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

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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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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.

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.