After five years of grading obituaries from The New York Times, Famous & Gravy finally has a conversation with with someone who actually writes obituaries from The New York Times. Sam Roberts is on the show to share his experiences as a NYT obit writer and to talk about his new book Are They Dead Yet?

Roberts has written roughly 1,500 obituaries over his career. He and Michael dig into what actually goes into that first sentence of an obituary: accuracy, notability, economy of language, and the pressure of a deadline that can show up with almost no warning. Roberts tells the story of writing an obituary for Jesus of Nazareth, a piece he expected to get torn apart and got almost no pushback on, and explains why Alfred Nobel spent the rest of his life trying to outrun the one obituary that got published about him too early. Along the way, Michael runs Famous & Gravy's own grading criteria past a professional to see if the show's been fair.

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast that asks what a celebrity's life story shows us about ourselves. This week, we ask the person who writes the first draft of it.

LINKS:

Are They Dead Yet? The Art of the Obit by Sam Roberts

Sam Roberts's imagined obituary for Jesus of Nazareth

Life Lessons from Dead Celebrities (Substack)

Dead or Alive quiz game

Famous & Gravy on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads

Famous & Gravy official website

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Val Kilmer walked off his first professional set at age 13. It was a hamburger commercial, he thought the burgers looked terrible, and he refused to sell them. He never got paid, and it turned out to be a preview of the rest of his career.

Kilmer once said he heard he'd gotten cast in Batman moments after walking out of a bat cave in Africa. He also claimed he rode a horse home faster than should have been physically possible the day his father died. Those stories come from a devout Christian Science faith that later shaped how he handled his own throat cancer diagnosis, including an initial refusal of treatment his children eventually talked him out of. The disease took his speaking voice, and by the time the 2021 documentary Val came out, his son Jack was narrating some of his father's own words. The film traced a career that ran from Jim Morrison and Iceman in Top Gun to Doc Holliday in Tombstone, alongside a reputation on set that made him one of the more polarizing actors of his generation.

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast that asks, "What does this celebrity's life story show us about ourselves?"

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode 50 "Golden Rose" (Betty White) and Episode 51 "Goofball Stud" (Bill Paxton).

LINKS:

Val Kilmer NYT Obituary

I'm Your Huckleberry, Val Kilmer's memoir 

Collider article on why Val Kilmer quit Batman

Val Kilmer talks with Larry King, previews Top Gun 2

Famous & Gravy quiz: [email protected]

Website: famousandgravy.com

Dead or Alive quiz game

Famous & Gravy on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads

Famous & Gravy official website

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matthew Perry died in 2023 at fifty-four, and despite his very public battle with addiction, the first line of his obituary made no mention of his disease. Michael Osborne and Alice Orr argue that Matthew Perry is a case study in fame and addiction, working through his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, where he admits he has no memory of filming three entire seasons of Friends. They get into his broken engagement to Julia Roberts, the sponsor turned business partner, and the question of what it takes to cultivate a quality of self-love when the disease of addiction is always working against you.

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast that asks, "What can a celebrity life story show us about ourselves?"

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like:

• Episode 119, Hungry Ghost (Anthony Bourdain)
• Episode 108, Gonzo Troubadour (Hunter S. Thompson)

LINKS

Alice Florence Orr, Managing Editor of Podcast Review

NYT obituary, Matthew Perry

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew Perry's memoir

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip trailer, the canceled Aaron Sorkin pilot 

Matthew Perry puts Peter Hitchens to shame about addiction

Best moments from the Friends 2021 reunion

Interview with Tom Power about his memoir

Your Favorite Podcast Host is (Probably) in Recovery, Osborne article published in Podcast Review

Famous & Gravy quiz: [email protected]

Website: famousandgravy.com

Dead or Alive quiz game

Famous & Gravy on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads

Famous & Gravy official website

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Marco Polo spent 24 years crossing the Mongol Empire and came home with stories so wild that his own neighbors called him a liar. In this episode, Michael sits down with Denis Belliveau, who in the 1990s spent two years retracing Marco Polo's actual route: from Venice through Afghanistan during the warlord period, into a newly opened Iran, and across the Silk Road into China, without ever boarding a plane. Denis made a documentary from the experience, which was nominated for Emmys. He now shares his story with students to inspire them about travel, geography, and culture. His website is In the Footsteps of History:

https://inthefootsteps.org/

This is one of our occasional off-format conversations, built around a single interview rather than the show's normal segments. Even though it's been 700 years, we still want to know what can a life story, shows us about ourselves?

Denis talks about getting held at gunpoint near the ancient site of Balkh, being among the first American civilians allowed into Iran since 1979, and the strange coincidences that kept opening doors along the way. He also gets into who Marco Polo actually was: a natural storyteller who charmed Kublai Khan as a teenager, and a man whose curiosity outran the prejudices of his own century.

Thanks to Rachel Huss for telling us about Denis. Read her article here!

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David Lynch died in 2025 at seventy-eight, and his own obituary somehow never mentioned Twin Peaks or Mulholland Drive. Michael Osborne and longtime Famous & Gravy editor Jacob Weiss spend this episode on the gap between David Lynch the public weirdo, the mind behind Blue Velvet and Eraserhead, and David Lynch the strikingly normal man underneath: a lifelong devotee of transcendental meditation who loved coffee, cigarettes, and burgers more than he loved being understood. The strangest thread they pull on: a filmmaker whose work returned again and again to smoke and fire died as the Los Angeles wildfires burned around him, at the same age David Lynch always seemed to defy.

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast that asks,  "Would you want that life?"

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like:

• Episode 82, Rebel Rebel (David Bowie)
• Episode 75 Love and OJ Jokes (Norm MacDonald)

LINKS

NYT obituary, David Lynch

"David Lynch Keeps His Head," David Foster Wallace's 1996 profile referenced in this episode

KCRW's David Lynch daily weather forecast archive

Naomi Watts, Laura Dern & Patricia Arquette Tell David Lynch Stories

Documentary on the midnight movie circuit and Eraserhead's cult run

Famous & Gravy quiz: [email protected]

Website: famousandgravy.com

Dead or Alive quiz game

Famous & Gravy on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads

Famous & Gravy official website

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Whitney Houston. Gospel choir prodigy raised by soul royalty, Super Bowl anthem reinventor, the rare voice the drag community refuses to parody, reluctant face of pop music's "crossover" wars, three-octave talent behind the best-selling soundtrack in history.

She grew up singing in the choir at New Hope Baptist Church, trained by a mother, Cissy Houston, who'd once backed up Aretha Franklin, with Dionne Warwick as a cousin and soul music running through the family before Whitney Houston ever picked up a microphone professionally. In 1991, her team made one quiet change, shifting The Star-Spangled Banner from a stiff 3/4 waltz into 4/4, and turned the national anthem into a charting Super Bowl hit. The Bodyguard soundtrack still outsells Saturday Night Fever, Titanic, and Purple Rain. And when Diane Sawyer asked her, on camera, to name her biggest devil, Whitney didn't say cocaine. She said: "me."

Host Michael Osborne and guest John Watts wrestle with the narrative of her addiction and an abusive marriage, and how we understand her talent. They dig into the night she was booed at the 1989 Soul Train Awards and met Bobby Brown hours later, her close bond with Robyn Crawford kept just out of public view, and the squeaky-clean "princess" image Clive Davis built that never matched the goofball she actually was at home.

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast. Every episode asks: Would you want that life?

If you enjoyed this episode you may also like Episode 74 "The Masterclass Act" (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Episode 101 "Soul Queen" (Aretha Franklin).

LINKS

New York Times obituary for Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston's 1991 Super Bowl National Anthem performance

Whitney Houston's 2002 interview with Diane Sawyer

Whitney Houston's 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey

Dead or Alive — the Famous & Gravy quiz game

Famous & Gravy on Instagram, Facebook, Threads

famousandgravy.com

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Vanna White has been on Wheel of Fortune and American television for more than 40 years. Her brother Chip White has spent a lot of that time figuring out what it means to live in her shadow.

Chip hosts Relatively Famous, a podcast about the relatives of famous people. He came up to Austin to talk with Michael about Vanna: her surprising business savvy, the misconceptions people carry about her, a Guinness World Record, and how she met her late fiancé at Chippendales. The conversation also goes into recovery, unconditional love, parenting, and the best advice Chip ever got from his sister.

This is an Extra Gravy episode — one of Famous & Gravy's off-format conversations where Michael follows his curiosity outside the usual structure. No quiz, no obituary, no category...just a little extra gravy.

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast with a twist of self-reflection. The central question every episode asks: would you want that life?

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Dr. Ruth. Sex therapist, Holocaust orphan, Haganah sniper, Sorbonne psychology student, host of the radio show Sexually Speaking. She go her own show when she was 52, and become a household name almost a decade after that.

She survived a Kindertransport train out of Nazi Germany at ten, was trained as a sniper because her height made her a smaller target ("with a gun in my hand I am the equal of a soldier who's 6 feet 7," she said), and talked her way into the Sorbonne without ever finishing high school. By the time she died in 2024 at 96, she'd written 45 books, including Sex for Dummies, and become the only person in America who could say "masturbation" on television and have parents thank her for it.

Host Michael Osborne and guest/spouse/soulmate Alison Osborne dig into what actually made Dr. Ruth singular: the grandmotherly delivery that made taboo subjects feel safe, her outspoken support for AIDS education and the gay community at a moment when most public figures wouldn't go near either, and the real net worth that turns out to be far smaller than five decades of bestselling sex advice would suggest.

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast. Every episode asks: would you want that life?

If you enjoyed this episode you may also like Episode 109 "Late Bloomer" (Betty Ford), Episode 20 "Notorious Dissenter" (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), and Episode 81 "Dimpled Ambassador" (Shirley Temple, re-release).

LINKS

• New York Times obituary for Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
• Ask Dr. Ruth — official trailer, Magnolia Pictures — the 2019 documentary that traces her path from Holocaust orphan to sex therapist, and the basis for a lot of the episode's biographical material
• Dead or Alive — the Famous & Gravy quiz game
• Famous & Gravy on Instagram, Facebook, Threads
• famousandgravy.com

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Robin Williams. Comedian, Oscar winner, Genie, Mrs. Doubtfire, Mork — and the person whose death in 2014 hit harder, and stayed longer, than almost anyone else of his generation. He was Juilliard-trained, cocaine-fueled, and constitutionally incapable of repeating himself — he never made a sequel, not once. Host Michael Osborne and guest Sarah Murphy dig into what actually made Robin Williams singular: the lonely Detroit childhood, the years alongside John Belushi and Richard Pryor, the Lewy body dementia diagnosis that reframes his death entirely, and the question the whole episode keeps circling — did he ever truly feel the love that was aimed at him?

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast. Every episode asks: Would you want that life?

If you enjoyed this episode you may also like Episode 31 "The Greatest" (Muhammad Ali), Episode 75 "Love and OJ Jokes" (Norm Macdonald), and Episode 100 "Divine Neighbor" (Fred Rogers).

LINKS

• New York Times obituary for Robin Williams
• Robin — the David Itzkoff biography used in this episode
• Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind — HBO documentary featuring Billy Crystal, David Letterman, Whoopi Goldberg, and never-before-seen archival footage
• Robin's Wish — documentary about Robin Williams and Lewy body dementia told through the eyes of his widow Susan Schneider Williams
• Billy Crystal's eulogy at the 2014 Emmy Awards — the most moving four minutes of television that year
• Billy Crystal remembers Robin on The Tonight Show — a more intimate version of the same love
• Dead or Alive — the Famous & Gravy quiz game
• Famous & Gravy on Instagram, Facebook, Threads
• famousandgravy.com

TAGS: Robin Williams, Good Will Hunting, Mrs. Doubtfire, Dead Poets Society, Aladdin, Mork and Mindy, Lewy body dementia, Juilliard, Billy Crystal, Christopher Reeve, David Itzkoff, Robin's Wish, celebrity biography podcast, Famous and Gravy, would you want that life

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This person died in 2026, age 48. Asked in 2023 what advice he would give his younger self, he said: "Don't be surprised if six years of work gets reduced to a three-second GIF of you crying." In 1997, he was studying English at Drew University in New Jersey when the opportunity for his breakout role came along. In 1999, he played a high school football player in the coming-of-age movie Varsity Blues. Today's dead celebrity is James Van Der Beek.

This is a shorter episode than usual as we say goodbye to James and The Van Der Beek category.

If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 88 Dirty Dancer (Patrick Swayze) or Episode 57 Cool Hand Dylan (Luke Perry).

LINKS:

14th Street Studios

Transcript of this episode

NYT Obituary for James Van Der Beek

Asshole for Hire — James Van Der Beek for Funny or Die

Castle in the Sky (1986) — Studio Ghibli

Dead or Alive quiz game

Famous & Gravy on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads

Famous & Gravy official website

James Van Der Beek gave Famous & Gravy its name for a category. In this special tribute episode, Michael Osborne and co-host Sarah Murphy remember the Dawson's Creek star not as a punchline but as a person: a self-aware kid who knew what he wanted at 15, a reluctant internet icon who leaned into the memes with humor and grace, an adopted Texan who found peace on a ranch with six kids and a gratitude that came through in his final videos. RIP Category retires the Vanderbeek and replaces it with the Pitch at the Pearly Gates — and makes the case that James Van Der Beek, at 48, had lived a genuinely good life.

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