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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

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

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Subscribe to the Thoughts on Tech & Things newsletter: jasonmperry.com/newsletter
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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.

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.