Hamilton (2015)

How did a bastard orphan immigrant become one of America's founding fathers? How did the country forget about him? And how — and why? — did he become the subject of a wildly popular hip-hop musical 200 years after his death? In trying to answer these tricky questions, we quickly struck a roadblock: Neither Emily nor Eric had seen or listened to the soundtrack of "Hamilton," Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit 2015 Broadway musical about the rise and fall of Alexander Hamilton. Enter Eric's friend and coworker Amy Keyishian, a "Hamilton" devotee and our first-ever guest geek. None of the three of us have seen Hamilton, still, but we listened to the original Broadway cast recording twice: Once in isolation, and a second time with the annotated lyrics from Genius in front of us. And boy, did we have a lot to say about it! You can find the "Hamilton" soundtrack pretty much anywhere you listen to music, in physical or digital formats. But if you're not sure about paying for it, and you don't subscribe to any music streaming services, you can still listen for free on YouTube. You can also play each track from its respective Genius lyrics page. This is part two of our civics-minded pre-Election Day weekend, and it's also the end of Season 4 for Giant Geek vs. Mega n00b. If you missed yesterday's discussion of The West Wing, check it out right here! We'll be back for season 5 in 2017, but stay subscribed to this channel ... we'll be dropping a couple holiday-minded goodies in the interim. What?! You're not subscribed? Do that here: iTunes or Google Play Music. If you like this, give Emily and me a follow on Twitter. Or, if Facebook is more your thing, like our FB page here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.