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

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/pushkin
Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plus

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(25)

Episode 6: By the Time You Get This Letter

“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...

22 Sep 42min

Episode 5: We Are Without Fear

“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 w...

15 Sep 43min

Episode 4: Bird on a Wire

“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...

8 Sep 41min

Episode 3: The Train Has Left the Station

“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 thei...

1 Sep 43min

Episode 2: It’s Lonely Without You, Friends

“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 ...

25 Aug 46min

Episode 1: Dear Honeys

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, ...

25 Aug 39min

Bonus: The Women on the Scene with Audrey Flack

Artist, musician and writer Audrey Flack shares her firsthand accounts of the downtown New York City art scene in the mid-twentieth-century and a song she and her band, The History of Art, wrote about...

23 Aug 202416min