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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.

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Check latest episodes from Death of an Artist podcast

Episode 6: By the Time You Get This Letter

2026/09/22

“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 this earth.” The letters Petra and Michael sent out echo the words of a letter in a children’s book Petra wrote 10 years earlier: the final installment in her beloved series about Lottie the chicken. But it was their relationship – not their work – that Petra and Michael seemed to think of as their most important artistic achievement. Were their deaths, and these letters, their final creative collaboration? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 5: We Are Without Fear

2026/09/15

“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 and Petra’s suicide a move toward something, or away from something else? To figure it out, they reach out to Michael and Petra’s families, to find out what examples they had from their own parents’ end-of-life experiences that might have led them to this choice. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 4: Bird on a Wire

2026/09/08

“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 orchestrated with Petra the ending of a love story he’d been trying to craft all along? Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of Death of an Artist by subscribing to Pushkin+ on the Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 3: The Train Has Left the Station

2026/09/01

“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 it wasn’t the first time: When Petra first fell in love with Michael, she left her son Tillmann to be with him. In an interview with Alice and Leon, Tillmann reckons with his mother's choices and the marks they left on his own life. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of Death of an Artist by subscribing to Pushkin+ on the Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 2: It’s Lonely Without You, Friends

2026/08/25

“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 to their friend Patty—unbeknownst to Patty’s sister Virginia, who considered herself one of Michael and Petra’s best friends. Patty and Virginia have different perspectives on what Michael and Petra did, but they agree on what it was like to be around them as a couple: awestruck and a bit excluded, something even Alice and Leon pick up on while looking at their dozens of photo albums. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of Death of an Artist by subscribing to Pushkin+ on the Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 1: Dear Honeys

2026/08/25

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 the pharmacy in Astoria, Oregon. It was from local residents Petra and Michael Mathers, and they wanted to let the pharmacists know that they had died—by suicide. Petra was a celebrated children’s book author and illustrator. Michael was a photographer. And as police investigated their deaths, they discovered a whole network of people around the country who had received similar letters. Journalists Leon Neyfakh and Alice Gregory, who have themselves been married for more than 10 years, visit Oregon to begin putting together the pieces of Petra and Michael’s shared life: the start of their love story, and the end. And they set out to interview everyone who received a letter from Michael and Petra, to try to understand why a couple who was seemingly so happy and in love would want to end their lives. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of Death of an Artist by subscribing to Pushkin+ on the Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Introducing Death of an Artist Season 3: Petra Mathers and Her Michael

2026/08/18

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 illustrator Petra Mathers. Petra had died by suicide alongside her husband, Michael Mathers. Both were in their late 70s, seemingly happy and healthy. The details of Petra and Michael’s deaths pulled Alice and Leon down a rabbit hole that neither were expecting—a plan many years in the making, dozens of letters mailed out across the country, friends and family caught between betrayal and envy, and a community grappling with their own feelings around aging and death. Death of an Artist drops weekly on Tuesdays starting August 25. Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of Death of an Artist by subscribing to Pushkin+. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, exclusive binges, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening for all Pushkin shows. Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plus See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bonus: Krasner's Way with Eleanor Nairne

2024/06/28

Katy speaks with Eleanor Nairne, who first introduced her to Lee Kranser’s work. Back in 2019, Nairne exhibited a groundbreaking retrospective of Lee Krasner’s work while she was senior curator at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. Today she is the Keith L. and Catherine Sacks Curator and Head of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In this episode, a dive into Krasner’s artistic career. Artwork Discussed: Joan Miro Constellations (1940-41) Mosaic Table (1947) Stop and Go (1949) Prophecy (1956) Birth (1956) Three in Two (1956) Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) Earth Green (1957) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 6: A Phoenix From the Ashes

2024/06/21

1956. New York City. After Pollock’s death, Krasner balances her new role as executor of his estate and her ambitions to continue making art. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 5: The Kiss of Death

2024/06/14

1955. Upper West Side. Jackson Pollock seeks help from a psychotherapist practicing controversial methods. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 4: Jackson Pollock Inc.

2024/06/07

1945. East Hampton. Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock start a new life in a farmhouse 100 miles east of New York City. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 3: The Collector

2024/05/31

1942. Midtown. Peggy Guggenheim arrives, opens a gallery and gives hungry artists hope. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 2: Inner Rhythm

2024/05/24

1936. Brooklyn. A young Lee Krasner leaves home and starts to create a kind of art America has never seen before. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 1: Crash

2024/05/17

1956. Paris. An artist named Lee Krasner learns that her husband is dead. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Death of an Artist Season 2: Krasner and Pollock

2024/05/03

On May 17th, Death of an Artist returns with an all new season hosted by Katy Hessel about the woman who made the modern art world: Lee Krasner. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Podcast reviews

Read Death of an Artist podcast reviews

4.5 out of 5

827 reviews

★★★★★

bunnyreebs 2026/10/02

Season 3 was excellent

I finished season three a couple days ago and thought about what to say for a while. I support euthanasia. That being said I never even once considere...

★☆☆☆☆

HiDsrtGrrl 2026/09/22

Wasted Potential

Season 3: The story is riveting the execution was sorely lacking. I researched and listened to other articles in an effort to dive deeper and get bett...

★★☆☆☆

LondonShosh 2026/09/21

Marred

Why do the hosts think that they are more interesting the story?

★★★★★

somanyendsperinch 2026/09/19

Exceptional

This is a complex, and beautifully crafted work of art. I could not look away.

★★★★★

PodcastsPodcastsPodcasts 2026/09/09

S3 Is Incredible, Thorny, Gorgeous

I was gob-smacked by S3; the story unfolded so naturally and didn’t shy away from the difficult aspects of their choices. The brave interviewees opene...

★★★☆☆

A16WE 2026/09/09

More White People

Hard to Sympathize. More well-off, self centered, entitled, white people. I‘ve had enough of them. Poor Till. He had a bad mother who abandoned hi...

★★★☆☆

@kyracarouse 2026/09/07

Could have been better

Marred by the avoidance, confusion, and self-insertion of the narrators, which precluded a more incisive unpacking of what actually happened here, whe...

★★★★★

KK Gile 2026/09/05

Unbelievable

This is such a tender, poignant and compelling podcast. Perfect interviewing - very attuned to the speaker, but completely willing to ask difficult qu...

★★★★★

wind burial 2026/09/02

Astounding

Season 3 is one of the most beautiful and haunting pieces of audio journalism I’ve ever heard - intimate and deep, a meditation on romance, friendship...

★★★★★

Rosh Dust 2026/09/01

Heavy but beautiful

Season 3 has been a super intriguing listen. The non-narrated style could be tricky but the audio they captured tells the whole story. The voices of l...

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