Sneak Peek: Revisting Lin-Manuel Miranda Podcast

Lin-Manuel Miranda: I think anything that connects us to the founding in a real way-- like I think for me the joy in researching this show and writing it was being forced to find the humanity in the founders. I have to find my way into them to write their songs. That's the only way I know how to write, is I have to put their clothes on and figure out what they're thinking and what they're feeling, and then when it feels true I write it down and I think what is touching a nerve is, I think other people are finding the humanity within them as well. They leave with an understanding, or at least a partial understanding, of what they were like as people in some weird way, or they have their head around them in a way that you don't get when you look at a statue of someone. I think, regardless of your political stripe, to be connected to your country in any meaningful way, or its country's founders-- even if you leave being like, "Oh, Jefferson was a jerk," or "Hamilton cheated on his wife," to make them human you can't dismiss them, and you have to reckon with them, because we live in their country.