Death of an Artist: New from Leon Neyfakh
About this episode
Leon Neyfakh introduces a new series exploring the impact of the suicides of authors Petra and Michael Mathers on their community.
Leon here bringing you a preview of a new series of mine, Death of an Artist . Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing a few episodes with you right here on the Fiasco feed. 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 deeply in love. As much a love story as one about death, it begs the question: what did that decision do to the people left to mourn them? My wife, journalist Alice Gregory, and I 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. Here's episode 1, where we visit Oregon to begin putting together the pieces of Petra and…
More episodes of Fiasco
- From Death of an Artist: The Train Has Left the Station
- From Death of an Artist: It’s Lonely Without You, Friends
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Fiasco podcast page.