Hi, I'm Stage in Stages, Lynn Manuel Miranda, and you're listening to The Hamelcast.

Boots and cuts.

Boots and cuts.

Goose and cuts.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Hello, friends.

Welcome back to the Hamelcast.

I'm Jillian, and I'm back for round two with author, teacher, and scholar Daniel Pollock Pelsner.

DPP is PLU, people like us. He dives into the cultural things he loves with full force and then finds creative ways to communicate it to the world.

And that's why he's really the only person who could have written Lynn Manuel Miranda, the education of an artist.

Last week, Daniel talked about the book's origin story, which he says is a love letter to his grandmother. only person who could have written Lynn Manuel Miranda, the education of an artist.

Last week, Daniel talked about the book's origin story, which he says is a love letter to his grandmother. She grew up in Washington Heights, living above her father's kosher deli, and as Daniel tells it, she raised the neighborhood. She was the one who introduced Daniel to End the Heights, and even encouraged him to see Hamilton on Broadway instead of going to a fancy pants birthday dinner. That turned out to be a much better choice for a lot of reasons, not least of all because he saw it in previews the same night as then VP Joe Biden. But it also kind of kicked off the journey that led us to what we're talking about today. But actually, now that I say it, I'm not sure if that's true. Because as we learned in last week's episode, for years, Daniel has had a lot of connections to Hamilton the show,

Hamilton the Person, and Lynn Mademal Miranda. Here's just one of the things he mentioned. You know who his mentor was at Yale? Badass historian Joanne Freeman. That's like 10 connections in one. Last week's episode was absolutely packed, and you know what? I'm going to take this opportunity to take a lesson from Daniel.

Something he learned writing this book. Two words. Coast Guard. Remember? I can't mention everything we talked about in last week's episode right now. I can't do it. It's impossible and probably kind of annoying, especially when we have two more episodes of stories to get to. So let's dive into episode two, Starting with Steven Sondheim Dish in the Dirt with a room full of high school theater kids.

Here we go. Before we move on to his

college experience, which I definitely want to get into, I was thinking about Sondheim coming to

Hunter and telling them about like all the lyrics that he scrapped in West Side Story.

It sounded so familiar to me because when Lynn came to my apartment and shared like First Burn and all of these like goodies, like brought his little MacBook air and was just like, you want to hear some shit?

All off the record.

And then ended up going on buzzfeed news by the way

and saying the idea for first burn came from that conversation because mike and i lost our

fucking minds when he played it for us isn't that amazing that story of sonheim being like i'll tell

...