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, 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.

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Episoder(21)

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

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...

18 Aug 3min

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

Bonus: Krasner's Way with Eleanor Nairne

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...

28 Jun 202425min

Episode 6: A Phoenix From the Ashes

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.

21 Jun 202424min

Episode 5: The Kiss of Death

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

14 Jun 202422min

Episode 4: Jackson Pollock Inc.

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.

7 Jun 202428min