Fiasco

Here's episode 2 of Leon's new series, Death of an Artist, a story about the joint suicide of a beloved children’s book author and her photographer husband that left behind an uneasy fellowship of friends and family caught between grief, confusion, anger, and envy.
Michael and Petra Mathers 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.
Find Death of an Artist wherever you get podcasts. And get early, ad-free access to the entire season now by subscribing to Pushkin+ on the Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Michael’s shared life: the start of their love story, and the end.
Search for Death of an Artist wherever you get podcasts. And get early, ad-free access to the entire season now by subscribing to Pushkin+ on the Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We have been told the American Revolution was fought over taxation and representation. But what the founders were most angry about in our country’s most famous document was Indian affairs. How did generations of Americans miss this?
Hosted and reported by Indigenous author Rebecca Nagle and featuring leading Native historians, First America shares the true story of how the United States came to be, and how our current political moment was 250 years in the making.
Here's the first episode. Rebecca sits down with historian Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) to talk about how hunger for Indigenous land drove the Revolution.
Find more episodes of First America wherever you get podcasts. Get episodes early and ad-free with a Pushkin+ subscription. Sign up on the First America show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Male comedian-led podcasts need a savior, and W. Kamau Bell is the man for the job. Instead of hosting a podcast that turns young boys into assholes, fans the flames of fascism, plays footsie with war criminals, and lies more often than it tells the truth, Kamau is going to do something different with his new podcast Who’s With Me?
In this episode, Kamau sits down with Congresswoman Lateefah Simon, a lifelong organizer and public servant representing California’s 12th District, which includes Oakland, Berkeley, and several neighboring cities.
The conversation dives into what it means to represent a district that spans deep poverty and intense wealth, from West Oakland to Piedmont, and why she believes every kid in West Oakland deserves the same schools, childcare, and opportunities that affluent cities provide.
Listen to Who's With Me wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this provocative investigation into OnlyFans— the adult platform where subscribers around the world spent more than $7 billion in 2024— journalist Leon Neyfakh teams up with comedian and OnlyFans creator Gracie Canaan for a one-of-a-kind exploration into the current state of human connection.
Captivating and tender, OnlyFantasy is about the cost of loneliness, the seductive power of desire, and how the rules of human intimacy are being rewritten online. Is what’s happening on OnlyFans real? Or is it only a fantasy?
Find OnlyFantasy wherever you get your podcasts, or binge all episodes ad-free on Audible.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.