247 - Hamilton

I had never heard the ALW/LMM platinum jubilee bit and god I never want to hear it again. Deeply deeply cursed

I tried watching the pro shot for Hamilton. Didn’t like it. Stopped 25 minutes in. I respect what Lin Manuel Miranda is doing musically but it’s just not for me. I much prefer In The Heights. I however have another relationship to Hamilton and it’s via the tumblr fandom and that one cursed set of drawings where the founding fathers are queer, trans and hiv positive.

I have no idea what to expect from this pod. Can’t wait. I hated Hamilton so much. Everyone wouldn’t shut up about it. I finally saw the show. I couldn’t believe how much of it was people standing on a lazy Susan and rotating. I didn’t get why people were rapping. I didn’t get why the main guy was such a dick. I found the rotating people to be highly distracting. I haven’t thought Hamilton in years until I saw this come up on my feed, looking forward to maybe learning a bit more about it.

It's interesting to listen to y'all talk about the debut of this in 2016 because in Canada the show didn't premier until 2020 and there wasn't really a phenomenon. It's interesting to know this was going on at the time in your pop culture world. It's a bit like looking at a Mandela effect. My first exposure to Hamilton was in 2019 or 2020 via people making fun of Thomas Jefferson ftm binder fanary

HOLY AMAZING FINAL SPEECH!

I keep listening and making comments, you are right, Hamilton would be so much cooler if Burr was the main character and it was like Amadeus and Salieri!

The funnier part of the revise Hamilton lyrics is that the part ALW is singing is what king Herod sings to Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar thus comparing him to Jesus.

This episode is going to be deep and amazing, I’m glad you got into it immediately and didn’t just say all of the other stuff that everyone says about Hamilton. That is implied. I did not expect you to be talking about Miranda’s father 25 minutes in! Although I guess it does make sense because you talk about the background of game developers, but that stuff is always unknown to me.

coming in late and hot to this one, but wanted to say that I'm an Australian and know fuck all about theatre and American history. When the Hamilton album came out I really loved it, had it on high rotation for a few months. Listening to you talk about its flaws, what works, what doesn't etc... is so enjoyable and looking at this particular show in the fucking second Trump term after the total and abject failure of neoliberalism is just... *chefs kiss*. Also that fucken AJ song in the halftime break? Incredible. Also shoutout to Josh for reliably being the guy who DOES NOT like a thing and can tell you exactly why - I cannot tell you how valuable I find this in working out my own opinions and why I have them about these pieces of media.

Aaaargh, Jomny Sun! No one makes the red mist descend quite like him.

I dreamed I saw Sam Bultch last night Alive as you and me Says I, "But Sam, you're ten years dead" "I never died" said he "I never died" said he

The discussion of water on stage gives me a strong visceral reaction. I've done costumes and run wardrobe for shows involving water and it's always a HUGE pain in the ass.

I’ve always said Lin is a decent songwriter who is kind of one note to me. To the point that I immediately know which Disney songs he’s written. I saw Coco & was like these songs have actual structure & lines that end when they’re meant to. Can’t be LMM. However, as much as I can give him a pass there, he is a very mediocre rapper in a way that’s very perfect for this moment & the people it so roundly captured. I laughed when you guys said you’re not rap guys but that one of the rap bits is complex to perform. I gotta tell you white people overwhelmingly love that shit. Especially if it’s fast.

This was very long and took up my whole workday. Thank you. So when are we doing season 3 of Slings and Arrows?

i've never listened to hamilton and the first 10 seconds of this podcast make me want to finally do it

Burr was a better man in every way. Listen to the three part dollop on Aaron Burr and you'll be fine with Hamilton losing the duel. .. I just don't want to listen to a musical about an asshole, so thank y'all for doing it for me. 😘😉

There are so many things about this show that bug me, but two big ones are 1) how impressed it expects you to be that Hamilton wrote so many of the federalist papers. Truly who cares! Since when is "quantity written" an important measure of anything? and 2) the weird equivocation in "history has its eyes on you". That can mean either that history will judge you morally OR think about your reputation for greatness and the show sees no daylight between the two but they're the furthest things apart in the world. It's just so insistent on you liking Hamilton that can't handle it

It is sounding like japanese lounge music of the late 80s and 90s.

I lived in PR during maria and when Lin brought the musical to the UPR (my alma mater) and you could feel the collective eye roll of it all. We just wanted electricity and water bro

Hamilton is linked in my head with The Greatest Showman, probably because it was popular with my high school theater group around the same time. These two musicals started me thinking about the ethics of storytelling, because of the way that they presented their protagonists and their marks on history. There is something so deeply disturbing to me about the way that history can be papered over, and especially so when it is done with a pop-liberal message that pussy foots around or directly contradicts the darker parts of our history. This was a great listen, thanks, guys!

too bad this wasn't the 250th episode that'd've been very satisfying

Fantastic speech at the end, fantastically recited. You guys rock.

This is Zorhan's favorite musical

Lol the "wait for it" clip editing got me

Wow, didn’t know about that simpering little ditty with Andrew ‘flew in to the uk first class just to vote to cut poor peoples benefits’ Lloyd Webber. It made me want to rip my ears off, thanks

Oh my god Josh I’m with you on toxic positivity…😡

My dear lovely elderly neighbour was worried about me after the primal scream I let out in horrific remembrance of Thomas Jefferson Miku Binder.

Absolutely amazing episode. One thing I think would have been interesting for the show to do if it was being honest with its portrayal of these historical figures and their flaws and humanizing them and more importantly to craft the sort of tragedy of ambition that this story kind of deserves, it really needed to emphasize some of Hamilton's scummier policies and positions- as the lads mentioned, his attempted coup in the wake of the Revolution, his tendency towards monarchist sympathies, and THE FACT THAT HE HELPED MANAGE SLAVES FOR HIS IN LAWS. But probably the one that Lin should have honed in on with his emphasis on Hamilton as an immigrant (even though as a British colonial subject moving from one colony to another he would not have counted as an immigrant by modern standards. Nor would Lafayette in the "Immigrants we get the job done" line because he wasn't actively trying to live in the US, he was a rich nobleman who had dropped everything to go fight the British) is Hamilton's support for and enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Act in the Adams' Administration. Like you have a perfect "look how far you have fallen" built in right there! But alas, Lin was too stuck in seeing himself and his Dad in Hamilton to be willing to let him be too evil. Also I read a very confounding and frustrating book a while back on the political theatre of Broadway from the 90s to Hamilton (that didn't include stuff like Parade or Assassins for some reason) and the book quotes a defense on the absurd ticket prices of Hamilton by saying that it is kind of a Robin Hood situation of taking money from the rich and using it to support charities and nonprofits...run by Luis Miranda. And like, that's not a Robin Hood scheme, that's just trading money from one group of rich people to another!

🇨🇻🇨🇻 Vozinha, Im not throwing away my shot 🇨🇻🇨🇻

We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is also very informative to Miranda’s… thing

in nursing we call any 4 hour shift picking up the princess shift and this interstitial WILL be playing in my head every time I bid on a partial shift for the rest of my career

I called in sick to work today as I was stricken with grief with the news of the passing of Dr Samuel Bultch, D.D.S. Fly high angel 🕊️

40:58 that’s why I pay for this podcast

Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson mentioned?? My sister is kind of a musical “hipster” so she was into Hamilton before anyone else, and when the rest of the family finally got on board she started listening to BBAJ instead lol. To this day, whenever I am tempted to say “I’m gonna kms” I pivot and say “life sucks and my life sucks in particular”. She will also never stop rubbing in the fact that she was into Hadestown while it was still a concept album 🙄

This musical came out the one year I did theater in high school and that was such a miserable experience for someone who didn’t like musicals much to begin with

I've had precisely 3 thoughts about Hamilton over the years: 1. "The actual hiphop community would be more into it if the rap was good" ca 2015 2. "Did this get edited by the DNC to get rid of anything too radical?" Pro-shot, 2020 3. "HOLY SHIT THE LIGHTS ARE SO COOL WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THAT" touring stop in SD, 2023

As someone who has never seen or even listened to Hamilton (it's just not my thing) I was a little worried at first about the thematic approach to the retelling but y'all really held it together.

I remember really liking the soundtrack and imagining what the rest of the show built around it was. Then I finally saw it live and realized, there isn't really anything outside the soundtrack. You professional theater people saying that it's a better soundtrack than a show helped validate my feelings.

He’s remaking the Warriors???

I think there's an interesting thing about the fandom (I wasn't in it, but I know about it) making the characters queer because it's what fandom does, and it's what LMM does by making them POC. You want to see characters like you, and you make them that way even when that would make no sense, but when you do that, you like them too much to make them as complex as they were in canon. But when you do it to actual historical people, and give them an identity that directly contradicts who they are in real life, it becomes this instead of incorrect quotes. And back to the fandom, they make the characters queer because that's what fandom does and it's not good at grappling with race, which makes the fandom even worse sometimes than the show.

As a big fucking nerd who DOES remember the federalist papers, my first reaction to this show was, "wait, Hamilton likes democracy in this story?"

Hatsune Miku Binder Jefferson jumpscare

I am upset that I had to listen to so much music from this in the course of the episode. Bad stuff!

it's been my crack theory for years that that SNL episode (host LMM, musical guest Twenty One Pilots at peak popularity, surrounding cultural context) was like. in retrospect one of the last truly representative and Big Cultural moments of Obama-era lib optimism. It is SO of a time

I enjoyed hamilton in high school, i think partially because i was in us history and it did help with the ap exam. Then i saw what they were all doing on tumblr and i was like ok thats enough of that.

Did I hear a Dr Orpheus on the soundboard? Be still my heart if you’re considering a Venture Bros ep.

This musical always makes me think of my favorite edu-tainment revolutionary show from when I was a growing up “Liberty’s Kids” on PBS

I appreciate you taking the time to address Thomas Jefferson's most egregious black spot: their Hatsune Miku binder

Josh said something at the end about the episode coming to you when you need it and boy, I needed it. I was ousted from my apt at 7am for plumbing work and was so happy to see it was already available to listen to, and made at least the first 3ish hours of my wandering bearable. Long live the multi hour podcast! Drown me in that content baybeeeee

Josh makes a comment during the first rap battle segment that the historical Jefferson didn't understand what slavery was doing for him economically. This is incorrect. He said the following: I allow nothing for losses by death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four percent. Per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their numbers. This is talking about how he could profit from the breeding of slaves. As stated in the article I'm linking at the end, "What Jefferson set out clearly for the first time was that he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children." The hosts call Jefferson a monster, but I don't think they appreciate how monstrous he really was. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/

On Chapo a little while back they reviewed the Obama presidential library, and it's desecration of the Chicago landscape. In the episode the Obama centre was joking referred to as the 'Cenotaph of Neo-Liberalism' What I gathered from this episode is that Hamilton is, in the same unintentional vein, the 'Eulogy of Neo-Liberalism'

THROW MY SOCIAL MEDIA AWAY?

congratulations on hitting the key podcast milestone of having a famous person live in one of the hosts’ genitalia

Just an FYI, The Dollop is covering the titular protagonist in their usual "this guy was crap" manner

Easily one best, most captivating closing asides. Wonderful episode!

2:11:10 oh my God, please just do Pacific Overtures already, I'm begging you. "Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? It's someone in a tree."

when i was in senior year of high school my deranged english teacher gave us a whole ass book with the lyrics of hamilton songs with pictures from the show and had us. analyze the lyrics. as if they were poetry. the only other class that’s ever made me want to kill myself on a similar level was quantum mechanics

Writing 51 essays is nothing. I write an essay under every video and podcast I listen to, you're not special Hamilton.

when i was in senior year of high school my deranged english teacher gave us a whole ass book with the lyrics of hamilton songs with pictures from the show and had us. analyze the lyrics. as if they were poetry. the only other class that’s ever made me want to kill myself on a similar level was quantum mechanics

I welcome the psychic damage this episode is bringing me.

Happy Canada Day

Okay, so I wore my lucky WTYP shirt today and that worked out weirdly. But a fantastic mega-episode and scratched that itch.

I can’t get the image of, The Ten Duel Commandments, tied to Big Smoke’s Order (From GTA), out of my head.

Brian saying Jeffersons song sounds like 3D Sonic casino levels sent me to the moon

Learning about the background politics of this play makes me hate it even more. It's all just establishment lib shit. Cosplaying as politically radical while you own a plantation or controlling shares in a corporation, and your dad is the political boss of a city. Now that I think about it, I'm sure that Lin-Manuel Miranda has excellent views on Cuba.

hell yeah four hours of theatre for Canada Day

Fuck yes! I love a theater episode.

Loved the ep! I strongly recommend Gore Vidal's "Burr" as a kind of anti-Hamilton. Looking back on the founding from the early 19th century you get to see all the founding fathers make themselves into legendary figures, and Burr becomes known as the demon of those early days because nobody wants to grapple with how fractious and alienating these men were

I thought Tim Caine in the membrane was just a tweet, I've never heard that before today and it made me literally cringe, like doubled over in disgust

It's still so funny to me that Daveed Diggs is well known for a) frontmanning one of the most influential industrial hiphop groups ever and b) playing mr. funny slaveowner in hamilton

When Hamilton was at the height of its popularity, I was in middle/high school theater, which was maybe the worst place to be at the time. Everyone I knew was OBSESSED with Hamilton, and that put me firmly off it. Maybe I was tired of the hype, maybe I just wanted to be "cool & different", but I avoided it like the plague. I finally listened to it around the time the pandemic started, and I had a brief infatuation with it and moved on. I watched the pro-shot when it came out too, but I think what prevented me from loving it is exactly what you guys talk about with the story Miranda wants to tell is incompatible with the actual history of the U.S. which he's using as a framework. I've never really returned to it in the same way I return to other (mostly Sondheim) musicals because it doesn't feel whole. At points, it even feels like a sinisterly constructed lie with how positive and optimistic it is about America as a nation, all the while indigenous genocide and slavery get waved away. I was introduced to 1776 through your episode on it, and I think (though it's extremely flawed) it succeeds more as a musical about America because it ends on such a somber, monstrous note which to me reads like the show is saying America is built on lies and illusions of equality, not equality itself. I feel like the essential difference in the two is 70s disillusioned vs 2010s optimism. It's the difference between, "This is the fate we wrote for ourselves from the beginning," and, "We fixed all the problems. Everything's ok now."

Please note that in the 1800 election, it didn’t become Jefferson-Burr due to the nominating convention, as Brian said, but because we initially elected presidents and vice presidents the electoral college separately so the runner up became VP, and winner president. This is how Jefferson became VP to his political rival Adams. It was only after that deadlocked EC vote in 1800 that an amendment changed the system to what it is now

Man libbed out little 16 year old me LOVED this shit sooooo much

Lin went to the Travis McElroy school of tweets

I lost it completely at the reference to Washington weighing 'a fucking ton'. I still quote that stupid animation sometimes. :-D Also, because I'm spending the 4th in Canada, I was also making the joke 'maybe I could convince some of them to burn the white house down again". :-P

Yo

Reject revisionist politics (Hamilton). Uphold revolutionary thought (Hadestown).

Honestly I’ve never liked Hamilton because “epic piano and strings” rap songs largely suck and make me think of Macklemore. The rapping is frankly all over the place. You actually have some world historical talents in the cast like Daveed Diggs, but Miranda is weak and honestly mostly rhythmically speaking. I am game to accept that this is because actually going hard on the rapping would be difficult in a musical theater setting where most audience members will be put off by anything more aggressive. This also feeds in to my pet theory that part of the reason Hamilton exploded is because people could understand the words and sing along easier than another musical.

man as i listen to this i did not consciously realize how much Miranda's musical theater rap was wearing on me until you clipped in Biggie Smalls and i felt my blood pressure drop a full 30 points instantly

Ah yes, over three hours on a musical I enjoy even in the face of the absolute butchering of history it does. Alexander Hamilton was a wannabe petty tyrant and aristocrat, but at the same time there are songs from this that just rattle in my mind like pebbles in an empty can. It might not be "good", but it entertains me and that's what I ask for out of a musical. *edit later* Also probably helps I'm not American so most of the cultural impact of it was very much removed from my exposure to it.

I was lucky enough to see Hamilton with the OBC (except Lin, Javier was on) and yeah it was fucking sick

I probably wouldn't hate this play nearly as much if the same people who loved The West Wing didn't love it

Three hours thirty eight minutes

HERE WE HERE WE HERE WE FUCKING GO

I have a real love-hate with this musical. When it came out, I wasnt a big fan of musicals but I wanted to love it because a fellow latino wrote something catching attention. A few years later I finally saw the disney cut during the pandemic and get hooked on some of the songs but it was kinda hard to match the tone and message of the musical to the experiences at the end of trump 1. Now im seeing edits of hamilton to countries in the world cup that seem to embody the original feelings I had for musical better.

Who lives, who dies, who pods your cast... Really happy y'all finally got around to this, especially considering how much LMM has been referenced throughout the podcast's history. I don't see it in the "media referenced" and I haven't had the time to listen to nearly four hours of this episode yet so maybe you bring it up, but I would recommend Ishmael Reed's "The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda", which is a play that serves as a critique where Miranda essentially gets haunted ala Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future by the figures he has distorted and misrepresented in his narrative around America's founding and especially around slavery. The Dollop also did a nice series of episodes around Aaron Burr that I think go a long way to deconstructing the narrative that Miranda has unfortunately popularised around what the founding fathers and especially Hamilton was actually like. Edit: Oh hey Reed got a shoutout at 3 hours 24 minutes in, you can buy the book of it online and read it, its still quite good even just as a piece of literature!

*seeing the length of this episode* So... have you guys been like, doing okay, or..?