A viral beach meetup in Pacific Beach brought hundreds of remote workers together to work in the sun. It also raised a bigger question: If working from home gives us so much freedom, why are so many people craving connection?
" The costs of remote work are really subtle, and they are slow to take hold," says researcher Emma Harrington. "It takes a while to feel these accumulated effects of not having as strong connections to your colleagues. By contrast, not going on that commute, that happens immediately and is quite salient."
We take our laptops (and mics) to Petco Park for a remote work day and put the idea to the test. Can people actually get work done at a baseball game? And what happens when you replace the isolation of working from home with a crowd of strangers? We talk with Emma about the hidden downsides of remote work, from loneliness to missed opportunities for mentorship and friendship, especially for younger workers. Then, as the Padres game heads into the ninth inning, our experiment takes an unexpected turn.
Guests:
- Emma Harrington, researcher
- Scott Muirhead, Remote Worker Guy
- All the hard-working fans in the stands who took a break to talk to us
Sources:
- 'Bring Your Own Desk' | Remote workers set up office on Pacific Beach sand (Alex Lai, CBS 8, 2026)
- Remote workers return to Law Street Beach — this time with a city permit and cleanup plan (Thomas Murphy, Times of San Diego, 2026)
- The Number of People Primarily Working From Home Tripled Between 2019 and 2021 (United States Census Bureau, 2022)
- Hybrid Work (Gallup, 2026)
- Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026)
- We Liked Remote Work. Then We Looked at the Data. (Emma Harrington and Natalia Emanuel, New York Times, 2026)
- Mistakenly seeking solitude (Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder, National Library of Medicine, 2014)
- Remote work -- not AI -- has sidelined recent college graduates, research finds (Andrea Hsu, NPR, 2026)
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