888: Not Today, Hades!
This American Life episode 888 explores three stories themed around Greek mythology: Pablo Manriquez, a DC reporter who taught himself oil painting and navigated Capitol politics; Jeremiah Schofield, a Social Security Administration whistleblower who revealed DOGE's attempts to falsely mark thousands of people as dead to facilitate deportations; and writer Daniel Alarcon's humiliating attempt to interview Lionel Messi for a glossy magazine.
Summary
The episode opens with Act 1, 'Icarus,' following Pablo Manriquez, a Washington D.C. reporter who found discarded art supplies on his stoop in 2022 and decided to become an oil painter despite zero experience. Motivated by ego and opportunism, he identified a niche painting portraits of politicians, starting with Messi McConnell and eventually receiving a FaceTime call from President Joe Biden praising his work. His ambition escalated to wanting a painting officially hung in the Capitol, leading him to covertly insert his Frederick Douglass portrait into a press gallery renaming ceremony. The Standing Committee of Correspondence voted 4-1 against his painting, establishing a rule prohibiting credentialed reporters from hanging artwork in the Capitol. Undeterred, Pablo announced plans to run for the Standing Committee itself to repeal the rule.
Act 2, 'Cerberus,' is the most consequential segment. Jeremiah Schofield, a 25-year Social Security Administration veteran, describes a series of escalating requests from DOGE and DHS to falsely add living people to the Death Master File — a database that, when someone is incorrectly listed as dead, freezes their bank accounts, cancels credit cards, and disrupts their entire financial life. First, DOGE pressured the SSA to assign fake death dates to apparent '150-year-olds' who were simply missing recorded death dates. Then DHS sent a list of ~6,000 people, mostly with Hispanic surnames, to be marked as dead — a request Jeremiah's team refused, but which was carried out anyway by the SSA's chief information officer's office, marking all 6,000 as having died on March 8, 2025. Subsequently, DHS escalated with a list of 2.7 million people to be killed off in the database. A random sample of 25 showed all were alive, and 23 of the 25 were U.S. citizens or legal residents. When Jeremiah's boss called a DHS/DOGE official to ask why, the official explicitly stated on speakerphone that the goal was either to make targets' lives so miserable they would self-deport, or to have ICE pick them up when they came to SSA offices to correct the mistake. Jeremiah quit and filed a whistleblower complaint; the 2.7 million list was not acted upon.
Act 3, 'Zeus,' features writer Daniel Alarcon recounting how he sacrificed his honeymoon to fly to Barcelona for what was supposed to be three days with Lionel Messi, only to have the access reduced first to one day, then to one hour. After waiting nine hours at the training facility without food or water, he finally met Messi, who gave monosyllabic, dismissive answers. The resulting article was killed by the magazine. Alarcon reflects on the humbling experience of believing his deep understanding of soccer would forge a genuine connection with Messi, only to be 'batted away like a third-tier defender.'
About this episode
Regular people trapped inside Greek myths. Visit <a href="https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_id=lifepartners&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners</a> to sign up for our premium subscription.<ul><li>Prologue: When a mysterious, ripped-open package arrives on Pablo's doorstep, he takes it as a sign. (4 minutes)</li><li>Act One: Pablo flies closer to the sun. (14 minutes)</li><li>Act Two: In Greek mythology, there's Hades, where everyone goes when they die. You have to cross the river Styx to get there, and there’s a gate with this three-headed dog. He’s guarding the entrance and he’s supposed to make sure only actual dead people enter. This story is about a real person in America who stood at those very gates. Which is not the easiest job it turns out, at least not right now. (24 minutes)</li><li>Act Three: A mortal gets the assignment of a lifetime — to go interview an actual god who is living on earth, traveling under the name of Lionel Messi. (11 minutes)</li></ul>Transcripts are available at <a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/888/transcript" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">thisamericanlife.org</a><a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">This American Life privacy policy.</a><br /><a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Learn more about sponsor message choices.</a><br /><br />🎬 SEE THE STORY UNFOLD:<br />Want to see the original photos, documents, and the faces behind this week's acts?<br />👇 View the visual archive for this episode here:<br /><b><a href="https://goo.su/XwNQm" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">https://goo.su/XwNQm</a></b><br />(Updated for each story)
Key Insights
- Jeremiah Schofield claims a DHS/DOGE official explicitly stated on speakerphone that the goal of marking 2.7 million people as dead in the SSA database was either to coerce self-deportation by freezing their finances or to have ICE intercept them when they visited SSA offices to fix the mistake.
- A random sample of 25 people from the 2.7 million DHS list showed all were alive, and 23 of 25 were U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, or otherwise legally present — contradicting DHS's claim that the list consisted of undocumented violent criminals and terrorists.
- When Jeremiah's team refused to mark the initial 6,000 people as dead, the SSA's chief information officer's office carried out the action anyway, assigning all 6,000 a single death date of March 8, 2025, leading to at least 300 documented 'resurrections' within weeks.
- Pablo Manriquez argues that his success in becoming a Capitol oil painter was entirely driven by ego — estimating it at '91 to 92 percent' — and that humility could not have created the same outcomes, framing ego as a necessary engine of unconventional ambition.
- The Standing Committee of Correspondence voted 4-1 not just to reject Pablo's Frederick Douglass painting but to establish a broad rule permanently prohibiting any credentialed reporter from hanging artwork in the Capitol, a fact Pablo learned only by obtaining the meeting minutes.
- Jeremiah Schofield describes the 'resurrection' process — being incorrectly listed as dead in the Death Master File — as potentially taking months or over a year to fully resolve, since each institution that relied on the SSA data must be individually corrected.
- Daniel Alarcon argues that his fantasy of bonding with Messi over a sophisticated shared understanding of soccer was delusional, and that Messi treated him as an anonymous, sweaty stranger asking repetitive questions — dismissing him 'like a third-tier defender.'
- The DOGE meeting Jeremiah attended was deliberately obscured: it was not on the official calendar, held in a half-used building, guarded by a bouncer-like figure, and the DOGE participants used non-government laptops — signaling to Jeremiah that normal institutional rules were being deliberately circumvented.
Topics
Transcript
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ikes Reese Konduraja in for Ira Glass. Pablo, does this feel like an Icarus story to you? Maybe, potentially. What part? Well, Icarus dies. Not that part. This is Pablo Manriquez, and he recently survived his own personal Greek tragedy. He's a reporter in Washington, D.C. known him for years. And this all began when a ripped open package showed up on his front stoop. It's late winter 2022. I find a box outside of my apartment. Inside is a canvas, a couple, like four, the four primary colors, a paintbrush, and a palette. It just seems like a sign. Yeah. And that's like, what's the sign? It was just, I thought…
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