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Chapter 1: What mysterious package does Pablo receive and what does it signify?
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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.
Chapter 2: How does Pablo's journey reflect an Icarus-like ambition?
It's late winter 2022. I find a box outside of my apartment. Inside is a canvas, the four primary colors, a paintbrush, and a palette. It just seems like a sign. And that's like... What's the sign? It was just, I thought to myself, somebody painted every painting in the Capitol, in the White House, in the Department of Justice, all these agency buildings, they have oil paintings.
And yet, in the 15 years that I've been in Washington, I've never met an oil painter. Get this light bulb moment. That could be him.
Chapter 3: What challenges does a gatekeeper at Hades face in modern America?
It wasn't the first time he decided to become a new Pablo. When we first met, he was doing PR work, but he decided he wanted to be a reporter no matter what. So at 37, he moved into a flophouse and began freelancing for small publications. And now he spends his days chasing down politicians in the halls of Congress. He made it happen.
So with these art supplies, he began to imagine this other life for himself. And he made a Pablo kind of plan. So I was like, if I become an oil painter, I would basically be the only oil painter I know. And in some sense have like a monopoly on oil painting in Washington. You know what I mean? Like if you want an oil painting, especially a portrait, you have to come to me.
What Pablo lacks in skill and experience, he compensates for with heat-seeking opportunism and blinding self-confidence.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of Pablo's first portrait of Mitch McConnell?
It can rub people the wrong way, but I appreciate the hustle. Pablo, it's so funny to me that you're trying to pick one career in a... I can say it, a dying industry, by supplementing your income with another dying industry. Reporting an artist, it's like the two poorest. It didn't make any sense to a lot of people. But it made sense to Pablo.
Woo!
Pablo looked down at the new tools in his hands and then tilted his head skyward. Even as Icarus did before him, he saw a way to soar where no mortal had dared to soar. Our show today, myths in real life. What happened next to Pablo and other daring actions by mortals challenging their small lives.
Chapter 5: How does Pablo's painting career evolve as he gains recognition?
and a cameo by a real-life god. Because, you know, the gods get mad if you don't include them. And I'm too busy to get smote. Not today, Hades. Stay with us.
Hey, this is Christopher Kimball. On Milk Street Radio, we share compelling stories about food. You'll hear about the secrets of restaurant design and the truth about picky eating. For example, in the 19th century, kids loved oysters and corned beef.
Chapter 6: What obstacles does Pablo encounter in his quest to hang artwork in the Capitol?
We also have a story about cooking in prison from former This American Life producer Sean Cole and interviews with Jose Andres, Semih Noserat, and Padma Lakshmi. Listen to Milk Street Radio wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Erlon Woods.
I'm Nigel Poore. We're the hosts and creators of Ear Hustle from PRX's Radiotopia.
When we met, I was doing time at San Quentin State Prison in California.
And I was coming in as a volunteer. The stories we tell are probably not what people expect from a prison podcast.
Like cooking meals in a prison cell. Keeping little pets.
Prison nicknames. And trying to be a parent from inside.
Stories about life on the inside, shared by those who live it.
Find Ear Hustle wherever you get your podcasts.
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Chapter 7: How does the Death Master File impact lives and what ethical dilemmas arise?
And then, late last year, in December, he got a phone call from a friend's number, someone who used to be a policy advisor in the executive branch. I picked up and I was just like, hey man, what do you need? I'm kind of busy. Here on the other end of the line... hey, Pablo, you're a great artist. This is Joe Biden. I'm like, bullshit, man. Like, very funny, right?
He's like, no, no, no, I'm serious. Hey, Jill. Put on FaceTime. And bloop, bloop, bloop, like the FaceTime noise plays. And I'm looking at Dr. Jill Biden. And I'm like, oh, my God. I'm so sorry, ma'am. I'm so sorry for cursing. I did not mean to say BS in front of you. Yeah, this is real. And she had to fall back over to Joe Biden.
And he was just like, you're a really good artist. This is a really great portrait of Jill and me.
If you've been wondering what Joe Biden's been up to since leaving office, well, mystery solved. He knew the photo that it came from. It was from the 1970s when they first met. So it was an oil painting of them when they were young. And I was on FaceTime with the president. There were probably 25 reporters in the press gallery filing their stories.
And pretty soon they were all gathered around me and we were all talking to Joe Biden, you know, like the Washington Post, the AP, like the Bloomberg, HuffPost. We're all talking, Fox News, Daily Caller. We're all looking into the camera and talking to Joe Biden. And he's just telling everybody how bomb my painting is. I was like, that was awesome. That was awesome.
This is the part of the story when Icarus, with wings cobbled together with wax and feathers, experiences the miracle of flight. Hey, I can see my Minotaur from here. For many mortals, this level of success is thrilling and enough. But not for Pablo. Pablo has a bigger goal.
He wants one of his paintings officially hung in the Capitol, approved by a committee and hung by an entity known as the architect of the Capitol, the only people allowed to drive a nail in the wall. Pablo wants to be immortalized in these halls of power. I have no legacy. Like, you know what I mean?
And while no one might remember any story I write ever, right, the painting will be there for centuries. Centuries, if it's on the wall. Maybe you've been wondering this whole time, what do these paintings look like? So to be totally honest, Pablo's improved a lot. But he's doing work that looks like it's made by a talented art student, maybe a folk artist. The colors are pleasing.
You can always tell who it is he's painting. But it's not, you know, John Trumbull's painting of the founders signing the Declaration of Independence or any of the other museum-grade paintings hanging in the Capitol Rotunda. Of course, that does not stop Pablo. And a couple months ago, he saw a way to make his dream happen.
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Chapter 8: What unexpected challenges does a journalist face when meeting Lionel Messi?
If you want to see Pablo's paintings or follow his campaign for standing committee, he's at pablo.menriquez on Instagram. That brings us to Act 2, Cerberus. You know how in Greek mythology there's Hades, where everyone goes when they die? You gotta cross the river Styx to get there. And then there's this gate with this three-headed dog, Cerberus.
He's guarding the entrance, and he's supposed to make sure only actually 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. Nadia Raymond talked to him about it.
When Jeremiah Schofield started working at the Social Security Administration, the SSA, the first thing his boss said to him was, if you're looking up your ex's records, your own records, or looking up someone famous, don't. We will know. Then they made him read Title V of the U.S. Code Section 552A, the Privacy Act, the actual legal text of it.
That's how much they wanted to drive the point home. The Social Security Administration is the caretaker of these truly massive databases of personal information. They use it to send social security checks, disability payments, and in order to do that accurately, given how there's over 300 million of us, they keep master files.
Jeremiah says they have all sorts of information from all sorts of moments in your life. Where you were born, your social security number, your mom's maiden name, your citizenship status. All of it stored in giant files.
Your master earnings files will show every job that you ever worked at, and it would show how much money you made at all of those different jobs.
At every job people have had?
Yep. And then you have the disability control file, which actually gets into disability-related information.
That's for people who collect disability.
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