I got 2 and 3 on my advantage, I want to use inspiration to roll a third die.  Or using Lucky to negate disadvantage entirely by then choosing the die they got when they got a nat 1 and a 19, rolled a third die and got a 4 but I choose the 19.  It's either using it to get advantage or using it to impose disadvantage.  If you already have it, can't use it.

With all of that in mind, I'm in favor of this specific change. 

I don't care for Inspiration because it is just Advantage.  Advantage is so easy to get through various other means that it seems like a very lackluster reward.  

I think the main point right now is to give players a way to gain it besides the DM remembering it or agreeing with it.

The point is to see if more inspiration = more fun.

I think they have gotten very clear and consistent feedback that people are not satisfied with it -  either didn't like it, forgot to use it, or have expended it on their own. So I am not surprised they are making changes to it. Are they the right changes? This is something I honestly think you need to playtest to see. Encouraging/rewarding behavior is a good thing, they just need to nail down how to best tie it into the game.

Personally, I just forget about it, both as a DM who should be rewarding it and a player who should be using it. Making it more upfront and visible may be enough to change my experience with it for the better.