Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #53 Explores the Hamilton Phenomenon

Your hosts Eri­ca Spyres, Mark Lin­sen­may­er, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Broad­way actor Sam Simahk (Carousel, The King and I, My Fair Lady) to dis­cuss this unique con­ver­gence of musi­cal the­ater, rap, and his­tor­i­cal dra­ma. Does Hamil­ton deserve its acco­lades? We cov­er the re-emer­gence of stage music as pop music, live vs. filmed vs. film-adapt­ed musi­cals, cre­ators star­ring in their shows, race-inclu­sive cast­ing, and the pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the show.

Some arti­cles we looked at includ­ed:

• “Lin-Manuel Miran­da Responds to the ‘Hamil­ton is Can­celed’ Con­tro­ver­sy” by Saman­tha Vin­cen­ty
• “Meet the Peo­ple who Didn’t Like Hamil­ton” by Zachary Pin­cus-Roth
• “Why We Need ‘Hamil­ton’ Now More than Ever” by Alan Sepin­wall
• “Watch­ing Hamil­ton Will Give You What You So Des­per­ate­ly Need This Pan­dem­ic: Hope” by Jes­si­ca Gold
• “Hamil­ton Is Fan­f­ic, and it’s His­tor­i­cal Crit­ics are Total­ly Miss­ing the Point” by Aja Romano
• “How the ‘Hamil­ton’ Effect Is Rever­ber­at­ing Across Broad­way” by Gor­don Cox
• “Should Hamil­ton Be Eli­gi­ble For Oscars?” by Eric Eisen­berg and Mike Reyes
• Sam found this Tum­blr user’s argu­ment for cast­ing minori­ties help­ful.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion includ­ing Sam that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.