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

Boots and cuts and Boots and cuts.

Hello, friends. Welcome to the 500th episode of the Hamelcast. I'm Jillian and Lynn Benwell

Miranda is here to really and sincerely teach me how to say goodbye to this fantastic chapter.

And I'm sure right now it sounds like I'm just using like a cheap throwaway reference, but I'm

really not because that's actually what he ends up doing. So just a few quick notes before we

dive in. Hi, welcome to all of the new people who have just ends up doing. So just a few quick notes before we dive in.

Hi, welcome to all of the new people who have just discovered the podcast.

So the bad news is that this is the last episode, at least for the foreseeable future.

But the really great news is that you have 499 episodes to check out.

Seven of those include Lynn's earlier appearances from 2017 and 2020,

and all of those are linked in the show notes. Lynn's first episodes from 2017 are where that stage and stages intro comes from that I

used in every episode since, as well as the Patreon Peep's intro that you'll hear about halfway through

this episode. That was just me and Mike and Lynn messing around. It's there organically on the episodes in

2017, but I thought it was really fun and cute, and the Patreon Peeps are legendary. And so I just wanted to give them a little special something moving forward. So that's what I played right before I started asking the questions that the Patreon Peeps had submitted. But I'm sure those two things sound very strange out of context if this is your first time listening to the pod. So I just wanted to bring you in on some of the lore, as they say. Oh, and the intro and outro music is done by none other than Alex Lackamore long before the official instrumentals came out. I was using, let's just call them unofficial instrumentals that I found online. And when Alex and I were working on his original episodes together, he was like, oh, here, I just made these for you.

Here's the intro. Here's the opening number. Here's Yorktown on a piano. It sounds like an orchestra. And he thought that I was using them just on his episodes. But no, I decided to use them forever because why wouldn't you? Is that crazy? Amazing, right? And I promise, we're going to get to the episode in a second. But as I'm sitting here, saying all this to you, talking into this microphone, it's really hitting me that there have been countless, and I mean, countless incredible experiences over these last 10 years. It's been a decade of stories and friendships and memories and skitch. How did we get here?

Moments. That's from my that thing you do people.

And in all of the emotion and feeling proud of the journey and being in my feelings about it,

I just got to tell you, I'm beaming because it was fun. You know, like most of all, it was fun.

I've had the time of my life making this podcast for you. And each and every one of you have really made me feel like the richest girl in town. There's another reference for you. But especially as we've been celebrating the end of the show and this journey that we've all been on together, because that's what it feels like to me, that we've all been doing this together. It's just been the best. This podcast has absolutely changed my life. And like I've said to Lynn and all the guys in the cabinet, you know, Hamilton could have said, could you not? And they really embraced me. Everyone at Hamilton really did. So anyway, I've just got inspired to tell you that. All right, so I will hop on again real quick at the end. And I promise I will keep it quick. But for now, let's jump back in. We're talking about a book called Lynn Manuel Miranda, The Education of an Artist by Daniel Pollock Pelsner.

It's excellent.

I highly recommend it.

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