Best of The Axe Files: Lin-Manuel Miranda

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2020

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Lin-Manuel Miranda first picked up Ron Chernow’s autobiography of Alexander Hamilton, he didn’t know much about the former Treasury Secretary. He didn’t yet know he was an immigrant, and he hadn’t yet read a sentence penned by Hamilton in which he wished for a war—the line that would inspire the creation of a revolutionary hip hop musical and Disney feature film. Lin joined David in October 2016 and spoke about what Alexander Hamilton would think of our politics today. He also discusses the value of growing up in a school where the arts were emphasized as much as math and science, and what came next when he thought to himself, “What happens if I bring all of me to something?”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Music
0:06.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files, with
0:12.5	your host David Axelrod.
0:20.0	When a friend invited me a few years back to a Broadway show that it just opened called
0:24.1	Hamilton, a hip-hop musical about the life of one of the most luminous and founding fathers,
0:29.9	I have to admit I was a little skeptical.
0:32.3	Well, it turned out to be one of the most extraordinary nights of theatre I've ever experienced.
0:37.0	This past Independence Day weekend, Disney Plus rolled out a film of that stunning production,
0:42.1	so I thought it would be a perfect time to reach into the Axe Files vault for my 2016
0:47.0	podcast with the young genius who created this masterpiece and starred in it as Alexander
0:52.3	Hamilton.
0:53.3	Here's my conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
1:00.3	Lin-Manuel, Miranda, you know, I worked with your dad back in 2001 on a race for mayor,
1:11.2	Freddy for air, you remember it well.
1:13.2	And I remember him saying to me, then, you know, my kid, he really, he likes to perform,
1:18.0	he's really talented, he writes, and he said, just don't know if you can make a living doing
1:22.2	that.
1:23.2	And he was, so he said, I, you know, I want to encourage him, but what, what, tell me
1:30.4	about, he's one of the great political consultants in New York.
1:35.7	You must have grown up around politics.
1:38.9	Your mom's a clinical psychologist.
1:41.3	How do you end up as a storyteller and musician and all of that?
	...

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