The Pre-Made Podcast

Tarsha Echols has lived a life that refuses neat categories. She grew up, in her words, “a hood rat" from Memphis, graduated from Amherst College as a biology and French double major, and went on to build a 28‑year career as a flight attendant, where she has had a front‑row seat to humanity at 35,000 feet. But it’s what happened in 2021 that reshaped everything. What she thought was a bout of Covi...

From the forest pansy redbud she studies each morning to the students she teaches at Penn, Jo Park talks about the power of observation as both a discipline and a source of meaning. She reflects on how gardening during Covid sharpened her ability to see patterns and small transformations, and how that same attentiveness informs her scholarship on Asian American literature and the frameworks that s...

Edward Lees, like many Amherst College graduates, has generally gravitated toward breadth. That first manifested in his academic journey from physics to neuroscience to European studies, and later in a career that has taken him through biotech hedge funds and today into environmental investing from his home in London. To complement that arc, he’s carved out space for the outdoors and for poetry, t...

Matt “Rudy” Ronfeldt grew up possessing a deep curiosity and passion for physics and Buddhism, but graduating from Amherst College having majored in physics left him with a gnawing doubt: whether he wanted to pursue physics professionally. He then did something some of us may only daydream about: he stepped off the grid and into the Himalayas. Months of trekking, six weeks of silence in a Buddhist...

Dr. Peter Tothy (hematology/oncology) has spent nearly two decades guiding patients through some of life's hardest moments, including navigating terminal cancer diagnoses. In this episode, he reflects on the experiences that have shaped him and made him such a compassionate caregiver and advisor. From attending and working at a rustic Adirondack summer camp to being a student and resident counselo...

Bill Bares has lived a life that unfolded almost exactly as he planned it in his early twenties, when he completed a Tony Robbins-branded one‑year, five‑year, and 25‑year plan. That plan resulted in a career as a jazz pianist, scholar, and now Distinguished Professor of Humanities at UNC Asheville. These days, Bill finds his interests shifting to unlearning the habits that made him successful and...

Kate Lewis (nee Westerbeck) has willed every stage of her career into existence. In her childhood, she knew she wanted to work in media. Her very first job after Amherst College landed her at Conde Nast. She then joined Hearts and rose all the way to Chief Content Officer, overseeing some of the most iconic titles in American publishing. When she later set her sights on Apple, she made that happen...

Sara Keen has been a close friend of mine for more than three decades. She has a rare gift: she listens in a way that makes people feel fully seen, and even when she disagrees with them, she remains attentive, kind, and firm yet flexible in her own mind. Whether we’re talking sports, politics, or the messy realities of organizational life, she always brings curiosity, good humor, and a deep respec...

For most of his adult life, JJ Haines has called Tokyo home. He didn't imagine that outcome while at Amherst College, but in retrospect it almost feels inevitable given his long-standing appreciation for Japanese culture. JJ traces the winding path from studying Buddhism and Japanese cinema at Amherst to building a global banking career that took him through risk management, real estate, the Lehma...

Valerie Leipheimer may be the first person in human history who can persuasively and clearly show how much art history and tax law have in common. How'd she come to that conclusion? By way of a path that has taken her from Amherst College, where she studied art history, through law school, and into a serendipitous turn as a corporate tax law summer associate in London that helped her find her true...

Anthropologist Anand Pandian joins me to explore the everyday walls—physical, social, and mental—that shape modern American life. Drawing from his book, Something Between Us, he explains how the boundaries built into our homes, cars, and information sources make it harder to imagine living in community with people who might think differently or come from another place. We talk about what it takes...

Aaron Carroll has spent his entire life following the instincts Amherst sharpened, especially the belief that learning never really stops. In this conversation, he traces the path from his first‑floor Morrow dorm room (where Bruno's pizza arrived through the window) to a career shaped by a liberal arts way of thinking. Aaron talks about the moment in residency when he nearly left medicine and how...

Fans of the pod will know how often my college classmates’ lives have unfolded in ways none of us could have predicted back in the mid‑1990s. Geoff Klein is a perfect example of that non‑linearity. After Amherst, he nearly landed at Leo Burnett before being told (accurately) that he seemed more interested in film than advertising. That observation set off a chain of reinventions: working for Seth...

Russ Hanser arrived at Amherst as a self-described nerd with big ambitions: maybe law, maybe journalism, maybe even director of the CIA. His liberal arts education sharpened his thinking and ultimately launched him into a career shaping telecommunications and technology policy at the highest levels. Today, Russ serves as Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Chief Legal Officer of NCTA – The...

Elizabeth Doyle is one of the proprietors of Doyle & Doyle, a purveyor of antique and vintage jewelry based in New York City. We talk about her wonderfully serendipitous path from Amherst College to the Gemological Institute of America, and then into building a jewelry business that has now spanned decades. Her journey is a delightful example of the good things that can happen from saying 'yes...

John Haskell has spent over 20 years living in Russia, a decision that began as a calculated professional bet in the post-Soviet 1990s and became, almost accidentally, a permanent life. John walks us through what it has meant to build a family, a business, and a sense of home in a place most Americans only know through headlines, and why the reality on the ground often looks very different from wh...

Ricky Quinones has spent his life exploring and expressing music across genres, geographies, and stages, from Amherst to New York, including Broadway, and Grammy-winning collaborations. Ricky opens up about his musical evolution, the artists who shaped him, and why the blues remains the emotional and structural foundation of everything he plays (and, surprisingly, what he sometimes hears in the mu...

As a very amateur geologist, I've been looking forward to catching up with Sonia Nagorski ever since my podcast project started. That's because she's a geologist whose work focuses on understanding Earth’s history and what it can tell us about the world we humans are shaping today. Perhaps not surprisingly, she and I share a sense of wonder about the mind-bending qualities of Earth time and the pl...

Mike Gold has built a life defined by range. He ran an art gallery in New York. He scaled an animation studio to nearly 200 artists. He has built backend systems for massively multiplayer online games, collaborated with DARPA on next-generation engineering tools, and even mined gold on a beach in Nome, Alaska. Mike traces the throughline that unites these pursuits: he loves learning, assembling st...

Asim Ahmed has three passions: the detection and workings of infectious diseases, sports (especially his hometown St. Louis teams), and music, and in this wide-ranging conversation, he shows how each one has shaped his life. We talk about his one-of-a-kind custom jerseys (clever mashups of teams, players, and music references), his journey from pediatric infectious disease (ID) in academic medicin...

Mariela Rexach's life reflects a combination of steadiness, self-knowledge, and humble assertiveness. From Amherst to Penn Law and back home to Puerto Rico, Mariela has raised a family and built a nearly three-decade career at the same women-owned labor and employment law firm. She shares the thinking that has helped her make decisions that align with her values rather than conventional expectatio...

Kensei Nishikawa arrived at Amherst as a transfer student from Japan already holding a degree from the University of Tokyo, carrying with him two languages, two cultures, and a deep love of literature. What he didn’t yet know was how profoundly Amherst would shape not just how he reads and writes, but how he listens. We explore Kensei’s lifelong devotion to the humanities, especially poetry, and t...

Amherst isn't known for launching fashion designers and entrepreneurs, but that's just one of the reasons why this conversation with Parke Lutter was so much fun. This talent has been building inside of him since his childhood in the Midwest, where he made clothes for one of us stuffed animals, his friends, and even a prom dress for his sister. Still, Parke hadn't awakened to that interest as a pr...

Deb Thalheimer Long's career and life since graduating with me from Amherst College have been marked by subtle yet profound transformations. From Wall Street to academia, from the Baltimore public schools to the hospital floor, Deb has navigated big career pivots with intentionality. Now a nurse specializing in wound care and infusion therapy, she brings to her patients the same attentiveness she...

Matt Sawyer has built a career rooted in one place: the Williston Northampton School in Easthampton, Mass., where he’s taught English, coached baseball and football, and served as ninth-grade dean for more than three decades. In a world that celebrates mobility and reinvention, Matt’s story is one of steadfastness and the value of deep community attachments. This conversation explores how teaching...