The Pre-Made Podcast

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...

When I started the Amherst College part of this podcast, I wanted to capture the stories of my 1994 classmates who’ve navigated big pivots in their lives. Few stories embody that better than David Young. He joined me from Mozambique, where he and his husband make their home. David’s career has taken him from Amherst’s ROTC program to the Air Force JAG Corps, then into a remarkable 20-year run with...

Since our freshman year in Morrow (“Psycho Ward”), Zack Henry has built a life that’s taken him across the globe. He’s lived on four continents, worked on six, and led projects ranging from energy dialogues in Saudi Arabia to business development in New York and São Paulo. But at the heart of his story is something simpler and deeper: a belief in what he calls “the hidden pass.” Borrowed from socc...

Thirty years ago, a Boston Globe classified ad launched Jessica Smith into a career at Harvard, where she built bespoke instruments and launched them on NASA’s converted U-2 aircraft, flying at 70,000 feet to read the chemistry of our stratosphere. In this conversation, she traces the improbable path from Amherst’s machine shop to equipping these delicate high fliers for experiments over the Arcti...

Erin Cowhey is an Amherst College classmate and architect whose profession is awfully interesting its own right, but it interests me more than ever now that my daughter works as an interior designer. Erin runs her own firm in Brooklyn but wasn't always destined for the field. She enrolled at Amherst with every intention to go pre-med before pivoting to architecture. In this episode, she talks abou...

Brian Clark transferred into our Amherst Class of 1994 having emerged from a childhood marked by instability and deep family pain. Today he serves as Director of Partnerships in Technology at the Spiritual Life Center in Hartford, where he helps others find healing through faith, psychology, and honest self-examination. Brian talks about growing up in a home dominated by an abusive father, the mom...

On September 17, a 19th century warehouse located in Red Hook, Brooklyn, went up in flames, resulting in a five-alarm response that was unable to spare Justin Neely's art studio home of over 12 years. He's facing the loss of every painting he has ever made, photographs that chronicle his life, computer equipment, and a treasured collection of sports jerseys. In this episode, Justin demonstrates re...

Jason Spero is going through a lot of change. His father recently passed away following a years-long battle with Alzheimer's. His youngest child is in the back half of her high school years, and after nearly two decades helping to build Google’s mobile advertising business, he is stepping away from a big job to chart a new path, one shaped by family, community, and the lessons of mortality and los...

I published this episode about getting into college with my friend and former Amherst College Associate Dean of Admissions Will Dix (Amherst '77) a few years ago, but it has aged well. As teens and their parents explore and apply to colleges, I wanted to share it once again. It covers most of the major considerations: how to select colleges for application, the importance and pitfalls of campus to...

It's time to catch up with my Amherst College birthday twin, Evan Wollen. While many of us left Amherst still unsure of what was next, Evan’s path was shaped by a love of history and a calling to service. He went on to spend more than 22 years in the U.S. Army, leading combat units in Iraq, teaching history at West Point, and running the ROTC program at Claremont McKenna. One of the most powerful...

What do 1990s college radio, Richard Scarry's picture books, and complex spine surgery have in common? They’re all part of JC Leveque's journey. Today he’s the Section Head of Neurosurgery at Virginia Mason in Seattle, but his path included years on the road with his Amherst-born band Rosemary Caine, the decision to, as he put it, “step off the bus” before med school, and a career built around mak...