Death of an Artist

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1. Introducing: Bone Valley Season 6 | The Devil’s Quarry II

   20 oktober 2026 · 3 min

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   We think you'll like this preview of Bone Valley: The Devil’s Quarry II. Lees meer

   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 Carmel, New York, investigative journalist Paul Solotaroff and reporter Kathleen Horan plunge into the cold case that has haunted the community for decades. Robin was last seen with a convicted violent predator who was never charged in her disappearance. Now, as the original case file is reopened, new witnesses emerge, old evidence is reconsidered, and the search for Robin enters its most critical chapter. Can the truth finally be uncovered before time runs out? Or will one of New York’s most haunting mysteries remain a ghost story forever?

   Award-winning investigative journalist and longtime Rolling Stone Magazine contributor Paul Solotaroff hosts the latest entry in the acclaimed Bone Valley anthology: The Devil's Quarry II.

   Search for Bone Valley Season 6 | The Devil's Quarry II wherever you listen to podcasts. Bone Valley Season 6: The Devil’s Quarry II is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.

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2. Episode 6: By the Time You Get This Letter

   22 september 2026 · 42 min

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   “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.” Lees meer

   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?

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3. Episode 5: We Are Without Fear

   15 september 2026 · 44 min

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   “I wrestle with: Was it courage, or was it cowardice?” Lees meer

   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.

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4. Episode 4: Bird on a Wire

   8 september 2026 · 41 min

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   “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?” Lees meer

   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.

5. Episode 3: The Train Has Left the Station

   1 september 2026 · 44 min

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   “I have never regretted my decision, only the amount of unhappiness it caused you. Still, unforgivingness is the product of those who feel it.” Lees meer

   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.

6. Episode 2: It’s Lonely Without You, Friends

   25 augustus 2026 · 47 min

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   “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.” Lees meer

   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.

7. Episode 1: Dear Honeys

   25 augustus 2026 · 40 min

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   DISCLAIMER: This podcast is about suicide. Listener discretion is advised Lees meer

   "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.

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

   18 augustus 2026 · 3 min

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   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. Lees meer

   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.

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9. Bonus: The Women on the Scene with Audrey Flack

   23 augustus 2024 · 16 min

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   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 Jackson Pollock. Lees meer

   Flack passed away in June. For more about her life, see “Audrey Flack, Creator of Vibrant Photorealist Art, Dies at 93.”

   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

10. Bonus: Krasner's Way with Eleanor Nairne

    28 juni 2024 · 26 min

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    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. Lees meer

    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)

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