Please note: This review contains discussion of suicide. Petra and Michael Mathers, an artist and a photographer who were married for 44 years, sent out over 40 letters to friends and family saying goodbye before killing themselves in 2024. As far as anybody knew, they weren’t ill. They had just lived long, fruitful lives, and were determined to make their exits together before the ravages of old age started taking hold. Some of their friends considered their actions selfish, others romantic. Many were confused. More still felt betrayed.
Petra, Michael, and the ones they left behind are the subjects of the third season of Pushkin's Death of an Artist, hosted by Leon Neyfakh and Alice Gregory, who are themselves married. In the six episode series, recorded onto tape, the hosts talk with some of the people who received those unusual letters from Petra and Michael. The bereaved reminisce on their relationships with the couple, theorize as to why they did what they did, and talk about their own views on ending their lives.
While Neyfakh and Gregory host this season of Death of an Artist, there’s no tangible narration; the podcast unfolds as a string of interviews conducted by the couple. On the odd occasion when they want to make a comment outside of these taped conversations – as when they talk about attending the Mathers’s memorial – they’re contrived through questioning by a friend. This approach, combined with the gentle, mournfully ethereal score, gives the project a stream of consciousness feeling.
The story doesn’t lead to any big reveal, though the reasons for Petra and Michael's suicides do seem more understandable the more we hear about their histories. Several questions remain unanswered by the end of the show – many friends wonder if Petra was as into the whole idea as Michael was. Some things will always be unknown.
By forgoing traditional narration, the connective tissue of the show consists of Gregory and Neyfakh interacting with their young daughter, Tess. They read Petra's children’s books to her, and even take her to visit the couple’s graves.
While there’s something to be said for making such a personal show a whole family affair, these sections really weren’t necessary. Tess sounds very sweet, but it’s often awkward listening to her parents trying to prod her into saying something relevant to the arc of their podcast. It would have been better to stick with the interviews.
Neyfakh and Gregory are an excellent interviewing team. They’re probing but sensitive. They don’t step on each other’s toes. It often seems as if the fact of them being a couple makes their interlocutors feel more comfortable. That’s especially important considering Gregory and Neyfakh interrogate some bleak territory here, particularly in the fifth episode, which explores how the nightmarish end-of-life experiences of Petra and Michael’s parents may have affected them when contemplating their own ends. Aging is a privilege, sure – and yet, the latter stages of life bring a host of agonies that most people would like to avoid if they could help it.
The Mathers’s joint suicide happened around two years before the bulk of these conversations took place, close enough that the feelings are still pretty raw, and for their family members most of all. You can hear in broken voices how close to the surface these emotions sit for those who were robbed of the chance to say a proper goodbye or who still had open wounds they had hoped to heal before it was too late.
Providing them catharsis, as this season of Death of an Artist does, would probably be enough of a reason for the podcast to exist (the fact of them being artists is far more peripheral here than in the previous two seasons). Yet, the questions the show raises about how to end a life, and what we owe ourselves compared to what we owe the ones who love us, mean it’s also a deeply thought-provoking experience. These are the kind of things we don’t talk about nearly enough, but we really should – after all, death comes for us all.
