After Amherst

Jeremy Kugel has spent his life turning so many ordinary moments into shared comedy and joy. In doing so, he’s built communities where people feel safe enough to laugh, open up, and create lasting connections.

From the Chicken Nugget Hour of Power in Valentine, to Tuesday Night Toothbrush Fest in Stearns, to the Mardi Gras Marathon at Maryland’s dining hall, Jeremy has a rare gift: he uses humor to dissolve self‑consciousness, spark vulnerability, and create intimacy in places that are usually serious, including the world of finance.

We talk about where that instinct came from, how he’s carried it through every chapter of his life, and why learning how to laugh together is one of the best ways to get comfortable with vulnerability.

Like many people who pursue a liberal arts education, JoJo Thirasilpa has been drawn to learning and acquiring new knowledge and skills his entire life. Where and how he acquires knowledge and skill is rather unique, however.

When not working in finance from his home in the United Kingdom, JoJo competes in Ironmans, has crossed the Sahara in arguably the most challenging footrace in the world, the Marathon des Sables, trained as a scuba instructor, and recently earned his pilot’s license. That means he seeks knowledge in places where many of us would find discomfort.

JoJo reflects on how exploration, discipline, and endurance have shaped his entire life, and why pushing his physical, mental, and emotional limits through endurance sports has become a most unexpected classroom.

I’ve been interviewing exclusively people with an Amherst connection for several years now. It’s time the podcast’s name reflects that.

When I first decided to focus this podcast on fellow Amherst College graduates, my guest for this episode was the first person I thought of. That’s because more than anybody else I know, James Glazer has lived intentionally, choosing his life rather than letting anyone else choose it for him.

At the age of 30, James lost his father. Through that loss and grief, he came to recognize something that’s true for all of us: the most finite resource any of us have is time. In that awakening, he rethought his career path, his definition of success, and the way he wanted to spend his time. Influenced by the Stoics, he built a life in northern New Hampshire centered on family, community, his work in medicine, and spending time outdoors.

We talk about all that and so much more, including the joy he finds in working with his hands and the playful, eye‑roll‑inducing ways he shows love to his kids. James has crafted a roadmap for defining success for ourselves. It’s a gift, especially for those of us on a certain side of the age of 50.

Email James at [email protected].

Keya Khayatian’s life reads like the kind of story he now champions in Hollywood: one shaped by the search for identity. Keya traces his journey from immigrating to the U.S. as a child fleeing Iran to becoming a partner and co‑head of Media Rights at UTA, where he represents some of the most influential filmmakers working today.

He reflects on navigating his early experiences of feeling “othered” and discovering Amherst College, where he came into his own and developed the confidence that comes from failing and trying again. He shares what makes a storyteller’s voice unmistakable, how he advocates for artists in moments of creative conflict, and why the stories we tell ourselves matter as much as the ones we tell the world.

Email Keya at [email protected].

Show notes:

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 Covid turned out to be severe pneumonia and life‑threatening blood clots. She flatlined, slipped into a coma, and somehow came all the way back.

Tarsha talks about the resilience she developed early in life, the shock of feeling “less than” for the first time in her life at Amherst, the joy she finds in animals and rescuing dogs, the scariest thing she has encountered mid-air, and the thrill and purpose that comes from surviving something you weren’t supposed to survive.

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 shape identity.

We also explore Jo’s research into the creative work produced by Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II, including the rock gardens whose arrangements reveal how people create beauty even under duress. Across gardening, teaching, and historical study, Jo makes a strong case for the power of the humanities and developing our understanding of what it means to be human.

Show note: William Carlos Williams’ poem, To Elsie: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46485/to-elsie

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, two practices that ground him and give him outlets for inspiration.

Edward also reflects on a more personal dimension of the last several years: understanding autism within his family and recognizing some of those traits in himself. That realization has reframed how he remembers his Amherst years, including why small groups felt easier than large ones and why some friendships have lasted his adult life.

Edward’s experience sheds light on how we can come to understand ourselves over time and how the pieces of our lives can reveal a clear and intentional design, even if we haven’t always been aware of it.

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 monastery, and a vow to make compassion his North Star reshaped everything that came after. That included walking away from the foundation that physics had provided and pursuing a career in education and educational research devoted to identifying the qualities and inputs that are associated with better teachers.

In this conversation, Rudy reflects on navigating uncertainty and the unexpected ways that purpose can emerge when we slow down enough to hear it.

Contact Rudy via email: [email protected].

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 counselor at Amherst College to his clinic in northern Indiana, he has learned how to treat people with honesty and deep empathy. Or, as he puts so emphatically in the context of his life’s calling, Peter treats people, not cancer.

We also explore the role of clinical medical ethics in meeting patients where they are and the ways he helps some patients process and navigate devastating news toward an outcome that at first might seem like a contradiction in terms: a good death.

To contact Peter, email him at [email protected].