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Thank you again for listening and for taking the time to help our shows. I want to recommend a podcast called Think Fast, Talk Smart to help you become a more effective communicator. Every Tuesday, host and Stanford lecturer Matt Abrahams sits down with experts to discuss how to hone and develop your communication skills.
Whether you want to make small talk that leaves a big impression, nail your big presentation at work, or perfect your wedding toast, this show will offer you science-based strategies so you can communicate with confidence and clarity. Listen every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts and find additional content to level up your communication at faster smarter dot IO. Luis, did you think your son was out of his mind?
No, no, I never think he's out of his mind. I just think that he's nuts. Nuts. That's one way to have your dad describe you. But when you have a creative streak like Lin-Manuel Miranda's, maybe it's not such a bad thing. I'm Adam Grant, and this is Taken for Granted, my podcast with the TED Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist. My job is to think again about how we work, You probably know Lin-Manuel from creating and starring in the cultural phenomenon that is Hamilton.
Maybe you were one of the millions who saw it on Broadway or streamed it on Disney. Maybe you have the t-shirt I bought. My thoughts have been replaced by Hamilton Lear. But before Lin created the musical that has redefined the way many teachers cover history, he was a teacher. And before that, he was a student himself. In 1999, he began writing his first hit musical, which went on to win multiple Tony Awards. What does Juanita mean? ¿Suñito? little drink. That's it! No story?
Alright, alright, everybody sit down, sit down. It's a story of a block that was Disappear In the Heights, co-written with Chiara Alegria-Hudis, tells the story of a bodega owner in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan who dreams of a better life. The film adaptation of In the Heights just launched, and it took me on a rollercoaster of emotions. From joy to sorrow, and moral outrage to elevation. I loved it. What? You still ain't got no skills. Ha ha ha!
After we recorded this conversation, Afro-Latinx critics raised concerns about their underrepresentation and lead role. Lin-Manuel responded to these concerns on Twitter, saying, I started writing In the Heights because I didn't feel seen. And over the past 20 years, all I wanted was for us, all of us, to feel seen. I can hear the hurt and frustration over colorism, of feeling still unseen in the feedback.
I'm learning from the feedback. I thank you for raising it, and I'm listening. I'm trying to hold space for both the incredible pride in the movie we made and be accountable for our shortcomings.
I got the chance to talk with Lin-Manuel together with his dad, political strategist and activist Luis A. Miranda Jr. Along with being a force of nature in his own right, Luis has a long history of collaborating with his son. He hired Lin for a summer job as a teenager and went on to promote his first music Now Luis is Lynn's gatekeeper, and they do a lot of philanthropy together. So I figured Luis could shed some light on what makes Lynn tick.
We picked up some of the honks and horns in New York City in the background. So welcome to... Assume where it happens. I'm my mom, Miranda. I'm the, uh, composer of In the Heights. This is a movie. Hi, I am Luis Miranda. I proud myself to be the guy who tries to get things done. Luis, tell us about how Lin worked for you when he was in high school. I heard you ended up demoting him to data entry.
Whenever he didn't care about something, he just didn't care about it. And he was always very sweet about it. But he just didn't do it. And when things need to get done, you just fire someone. but when that person is your son it's more difficult to fire that person so you just demote that person and he knew that he was being demoted but you make them feel strong uh in in this new responsibility which is
I listened to a lot of wonderful music while I entered that data, and that was more interesting to me than the more cumbersome tasks that were laying upon me earlier. Writing was on the wall. There were all important tasks. That's the way he was as a child as well. He was not interested in something he just didn't do it.
That reminds me of a classic study of creative architects, where one of the things that differentiated the most creative architects from their peers was they had spikier grades in school. They excelled in topics that interested them, and they basically flunked everything that didn't. Lynn, it sounds like you were that kid. Yes. And here's where I get to bring up my one of the toughest things about senior year of high school or my father forced me to take AP statistics.
And he said, it'll make you look well-rounded. And I said, I'm not well-rounded. so you know my my grades reflected um you know i i did okay in english and i did okay in history and um and and all of the arts uh things i was lucky enough to take but Yeah, for better or worse, I mean, in the heights was written in an astronomy class that i did not get a very good grade in i was supposed to be paying attention and you have to understand that astronomy class
was his science requirement. Well, I have to say, this clearly paid off when seeing In the Heights. It all worked out fine. Lynn, I have to wonder, there have to be tasks now that are not intrinsically interesting or meaningful to you that are still important for you to be able to produce your brilliant work. How do you motivate yourself now, and what would you tell your teenage self?
A couple of things. One, the things I cared enormously about then and now were making things and making things with my friends. when i sort of fell in love with theater by not by seeing shows but by doing shows in elementary school and junior high and high school you can't Fire your castmates. You can't pay them. You're in school. The only thing you have as a motivational tool is your belief in the thing itself and getting others to believe that we can make
something greater than the sum of our parts. And so I was probably more intense even then than I was now because that was all I had and I cared passionately about. making things, whether they were movies or whether they were plays. And so, you know, but again, what comes with, I also learned very early on that I thrive on deadlines and that can be a positive thing, not necessarily like it's Monday morning and you haven't done your homework yet.
But Tommy Kail, who is maybe the most important collaborator in my life, realized very early that I thrived on deadline. So he just said, let's meet every Friday before any producer ever saw In the Heights. before, you know, anyone, before even Kiara was on board in 2004, he just said, bring in something every Friday. We'll meet in the basement of the drama bookshop. And on days when I brought in stuff, we had stuff to talk about. And again, like it became a joy.
to work towards that Friday meeting. And that's how In the Heights gets made. That's how Hamilton gets made is by knowing that if I work hard, and writing is always hard, I'm going to get to bring it into a room with smarter uh folks than me and we're all gonna get to kick the tires on it and make something better and let me tell you and the second part of that question that he avoided because he didn't like it which is how does he motivate with things that he doesn't like to do.
By now I know he has a great team of people around him. that help in every way. It's the thing on the agenda that gets pushed week after week after week. And then I finally ask him, you're never going to do this, right? So why don't we have so-and-so do this and then it gets done. Wow, remind me to do more podcasts with my dad. Be careful what you wish for. I love that. If it doesn't get done, delegate it. I think that could be useful for anyone trying to manage a creative genius.
Yeah. So let's talk about In the Heights. I love the final product. I'm guessing the process is a little more mundane of creating it. And Luis, I wondered if you've learned anything from watching your son create, or is it the most boring thing in the world to watch Lynn write? No, not at all. And I follow it very carefully because like my wife, he thrives on that line. I'm the guy who you tell that something is due next month.
And I'll start working now so that it's done a week before it's due and there is time to review it. That's not Lin-Manuel. So I have seen this process unfold over two decades. And it's always fascinating because what comes next, it's certainly better. And there's always a real rationale and a real road that he followed of why he ended up at this new place.
Well, you and I are cut from the same cloth then. My first TED Talk was about how I'm a pre-crastinator instead of a procrastinator. You give me a deadline, and I will find a time machine to finish it early if I have to. And I was stunned to discover that often people who procrastinate are more creative than people who dive right in because they incubate. They wait for the best idea instead of rushing into the first idea.
Lynn, I wondered if there's anything in there in your creative process and what you know about creativity that most people get wrong. Oh, man. I think for me, yeah, I've always sort of said what you said in a joking way. There's kids who do their homework. on friday night and there's kids who do their homework on monday morning and for the life of me i wish i were a friday night kid i'm sure it would result in less stomach ache
But that being said, incubation is a really important part of the process. I think of the final numbers of two of my musicals, both in the Heights and Hamilton, they were both written on mornings of workshops where actors were waiting for the last song in the show. And we spent them all, you know, I remember like The hydrants are open, cool breezes blow, arriving at four o'clock in the morning on the day of a reading and writing all of that.
as quickly as possible. And the same is true of Hamilton, Eliza's whole last section. I woke up like a shot at 3am and had to get it done by 9am to give it to Pippa to learn for our reading at noon. as I'm sure my actors were incredibly stressed out by not having that material yet. I don't know any other way around it. I was, you're going to love this, but James Lapine's written a book on the making of Sunday in the Park with George.
there's there's a good long they went into rehearsal of that without a second act they went into performances with an audience without a second act and at one point mandy patinkin grabbed sondheim and said give me anything i don't care if it's a piece of shit just give me something to say um
And someone taken aback said, I'm working on it, I'm working on it. And then he went on to write Finishing the Hat, which is maybe the greatest song about the artistic process that exists, but it really is about Getting yourself into that mind state where the world disappears.
One of the things that I have learned mostly over the last year in working closely with Lin-Manuel and with him having so many balls in the air It's that initially the way we handle it was, okay, he could work on Encanto from 11 to 1. and he is going to work on tick tick boom from this time to this time. to realizing that's not the way the creative process works, probably for anybody and certainly not for Lin-Manuel.
and sort of working hard now with the team and saying, okay, today's an Encanto day, don't put anything else. Let him just marinate whatever he has in his head. And even if he's doing nothing but eating chocolate cake. Let him eat chocolate cake because that's how he's gonna be marinated the next song he needs. That's amazing. I have so many questions about that, but I want to talk about one of the characters in In the Heights, Nina.
Her arc is so interesting that she's the first in her family to go to college, but then she struggles when she gets to Stanford. And it reminded me of some recent evidence in psychology that there's a mismatch between the collectivistic cultures that we often see in immigrant communities and the individualistic cultures that dominate our American universities and workplace. I would love to hear both of your thoughts about how we can change that.
How do we take a school or a workplace where help seeking seems like a sign of weakness and make it a source of strength? How do we build a sense of community in these very independent worlds of achievement that we've created in the US? A long, long time ago, I'm talking about decades ago, I worked in a place called the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, NACMI.
there were very few black Latinos in engineering and the goal was how do we create programs in universities that celebrate what these new students are bringing into the university. How do we accept a Parsi? Now there is a Parsi foundation that we're working with, but enough of them so that they have a community. and they can work together as a community. and how administration is committed to do this.
When my wife and I were accepted into the PhD programs in psychology for New York University, 10 out of the 20 PhD students, there were 5 Blacks, 5 Latinos, 10 White. but then we got accepted and there was no professors nobody was interested in our dissertation topics no one was interested in teaching what it was to shrink latino So none of that existed in the college. So it's not only to accept, it's really to prepare the institution on how to best help those students that they're accepting.
And it's so interesting you mentioned the Posse Foundation. It's an organization that we've worked with specifically in the arts lane to create a cohort of students who are all going together so that you get to school with that. that group of fellow students and community resources. And I realized that
The inception of In the Heights came out of a proto-posse experience for me. I was living in, you know, I got to Wesleyan and lived in dorm housing my freshman year. My sophomore year, I lived in a Latino program house. You had to write an essay on how you felt you could be a Latino community leader at Wesleyan to get one of the rooms. And it was me and eight other Latino students.
And I was the arts kid. I was the theater major in that house. And there was my upstairs neighbor, Malta. Her passion was helping unionize the janitors at Westland University. The wonderful side effect being that they became our adoptive parents and they would come to our house to hang out when they weren't working. But again, it was also the first time I really had
close friends and a system of, you know, a group of first generation Latino kids around me. And we're making the same pop culture jokes and we're fluent in Spanish and in English. And then Spanish, Latino pop culture and American pop culture. And I think that's what gives me the permission to write that first draft of In the Heights. It's realizing, oh, I can bring more of myself. to my work than just the pop rock stuff i was writing because i was inspired by rent in 1997. um so it's not just
you know, whether you thrive or not, but it's really, it's about the power of being able to bring all of yourself into a room. Well, it's striking to me, everyone needs a posse around them who understands their experiences and their background. It's also interesting though, Lynn, you wrote this story literally half your life ago.
And it would have been very easy to just take what worked on Broadway and do it for the film. But you didn't stop there. You rethought and reimagined some of the major pieces. Why? Well, Kiara gets 100% of the credit for the very intelligent update. To the story and to the screenplay, I think, one, we recognize that we're further along in our journey as writers, as we were when we were little babies, making In The Heights in 2007 and 2008.
And the world changes and art changes with it. Certainly, I can point to specific things. Immigration, the debate around immigration. somebody is wrapping that immigration back in 2007 and 2008 that debate only got more toxic and more divisive. And so her decision to foreground that debate by having one of the characters be an undocumented citizen, I think really humanizes it and really humanizes it in a way.
in the best way that art can, which is now that's not some other that you've read about in the headline page. That's a character you love. That's a person you love who has grown up here and spent his life here and can't imagine living anywhere else. So you can't just put it away. You can't just brush it aside in the same way. And also, I think the other thing she did was very subtly but intelligently update the level of gentrification in Washington Heights.
In that 2008 version, it's around the corner. It's still all Latino businesses. It's here in 2020. The question then becomes, who survives, who adapts, who moves on? It's amazing to me that not only did you do all this updating of it, but that In the Heights wasn't an immediate sensation. Luis, you were selling tickets personally for your adult son's performance at one point. Was there a moment where you said, nah, this isn't going to work?
You know, I will do whatever I have to do for my kids. Then, now and forever. And no, it was what needed to be done. I proud myself to be the guy who tries to get things done. And at that point, once the money was there to take the show to the Richard Rodgers, now we need it. But for the chairs, not 1200 chairs at the Richard Rodgers every single night. So then that's what needed to be done. And I use every trick in my book from
Bendito, my son did this show. It could only be successful if you come, bring your family and your friends to... those that have a little more more presence that you gotta come and and then just reach out to institution It was a show. That was a wonderful show. It didn't have stars, it didn't have any of the things that people tried to put on Broadway in order to make a show successful. And we know that at the end it paid off.
Was there a moment that you doubted yourself or said, you know what, I'm just not sure if this is going to make it? There were lots of moments where I wasn't sure if I'd live to see it.
We don't talk a lot about the sensation of having an entire show in your head but it's not not yet on stage for people to see it it's an incredibly uncomfortable feeling it is uh it is like feeling intellectually pregnant it is like it is it is you know i remember kiara and i we were lucky enough to get the show in the o'neill theater center to work on it for two weeks sort of like free workshop labs based unlimited coffee unlimited copies and
We didn't sleep for two weeks. We worked so hard. We did these. Amazing performances. Everyone's crying after all the shows. And our producers said to us at the end of those two weeks, It's not ready. You've done good work, but it's not ready. And there's still too many storylines. I still don't know what I'm supposed to follow. And you've taken steps forward and you've taken steps backward. And we think we need at least one more workshop.
before we get a production and you know again you've got this whole show in your head and all it needs is an audience all it needs is to not exist only in your head anymore um that's those are the times when it's the toughest when you can see the distance between this work that, you know, again, we're writing in theater. This is our book. They need an audience to live. Tinkerbell needs your applause to survive.
And so that distance can be very tough and very dispiriting. But that's where you lean on your collaborators and you just keep working. On my end, it's interesting that I lived all of those moments and will get very sad. about oh god we're we're not going the next step but again my show my my job is to be the cheerleader. Sometimes Lin-Manuel tells me that can I just spend some time in sadness? that I just be a bit introspective.
about what is happening, you're trying to fix it. You're trying to get it to the next level. And my wife is the person with whom I spend time. fixing things and being vulnerable and being sad. But with my kids, it's okay. How do we fix this? How do I go and shake Jeffrey Seller to move forward?
that's amazing everybody should have a parent that relentless i think right and then yeah but then you have to say like no we have to make the show back because they were right by the way i shudder to think if the o'neill version of in the heights had uh had appeared on Broadway it didn't have the focus it needed we did have work to do um but you can't a musical fast you have to let it talk to you and tell you what it needs and that's painstaking work
Алло, здрасти, бабо. Здрасти, миличак. Добави ли си картата виза в телефона, както те посъветвах? Бабо, нямах време. Отнема секунди? Ай, що ме аз успях? Ей! I want to recommend a podcast called Think Fast, Talk Smart to help you become a more effective communicator. Every Tuesday, host and Stanford lecturer Matt Abrahams sits down with experts to discuss how to hone and develop your communication skills.
Whether you want to make small talk that leaves a big impression, nail your big presentation at work, or perfect your wedding toast, this show will offer you science-based strategies so you can communicate with confidence and clarity. Listen every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts and find additional content to level up your communication at faster smarter dot IO. Welcome back to Taken for Granted and my conversation with Lin-Manuel and Luis Miranda.
I'm thrilled the White House called me tonight because I'm actually working on a hip-hop album. When you were 29, you were invited to perform at the White House with the Obamas in the audience. and you took what looks to me like a massive risk. Instead of performing in the Heights, which has already been validated and stamped, you debut a brand new song called Alexander Hamilton.
What the hell were you thinking? Who does that? Here's what they said to me. They said, we'd love for you to do something from the heights or if you have anything about the American experience. I have 16 bars on the American Experience. I didn't have even really the finale of the song yet. I wrote that for the White House itself. I just had the verses and the Alexander Hamilton little chorus
But it was a deadline. It forced me to finish the song. And I thought, if it doesn't work in this room, maybe I'll just throw it away. This feels like a good audience for it, I feel like. You know, the president has a treasury secretary. He's going to relate. But again, like, yes, it was a massive risk. The only people who had heard the song at that point were maybe Karen Olivo, who I was in the show with every night.
You know, Alex Lacamoire, who ended up playing piano for me and my wife, who wasn't even my wife yet. So that was, it was certainly nerve wracking, but it was also, it was thrilling to perform something new in that space. It was thrilling to split a van with James Earl Jones to the White House. The day could have ended there. And it would have been a great day. So I'm glad I took the risk because it was also an encapsulation of what my Hamilton experience would be. I would tell folks the idea.
they would laugh and i would start telling the story and then they'd go well wait then what happened um and and that's been the experience now is that experience in miniature and that's been the experience of hamilton um ever since How did you know this was the right risk to take? I mean, in many ways, this could have been the biggest performance of your life, and you could have blown it, right? It could have just bombed.
yeah i i honestly um i'm probably more timid now than i was then i think that i was um There's a reckless thing that happens when you're a writer, which is the song you're working on now is always your favorite song. I was really proud of what I was writing and working on. I liked it the best at that moment. I just never looked down. I didn't think about what would happen if it didn't...
come through. I just thought, well, this is the best thing I've written because it's the latest thing I've written and I want to show this to them. Luis, did you think your son was out of his mind? uh no no i i never think he's out of his mind i i just think that he's nuts you have to remember he was on vacation uh from in the height when he read the hamilton book
and came to the house and said this is my next musical. I'm never going to say that's ridiculous. And I knew that he was taking the risk.
and the entire time he was singing my wife and i were there we were just checking people's reaction in the room i don't think that i looked at him once or alex lacamore once i was just looking at people like are they're nodding with approval are they're nodding what what the is he talking about just trying to read the room watching that audience is so interesting as a psychologist because Lynn you look very nervous in the first
maybe two, three sentences, and then you're just in the zone. And the audience goes through the same transformation. They're all looking at you like, what is this guy talking about? And they laugh nervously, and then they're hooked. Did it feel that way? Did you feel the room change? Exactly that way. You've never seen me stammer as much as you have in the intro to that song. The intro was probably the most under-rehearsed
Part of it. And in a lot of ways, the most important part of it, I'm setting up quite a weird pitch. But I am stammering. I'm really nervous. And the first thing I did, which was a mistake, was like lock eyes with the president of the United States. And I realized, can't look at him. That's too scary. And then I looked over and there's the first lady. And then finally, Michelle's mom was at the table with them as well. And I was like,
Okay, I can look at First Abuela. I can look at First Mom. She's giving me a beautiful smile and this is someone I can talk to. But all of that is happening while I'm trying to set up the premise. this song and then as soon as the snapping starts Hamilton. hasn't done, but just you Yeah, I find this whole dynamic of creating and performing just endlessly interesting.
As a psychologist, given that Lynn, you're the son of one psychologist and another almost psychologist, one of my biggest fears is screwing up our kids. And I wonder if you could both talk about what you learned and what you did to impart psychology into a young mind without creating a warped child. I think that it's understand, the first item is understand what's your role in that family. My wife, it's the one who gives nurturance.
She's the one who is empathic. She's the one who can hold your hand and make you feel better. That's not who I am. And I know that that's not who I am. I'm the one who holds your hand. when he was a little boy that he wanted us to give money to every homeless person that he saw in the street and the guy was gonna hold his hand and we're gonna go and put a corner on that.
and my wife is the one who holds the hand and explains the sadness of seeing someone without a home so once you understand what your role in the family you stay in your lane and you intersect when it's needed but otherwise you try to do what you're best at and let the other take over at what they're best at. Lynn, what was that like? Are there lessons that you learned from your psychologist parents about managing emotions, about dealing with conflict?
so i had a dsm4 on my job i was like oh this is um oh i see i have seasonal affective disorder that's why while it's raining um these symptoms check out um so uh you know having access to that is is great but i also I think one of the good side effects of having psychologist parents is you're very in touch with your feelings and you're able to name them. One of my books growing up that I learned was not a shared.
Childhood experience. It was not exactly goodnight mood. It was TA for talks. Transitional analysis for talks. where you talk about warm fuzzies and your cold pricklies it was a book designed to sort of help you talk about feelings and then you know come to me in college and we're talking about good night moon and we're talking about
You know, the very hungry caterpillar, rest in peace, Eric Carle. And I'm like, TA for tox? Nobody? We run it every night. No scars. Clearly no scars from that experience. I love it. One of the other things that I find so interesting about the two of you is you both had prior careers in completely different worlds before you landed where you are.
Luis, I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how your political experience has foreshadowed now all the creative activism that you're doing in the art scene. And Lynn, obviously, time is an English teacher. How that continues to influence you as a creator and performer. On my end, it's very, very easy to work with Lin-Manuel because in my head, he's my political candidate.
you know when you work with political candidates you are helping them shine If you have to get on camera, your candidate screwed up and you're going on camera to explain and clean up. So it's a similar experience. Everything that we do, it's to make sure that the best of Lin-Manuel comes forward. And I continue to be involved in politics.
possible to separate but doing everything we can for the issues that we care about To use the new megaphone that we have, that Emmanuel has, that we have as a family, it's an important component. of continuing that journey of moving the needle.
forward on progressive courses. Lynn, what about the interplay between teaching and creating and performing? What do you see from your teaching days really affecting the way that you think? My first job out of college was teaching seventh grade English at my old high school. And it's really as a result of one of my mentors at my high school, my eighth grade English teacher, Dr. Rembrandt Herbert, he's the one who noticed me writing songs in the back of English class.
and said, you know, we have a student-run theater program, you should write for that. you're very talented and he was the first person outside of my family to tell me And so as I was graduating college, I Rung up Dr. Herbert and said, are there substitute positions available at Hunter? I'm going to be trying to make theater and I'm going to have to pay the rent somehow.
And he said, actually, there's a part-time English position that's open. And so I went and taught English. And I think the biggest lesson I learned, I feel like I should have seen it because all of my favorite teachers did this. is you're actually your best as a teacher when you're listening. when your job is to introduce the topic and give everyone the salient details and then ask questions.
I found that the most profound breakthroughs invariably happened when the kids were learning from each other. And there's a lot of lessons to take away from that in the creative arts space as well. You are as good as the room you put yourself in and you're trying to create an environment both in the classroom. and in your artistic collaborations where the best idea in the room went.
And it doesn't matter where it comes from. It doesn't matter if it's in my syllabus to give you or you've come to that realization yourself. But fostering an environment where Ideas are supported and the best idea in the room wins. And so that was invaluable. I went into teaching thinking I was going to be a performer. and i realized oh that part actually goes out the window um and the part where you're listening really listening to your students
and then able to turn the conversation, that's actually when you're doing your best work. And that's also true of acting, by the way. The actors who really listen are the most compelling invariably. I think listening might be the most underrated skill in our lives. Another topic I wanted to ask you both about is I guess what's traditionally called work-life balance, which I think is just a ridiculous concept. I don't know anybody who accomplishes anything worthwhile in steady equilibrium.
And it seems to me that what we're striving for is more like rhythm, where there's a repeating pattern of different beats. Some might be job or family or friends or health or hobbies. that might vary in their duration and in their accent. And I might be stretching the music metaphor here, but I'd be thrilled to hear both of you talk a little bit about how you think about work-life rhythm. What I try to do is everyone in my life Personally, it's everybody in my life worthwhile.
I create this match of people who I enjoy just having coffee with and talking about current events or whatever we want to talk and then we're going to be working together in doing a commercial or doing something that is important. So the way in which I have been successful doing that so that I can work 24-7. It's by marrying my work and my personal life. And quite frankly, the only relationship where that doesn't happen to the extent that the others happen, it's with my wife.
because we have very different lanes and it works and it has worked for decades and decades And why change it when it does? But I have worked with my daughter for 25 years. And I work with her every single day of my life. So that's the way I have been able to create that unbelievable song of work and family. We have very different positions. I reject the premise that the goal is to win.
24 7 which was embedded somewhere in luis miranda's answer the way i have achieved working 24 7. but it is interesting you know my wife had an insight really into like a little into the process of writing Hamilton when when we were together and married which was um life is always going to present distractions um and The best idea you had, the idea to make a musical of Hamilton, actually happened when you were on vacation on a pool float with a margarita in your hand.
that moment when your brain can kind of unplug from your day-to-day concerns and really drift And so she just started booking us vacations. We would go borrow a friend's house out of town. She'd stay the first week with me and leave me alone for a week. We'd go to, she booked us on a trip to Nevis where Alexander Hamilton was born.
booked us in a very nice hotel so she could have a very nice sort of spa time while i worked on non-stop the song at the end of act one and then we both had a wonderful vacation um because i could really drift and relax To me, the creativity part doesn't happen without daydreaming.
In my line of work, I need to daydream. Just like my dad said, we were getting diminishing returns when I had to work on three different projects in one day. But if there is a day, where it's you know the only thing on my schedule is really to pick up my kids and tuck them in even though there's nothing on the schedule i'm daydreaming i'm thinking about that next song i'm thinking about that next
um creative problem that i have to solve and so it's it's a bit of a different uh ratio for me or a different rhythm to use your terminology Well, it's been such an honor to speak with the two of you and a real delight too. So much fun. In closing, I would love to just ask you each, what impact do you hope In the Heights will have? I think that I want it as a real opening for Latinos to be in Hollywood.
I have seen the impact that it had on Broadway and how many Latinos got their first Broadway gig. within the height and how many have careers in theater and you know not to be that way. There should be an In the Heights opening in theaters every single week of our lives. And that's what I hope the movie will do. Yeah, it's not lost on me that at the same time In the Heights is releasing. I'm also an executive producer on a documentary on Rita Moreno.
blazed a trail where there was no trail and was often the only latina in productions first in the studio system and then through the 40s and 50s and 60s And I'm so glad that we have this movie that gives her her flowers because she made a way where there was no way. And without her, something like In the Heights doesn't exist. Not just one Latina story being told, but lots of stories being told. So, you know, my hope is that in 10 years, people go, what was the big deal about in the hype?
That would be the goal. And just to say that my dad made a chocolate cake because he was born and now I'm going to eat this delicious chocolate cake. Take In For Granite is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by TED with Transmitter Media. Our team includes Colin Helms, Greta Cohn, Dan O'Donnell, Constanza Gallardo, Joanne DeLuna, Grace Rubenstein, Michelle Quinn, Angela Chang, and Anna Phelan. This episode was produced by James T. Green.
mixed by Rick Kwan. Original music by Hansdale Sue and Allison Thanks to Donald McKinnon on Creative Architects, Nicole Stephens, Sarah Townsend, and Andrea Day. match and my collaborator Jihei Shin on procrastination and creativity. And special thanks to Whitney Williams for her help in arranging this interview. In the Zoom where it happened, my dad wore pajamas.