Thoughts On Tech & Things

By Jason Michael Perry

Thoughts on Tech & Things helps you make sense of emerging technologies and what it means for work, life, and business. From AI to quantum and the systems shaping our future, Jason explains wha

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FAQs about Thoughts On Tech & Things:

How many episodes does Thoughts On Tech & Things have?

The podcast currently has 26 episodes available.

Thoughts On Tech & Things episodes:

August 07, 2026How will Maryland meet its future energy needs?
Host Jason Michael Perry moderated a live panel for the
World Trade Center Institute's AGILE Global Innovation Series,
exploring the constraint quietly shaping Maryland's future: energy capacity.
As Maryland positions itself as a hub for emerging technologies, demand from data centers,
electric vehicles, and an increasingly digital economy is rising faster than in-state power
generation can keep up. This session explores what the state's future energy mix must look like
to support growth, reliability, and competitiveness, examining the role of renewables, the current
limits of the Maryland grid, PJM's regional challenges, and the power needs of next-generation
infrastructure, including data centers and quantum computing.
Jason is joined by three leaders shaping how Maryland meets that challenge:
Lindsay North, Director of Clean Energy Strategy at Exelon;
Jason Stanek,
Executive Director of Governmental Services at PJM Interconnection;
and Adam Ortiz, Deputy Secretary of the
Maryland Department of the Environment.
They break down where Maryland's power actually comes from, why the state imports a significant
share of its electricity from the regional grid, and what's driving the sharp rise in demand.
The conversation covers the tension between clean energy goals and grid reliability, the real
cost pressures showing up on ratepayers' bills, and what infrastructure, new generation, and new
transmission need to get built — and how fast.
The result: a grounded look at one of the most consequential and least understood questions
facing the state right now.
Podcast Notes & Links
WTCI AGILE Global Innovation Series

Lindsay North, Director of Clean Energy Strategy at Exelon

Jason Stanek, Executive Director of Governmental Services at PJM Interconnection

Adam Ortiz, Deputy Secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment

Sponsors
This episode is brought to you by:
PerryLabs: Invested in AI but not seeing results? You're not alone. PerryLabs helps
organizations find what's working and build what's next. Start with our AI Assessment at
PerryLabs.io.
HoopDee
Are you a new parent, or do you have one on the way? Get HoopDee so you never waste a drop of
breast milk or baby formula. HoopDee's smart system does all the milk math for you, and the whole
family will know which bottle to use next.
Enjoy 20% off with code: thoughts.
Visit gethoopdee.com.
Subscribe & Contact
Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter:
jasonmperry.com/newsletter
Send feedback, questions, or guest suggestions:
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Credits
Special thanks to the team at the
World Trade Center Institute. Thanks to the team at
WYPR, producer Sam Bermas-Dawes, and Myrna Martinez,
Head of Operations and Marketing at PerryLabs.
...more
52min
July 31, 2026 Can a Machine Bring Back the Dead?
Host Jason Michael Perry picks his conversation with psychotherapist Jessica Daniel, founder of Peace in Perspective, back up — this time with the heaviest version of the question.
You can now feed someone's texts and voicemails into an AI and get back something that talks like them. Jess makes the case that grief isn't a problem to be solved but something that has to be witnessed and held — close to the opposite of how an answer engine works. They end where the two of them started: what's left that a machine can't have.
If You Need Support
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. 24/7.
Maryland Department of Health — 988 in Maryland
211 Maryland — Maryland's Helpline — dial 211 or text your zip code to 898-211.
Subscribe & Contact
Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter: jasonmperry.com/newsletter
Send feedback, questions, or guest suggestions: jasonmperry.com/contact
Credits
Thanks to the team at WYPR, our producers Sam Bermas-Dawes, and Myrna Martinez, Head of Operations and Marketing at PerryLabs.
...more
24min
July 24, 2026Is It Grief If Nobody Died?
Is It Grief If Nobody Died?
Host Jason Michael Perry sits down with psychotherapist Jessica Daniel, founder of Peace in Perspective, to ask what happens when you're grieving something that never had a funeral.
Jess widens grief past death — a career, an identity, the life you were promised. Maryland has lost more than 31,000 federal jobs in about a year, and she describes what that grief looks like when it walks into her office. Then the harder part: why so many people hand their inner lives to something free, awake at 2am, and impossible to disappoint.
If You Need Support
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988, or chat at
988lifeline.org. 24/7.

Maryland Department of Health — 988 in Maryland

211 Maryland — Maryland's Helpline — dial 211 or text your zip code to 898-211.

Subscribe & Contact
Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter:
jasonmperry.com/newsletter
Send feedback, questions, or guest suggestions:
jasonmperry.com/contact
Credits
Thanks to the team at WYPR, our producers Sam Bermas-Dawes and Shania Mapson,
and Myrna Martinez, Head of Operations and Marketing at
PerryLabs.
...more
25min
July 10, 2026Will AI Do The Shopping?
Host Jason Michael Perry sits down with Brad Thompson, Senior Vice President of Technology at Target, to talk about what happens to shopping when AI starts doing the finding — and what it would take before you'd let it do the buying.
In this episode, they get into Target's bet on agentic commerce: the Target app inside ChatGPT, the open Universal Commerce Protocol Target helped shape with Google, and what it means to meet shoppers inside Gemini or AI Mode instead of on Target.com. Brad explains why Target is a "build shop" that increasingly "rents" software rather than buying it, how a tool called Store Companion answers team members' questions on the store floor, and how AI quietly fixes the "unknown out-of-stock" problem before you ever notice the shelf is empty. They close on the near future Brad imagines — telling your app, "I'm hosting Taco Tuesday: send the ingredients, skip the guacamole" — and what it takes to earn that kind of trust.
Podcast Notes & Links
Target — Conversational, curated shopping comes to ChatGPT

Target — Frictionless checkout in Google's AI Mode and Gemini

Universal Commerce Protocol — The open standard for AI shopping

Target — Store Companion, generative AI for store team members

Target Tech — Solving for product availability with AI

Sponsors
This episode is brought to you by:
PerryLabs: Invested in AI but not seeing results? You're not alone. PerryLabs helps organizations find what's working and build what's next. Start with our AI Assessment at PerryLabs.io
HoopDee
Are you a new parent, or do you have one on the way? Get HoopDee so you never waste a drop of breast milk or baby formula. HoopDee’s smart system does all the milk math for you, and the whole family will know which bottle to use next.
Enjoy 20% off with code: thoughts.
Visit gethoopdee.com.
Subscribe & Contact
Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter:
jasonmperry.com/newsletter
Send feedback, questions, or guest suggestions:
jasonmperry.com/contact
Credits
Thanks to the team at WYPR, our producers Sam Bermas-Dawes and Shania Mapson,
and Myrna Martinez, Head of Operations and Marketing at
PerryLabs.
...more
44min
June 26, 2026Who Wrote That, AI or You?
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Host Jason Michael Perry sits down with Joseph Thibault, founder and CEO of Cursive Technology, to dig into one of the most contested questions in education right now: in a world where AI can write anything, how do you know if the thinking actually belongs to the person who submitted it?
In this episode, they explore what "plagiarism" even means anymore — how the old definition doesn't map onto a world where AI can do the thinking while a student writes every word, or where detectors flag innocent students for work they genuinely produced. Joseph brings his perspective as someone who's been tracking this problem since before most schools had a policy, including his work building Cursive's typing biometrics platform that focuses on the process of writing, not just the final product.
Podcast Notes & Links
Cursive Technology — Joseph Thibault's academic integrity platform

NBC News — College Students, AI Cheating Detectors, and Humanizers — The January 2026 investigation featuring Joseph Thibault

Cursive Blog — Joseph on the NBC Report — His additional context on trust, surveillance, and the "new agreement" schools need to make with students

This Isn't Fine — Joseph Thibault's newsletter tracking the academic integrity and essay mill landscape

Sponsors
This episode is brought to you by:
PerryLabs: Invested in AI but not seeing results? You're not alone. PerryLabs helps organizations find what's working and build what's next. Start with our AI Assessment at PerryLabs.io.
HoopDee: Are you a new parent, or do you have one on the way? Get HoopDee so you never waste a drop of breast milk or baby formula. HoopDee's smart system does all the milk math for you, and the whole family will know which bottle to use next. Enjoy 20% off with code: thoughts. Visit gethoopdee.com.
Subscribe & Contact
Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter:
jasonmperry.com/newsletter
Send feedback, questions, or guest suggestions:
jasonmperry.com/contact
Credits
Thanks to the team at WYPR, our producer Sam Bermas-Dawes, and Myrna Martinez, Head of Operations and Marketing at PerryLabs.
...more
34min
June 12, 2026What Is a Game?
Host Jason Michael Perry sits down with Frank J. Lee, Professor of Digital Media at Drexel University and the founding director of the Entrepreneurial Game Studio, to take a deceptively simple question seriously: what is a game? Frank is the cognitive psychologist who turned a 29-story Philadelphia skyscraper into the world's largest video game — Pong in 2013, Tetris in 2014, both Guinness World Records — and who has spent the last twenty years arguing that games are an art form, a story form, and one of the most underrated tools we have for understanding ourselves and the cities we live in.
Podcast Notes & Links
Drexel University — Frank J. Lee Faculty Page

Drexel ExCITe Center — Entrepreneurial Game Studio

Drexel News — Video Game Design Reaches New Heights in Skyscraper Games

Technical.ly — Drexel's Open Data Game Wants to Make You Understand Philly's Neighborhoods

Fortune — Netflix's Competition Isn't Sleep Anymore

Interesting Engineering — Humanoid Robot Kicks Child in Stomach During Public Demo in China

Subscribe & Contact
Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter:
jasonmperry.com/newsletter
Send feedback, questions, or guest suggestions:
jasonmperry.com/contact
Credits
Thanks to the team at WHYY in Philadelphia, our on-site audio engineer Diana Martinez, WYPR's Shania Mapson, and Myrna Martinez, Head of Operations and Marketing at PerryLabs.
...more
29min
May 29, 2026Is AI a Performance-Enhancing Drug for Entrepreneurs?
Host Jason Michael Perry sits down with Chris Wink, cofounder and CEO of Technical.ly, to explore whether AI is becoming a performance-enhancing drug for founders — and what that means for workers, entrepreneurs, and the cities trying to build ecosystems around both.
Recorded in Philadelphia during Philly Tech Week at the WHYY studios, the conversation digs into Chris's framework for cutting through the AI noise, the gap between what AI could do at work and what people are actually using it for, why the most exposed workers may not be who you expect, and what the bar is now to be taken seriously as a founder in 2026.
Podcast Notes & Links
Technical.ly — Finding the Signal in AI's Noise

Anthropic — Labor Market Impacts of AI: A New Measure and Early Evidence

YouTube — Humans Need Not Apply by CGP Grey

Amazon — Philly ABCs and Jawns by Christopher Wink

MacRumors — Searching for 'Disregard' Breaks Google
Subscribe & Contact
Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter:
jasonmperry.com/newsletter
Send feedback, questions, or guest suggestions:
jasonmperry.com/contact
Credits
Special thanks to the team at WHYY, and our on-site audio engineer, Diana Martinez. Our producer Shanya Mapson at WYPR, and Myrna Martinez, Head of Operations and Marketing at PerryLabs.
...more
33min
May 15, 2026Can Journalism Schools Teach AI Without Losing the Craft?
Host Jason Michael Perry sits down with Derek Willis, a lecturer at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism and affiliate professor at AIM — Maryland's Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute — to explore what happens when the newsroom's most powerful new tool is also its most dangerous.
In this episode, they dig into how journalism schools are preparing the next generation of reporters for a world where AI can draft articles, fabricate quotes, and produce content at a speed no human can match. Derek draws on years inside The New York Times, ProPublica, and The Washington Post to talk about where AI actually helps journalists, why his "Team Luddite" classroom experiment keeps proving human skill still matters, and how educators teach craft during a technological transition where nobody knows the end state.
Podcast Notes & Links
An AI Upheaval Is Coming for Media. This Journalist Is Already All In – Wall Street Journal

Union Denounces AI-Generated News Stories as Baltimore Sun Management Predicts More of Them – Baltimore Brew

AP's Approach to Artificial Intelligence

Principles for Using Generative AI in the Times's Newsroom – New York Times

The Baltimore Banner's Approach to AI

Editor's Note: Retraction of Article Containing Fabricated Quotations – Ars Technica

Ars Technica Fires Senior AI Reporter After AI-Generated Quotes Scandal – Futurism

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Scott Shambaugh

Subscribe & Contact
Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter:
jasonmperry.com/newsletter
Send feedback, questions, or guest suggestions:
jasonmperry.com/contact
Credits
Thanks to the team at WYPR, our producers Sam Bermas-Dawes and Shania Mapson,
and Myrna Martinez, Head of Operations and Marketing at
PerryLabs.
...more
1h 13min
May 01, 2026Are You Ready to Pivot or Die?
Host Jason Michael Perry sits down with Gary Shapiro, Executive Chair of the Consumer Technology Association and the man who led CES for more than 35 years, for a conversation about what it really takes to pivot when everything around you is changing. Recorded on site at CTA's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, this episode traces the arc of pivoting through Gary's career: from the forced pivot of taking CES fully virtual during COVID, to the slow-burn evolution of technologies like AI and robotics on the show floor, to the policy fights shaping what technology actually reaches consumers.
Gary shares the framework from his book Pivot or Die — the startup pivot, the forced pivot, the failure pivot, and the success pivot — and explains why even the smartest leaders struggle with change. They dig into AI adoption, the Trump administration's new AI policy framework, autonomous vehicles stalling in Maryland, the intensifying tech race with China, and what 35 years of walking the CES floor teaches you about separating the breakthroughs from the flameouts. The conversation closes with Gary's own pivot — stepping from CEO to Executive Chair — and with the question of whether Kinsey Fabrizio will let him get a ticket to next year's show.
Podcast Notes & Links
Gary's latest book, laying out his four-type pivot framework, drawn from decades of leading CTA and watching companies rise and fall at CES

The trade association representing more than 2,200 consumer technology companies, the owner and producer of CES

Waymo's push to bring autonomous ride-hailing to Baltimore stalls as the Maryland legislature ends its session without passing the bill

A deeper look at the regulatory gap keeping driverless cars parked in Maryland while Waymo expands to Dallas, Nashville, and other cities

CTA's overview of CES 2026, where robotics and physical AI dominated the show floor

A humanoid robot named Lightning finished the Beijing half-marathon in 50 minutes, beating the human world record by nearly seven minutes — then crashed into a barricade at the finish line

Subscribe & Contact
Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter:
jasonmperry.com/newsletter
Send feedback, questions, or guest suggestions:
jasonmperry.com/contact
Credits
Thanks to the team at WYPR, our producer Shanya Mapson, and Myrna Martinez, Head of Operations and Marketing at PerryLabs.
...more
49min
April 17, 2026Why are Maryland's Electric Bills Rising?
Host Jason Michael Perry sits down with Jason Stanek, Executive Director of Governmental Services at PJM Interconnection, to unpack why Maryland electricity bills keep climbing — and how the structure of the grid itself is at the center of the problem.
Maryland is a net importer — the state produces about 60 percent of the electricity it uses and buys the rest from the regional market. Stanek explains what that actually means: who generates power, who moves it, and who delivers it to your door. He walks through how PJM — the organization that coordinates electricity across 13 states and 65 million people — fits into the system, and why Maryland’s dependence on regional supply has become so expensive as data center demand drives capacity costs sharply higher.
The conversation covers the double squeeze on Maryland ratepayers: BGE’s multi-year infrastructure investment plan pushing distribution costs up at the same time that regional generation costs are rising. Stanek also explains the stalled renewable buildout, the fight over the proposed Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project transmission line, and what a new deal between Entergy Louisiana and Meta suggests about how states can push data centers to pay their fair share. Plus: what regular Marylanders can actually do about their bills, including BGE’s time-of-use rate program that rewards off-peak energy use.
Sponsors
This episode is brought to you by:
PerryLabs Invested in AI but is not seeing results? You’re not alone. PerryLabs helps organizations find what’s working and build what’s next. Start with our AI Assessment at PerryLabs.io
HoopDee Got a baby on the way? HoopDee tracks breast milk and formula with our smart Hoops and free app so you always know what’s fresh, what’s next, and what’s expired. Save 20% off using promo code: thoughts. For more information, visit gethoopdee.com.
Podcast Notes & Links
PJM Interconnection — Who We Are

EIA State Energy Profiles — Maryland

WYPR — What Would Happen If Maryland Left the Nation's Largest Power Grid?

CNS Maryland — As Data Centers Multiply, Maryland's Power Grid Struggles to Keep Up

BGE Residential EV Programs & Time-of-Use Rate

TechCrunch — $1B DOE Loan to Restart Three Mile Island

Anthropic Exposed 512,000 Lines of Its Own Code

WTCI AGILE: Energy Discussion with Panelists Including Jason Stanek
Subscribe & Contact
Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter: jasonmperry.com/newsletter
Send feedback, questions, or guest suggestions: jasonmperry.com/contact
Credits
Thanks to the team at WYPR, our producer Shanya Mapson, and Myrna Martinez, Head of Operations and Marketing at PerryLabs.
...more
40min

FAQs about Thoughts On Tech & Things:

How many episodes does Thoughts On Tech & Things have?

The podcast currently has 26 episodes available.