The Line

The PEXE Lab
  • 5.0 (7)
  • TECHNOLOGY

Everyone has a line they won't let AI cross—a task, a relationship, a piece of work that has to stay human. But where exactly is that line, and why? Each episode, hosts Sean Legnini and Matthew Kruger-Ross from The PEXE Lab sit down with someone from a different field and ask: where's your line? Part interview, part investigation into what it means to stay human in an age of AI.

Episodes

  1. 2D AGO

    Ep. 2 - Brandon Jacobs: Relationships, Identity, and his ADHD Superpowers

    What happens when we hand off the tasks that quietly shape who we are? In this episode of The Line, Sean and Matthew sit down with Brandon Jacobs, leadership certification program manager at the National Association of Episcopal Schools and former independent school recruiter. Brandon makes the case that education has always rested on three Rs — reading, writing, and arithmetic — but has consistently missed the fourth: relationships. For Brandon, AI's greatest value is that it clears space for that relational work. It handles the spreadsheets, the survey synthesis, the interview note collation, so he can show up fully present for the people he serves. Brandon also shares what AI means for him as someone diagnosed with ADHD later in life. Rather than framing ADHD as a limitation, he describes it as a superpower — and AI as the tool that lets him lean into his strengths by neutralizing the tasks that used to drag him down. He talks about the zero-inbox policy his brain demands, the presentation prep that used to stall him, and how AI gets him "out the door" so he can bring his full self to the work that matters. But Brandon's not naive about the tradeoffs. His line comes into sharp focus when he talks about asking school leaders to write their educational philosophy statements — and receiving something clearly AI-generated. "I asked for your humanity," he says, "and you gave me a robot." For Brandon, the line is about honoring the time and attention that genuine relationship demands. He introduces the phrase "human first, human last" — a framework where AI lives in the middle, but the human bookends are non-negotiable. In the debrief, Sean and Matthew unpack the role of time as something more than a resource to be optimized. Drawing on Heidegger's observation that "all distances in time and space are shrinking," they explore how the slow, messy process of writing a teaching philosophy or reading a novel over a month is itself identity-forming. When AI collapses that time, there are real gains — but also real losses that rarely make the headlines. The episode closes with a question worth sitting with: if the tasks we hand off to AI are part of how we become who we are, what happens when we stop doing them? Follow along with our thinking: ⁠The PEXE Lab⁠ ⁠The PEXE Lab on Substack⁠ ⁠Sean's Substack⁠ ⁠Matthew's Substack⁠

    48 min

  2. FEB 12

    Ep. 1 - Welcome to The Line

    Everyone has a line they won't let AI cross. But most people don't know exactly where it is until someone asks. In our first episode, Sean and Matthew sit down with Jes —instructional designer at West Chester University and EdD candidate researching AI policy in higher education—to find out where her line is. What starts as a conversation about brainstorming and event copy turns into something more interesting: a candid look at the anxiety of not knowing whether your AI use is okay, the difference between what people say their line is versus where it actually lives, and whether using Gemini to fix your tone in a heated work email is something you'd ever admit to. Along the way: Heidegger's ready-to-hand and present-at-hand, the secretary analogy nobody expected, a mom who thinks ChatGPT is lying to her about Bible verses, and the question of how many R's are in the word "strawberry." In the debrief, Sean and Matthew notice that Jess's articulated line—rooted in policy language—might not be her real line at all. Her real line seems to be about protecting something she actually loves: the creative work of designing learning experiences. That gap between what we say and what we're actually protecting might be the whole show. The Line is a podcast about where AI ends and humanity begins—and why that boundary keeps moving. Follow along with our thinking: The PEXE Lab The PEXE Lab on Substack Sean's Substack Matthew's Substack

    48 min
  • 2 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

Everyone has a line they won't let AI cross—a task, a relationship, a piece of work that has to stay human. But where exactly is that line, and why? Each episode, hosts Sean Legnini and Matthew Kruger-Ross from The PEXE Lab sit down with someone from a different field and ask: where's your line? Part interview, part investigation into what it means to stay human in an age of AI.

Information

  • Creator
    The PEXE Lab
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    2
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The PEXE Lab
  • Show Website
    The Line