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.

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.