On one of the hottest days of summer, this guy you may have heard of, Lin-Manuel Miranda (no?)—who wrote and starred in this little Broadway triﬂe you may have also heard of, Hamilton (anyone?)—is standing on a street corner near the house he grew up in. It's a modest redbrick two-story his parents bought for $75,000 during the 1980s in Inwood, at the northernmost tip of Manhattan, home to a mostly working-class Hispanic diaspora, which was, before that, home to the Irish. Such is the story of New York—and America—the ﬂashing tides of history reshaping our collective history, and this is the place, for Miranda, where the past and present are most porous, his memories most resonant, the energy most protean.

The ﬁre hydrant near the house is the same one that years-ago Miranda and friends used to wrench open in order to baptize themselves with icy water on scorchers like this; the front stoop—the same one where he now sits, at 36, with his father, Luis, a political consultant who is 62—is where, as a kid always ﬁlming himself, he delivered some of his best, if most embarrassing, material. Around the corner is Academy Street, what used to be gang territory in his youth, where at the ﬁrst hint of trouble he'd hightail it, painfully aware of his own mortality. "I knew when to run the fuck home," Miranda says, dunking a raisin bagel in his coffee. "I was Peter on The Cosby Show, you know? Like, they would get into some shit, and Peter would run out the door. That was me. I was like, 'I am out!' "

The block, the hood, the city—it makes him jittery, thinking about how he's going to miss it, even if temporarily, when he leaves. In ﬁve days, after a year of doing eight shows a week of Hamilton at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, he departs for London to make a movie, Mary Poppins Returns, with Emily Blunt. "My wife and I left town for a week and a half on vacation," he says, "and I was tearfully glad to see the George Washington Bridge again. I relax more in my neighborhood because I know where all the stuff is. I feel comfortable with the noise and seeing other Latinos around me, and there's an ease I feel from 168th Street to the end of the island that I don't feel anywhere else on earth."

And what about those of us who have gotten very used to having him around just as he's up and leaving? You'd be hard-pressed to name an actor, musician, or author—anyone—who has owned the past year quite like Lin-Manuel Miranda, or transcended his station, to speak to our national moment. He's become national treasure, and National Reassurance Officer, both at once. He's that guy with the ponytail freestyling at the White House and delivering the "Love is love is love…" sonnet to the Orlando mass-shooting victims (and his wife) in that Tony-acceptance speech. Meanwhile, his Hamilton—about the improbable, Dickensian life of the "$10 Founding Father without a father," starring actors of all color and ethnicity as the architects of young America—has convinced even the grumblers that a Broadway play, and a musical at that, might call attention to the enduring power of our national DNA. The thematic Venn diagram of the play overlaps with so many of the biggest themes of our own lives—death, loss, parenthood, love, lust, betrayal, displacement, the American Dream, the immigrant experience, etc.—that Common went so far as to call it one of "the greatest pieces of art ever made," while Michelle Obama did him one better, calling it "the best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life."

After stepping away from the lead role this past July, he spent three days with us in August discussing the singularity of the Hamilton experience and what could ever come next in the wake of such success.

Has it felt weird leaving Hamilton behind?

I was ready. My kid was born two weeks before rehearsals started. So we went from a newborn child at the beginning of this to complete sentences by the time I was leaving the show. That's a hell of a thing, and that's a marker of how fast it goes. I had so much stuff I had to do that was not getting full expression, because my life was built around 8 p.m. Performing Hamilton through two hours and 45 minutes, when you're in it, was the most relaxing part of the day. Because I didn't have unanswered e-mails, or family stuff I wasn't doing. I was just supposed to be Hamilton, and I know the script on that one. Playing Hamilton is like taking the nozzle off your id and letting it ﬂy. It's walking into the room and going, "I'm the smartest person in this room—and you need to listen to me!" It's getting to go out with your friends. It's getting to ﬂirt with everybody, male and female, as Hamilton did. It's getting to experience joy and grief. It's a 14-course meal of a role. So I leave very tired, but very fulﬁlled, every night. So I miss that. I miss the cast and crew. But I also had enough stuff going on in real life that I didn't need this to be the rest of my life.

What's been the high point?

Obviously, going to the White House was a very big deal. But often, it's the little things. I'm such a pop-cultural junkie. Alex Trebek came backstage, and the ﬁrst thing he said in that voice was, "Answer: This is America's favorite play." "What is Hamilton?" And I was like, "Did that really just happen? Is that how he starts every conversation?"