Death of an Artist

Investigative series exploring artists' deaths and their impact on communities AI summary

Pushkin Industries Visit website › True Crime · EN · 27 episodes · latest 2026-11-10 · explicit

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What it is about

In February 2024, celebrated children’s book author and illustrator Petra Mathers and her husband, photographer Michael Mathers, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Petra and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they choose to die together? And what did that decision do to the people left to mourn them? In season 3 of Death of an Artist, journalists Leon Neyfakh and Alice Gregory set out to interview everyone who got one of Petra and Michael’s letters—as one married couple trying to understand another. Through intimate conversations with Petra and Michael’s friends and family about their own relationships to aging, grief, death, and the friends they thought they knew, Death of an Artist weaves together a portrait of a community grappling with the Mathers’ deaths and the final words they left behind. Listen back to season 2, where Katy Hessel offers an inside look at how Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, changed everything about the landscape of modern art. And in season 1, host Helen Molesworth revisits the artist Ana Mendieta’s death and the trial that followed—interrogating both the silence and the protest that have accompanied her story ever since. Death of an Artist Season 1 is a co-production between Pushkin Industries, Somethin’ Else, and Sony Music Entertainment. Death of an Artist Season 2 is a co-production between Pushkin Industries and Samizdat Audio.

Publisher’s own description, taken unchanged from the podcast feed.
2026 2026 Pushkin Industries

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Latest episodes

Behind the Scenes of Death of an Artist with Jonathan Goldstein

2026-11-10 · 13 min

In this bonus episode, Heavyweight host Jonathan Goldstein sits down with Alice Gregory and Leon Neyfakh to discuss the making of Death of an Artist: Petra Mathers and Her Michael. They share what drew them to the…
Introducing: Bone Valley Season 6 | The Devil’s Quarry II

2026-10-20 · 3 min

We think you'll like this preview of Bone Valley: The Devil’s Quarry II. If Season 1 of The Devil’s Quarry was a horror story, Season 2 is a ghost story. More than 30 years after 17-year-old Robin Murphy vanished from…
From A Slight Change of Plans: “I Will Never Leave You”

2026-10-06 · 35 min

This week, we’re sharing an episode of another Pushkin podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of change. In this episode, host Maya Shankar interviews Lucy Kalanithi…
Episode 6: By the Time You Get This Letter E

2026-09-22 · 42 min · Season 3, episode 6

“Dear Lottie and Herbie, by the time you read this, I will be dead . . . That's why I'm writing this letter. I've had a long and happy life doing what I loved best . . . Now it's time to make room for someone else on…
Episode 5: We Are Without Fear E

2026-09-15 · 44 min · Season 3, episode 5

“I wrestle with: Was it courage, or was it cowardice?” This question animates a memorial service for Michael and Petra, held several months after their death. Alice and Leon want to understand it as well: Was Michael…
Episode 4: Bird on a Wire E

2026-09-08 · 41 min · Season 3, episode 4

“It brought up all the things I've never done. All the risks I haven't taken. It was always about trying to be free, you know?” According to Michael Mathers’s first true love, he was always a romantic. Was the death…
Episode 3: The Train Has Left the Station

2026-09-01 · 44 min · Season 3, episode 3

“I have never regretted my decision, only the amount of unhappiness it caused you. Still, unforgivingness is the product of those who feel it.” When Petra and Michael died, they left everyone in their lives behind. But…
Episode 2: It’s Lonely Without You, Friends E

2026-08-25 · 47 min · Season 3, episode 2

“I would've screamed. I would've shouted. I would've cried out. I would've protested. I would've given a million reasons to not leave this world.” Michael and Petra left their house and the logistics of their afterlife…
Episode 1: Dear Honeys E

2026-08-25 · 40 min · Season 3, episode 1

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is about suicide. Listener discretion is advised "When Michael and I got together some 40 plus years ago, we’d always planned on checking out together." In February of 2024, a letter arrived at…
Introducing Death of an Artist Season 3: Petra Mathers and Her Michael

2026-08-18 · 3 min

When Alice Gregory and Leon Neyfakh started building a library for their infant daughter, they stumbled across a name in an obituary that Alice recognized from her own childhood: celebrated children’s book author and…

Episode details from the publisher’s feed. Playback happens at the publisher.

Publisher details

Oldest episode in feed: 08/2022 · over 4 years
Typical length: 31 min
Format: Serial Meant to be heard in order

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