This week Chuck and Jenni dig into what heavy AI use is actually doing to us, why most executive offsites fail before they even start, a co-founder who got fired for breaking the very return-to-office rule he signed off on, whether AI is really to blame for Gen Z's job struggles, and what the latest remote work research says about loneliness at work. Plus Nick Bloom makes another appearance to push back on the doom narrative. Mark Zao-Sanders' third annual AI usage study moves the conversation past adoption and into what heavy use is doing to people, coining the term "think slop" for the growing sense that users are outsourcing their thinking to the machine. Drawing on nearly 13,000 real use cases, the study finds therapy and emotional support has doubled to become the top use case for the second year running, while enterprise ROI remains mostly marginal outside of narrow, specific applications like personalised email campaigns. Chuck and Jenni compare how their own AI habits have shifted, from content generation toward thought partnering, administrative troubleshooting, and call summarisation. Gustavo Razzetti, author of Remote, Not Distant, has run over 300 executive offsites and says most fail for the same reason: treating bonding as the point instead of paying down what he calls "conversational debt," the compounding cost of every real conversation a team keeps avoiding. Jenni and Chuck debate whether leaders can actually handle the discomfort a good offsite requires, and agree the real test isn't the room, it's whether anything changes in the weeks that follow. William Neport, co-founder of the $8 billion investment firm Bramshill, was fired after refusing to comply with the return-to-office mandate he himself signed alongside his two co-founders. His defence is that the policy was written for employees, not owners, and he's now suing for $30 million while arguing the mandate was really a mechanism to force him out of his equity stake. Jenni doesn't hold back on what a "rules for thee, not for me" policy does to leadership credibility, and both hosts question why this apparently wasn't discussed among the three founders in the first place. New research from the St. Louis Fed complicates the popular narrative that AI is eating entry-level jobs. Looking at 18 to 24 year olds, a general shortage of job openings accounts for the bulk of rising youth unemployment, while AI-skilled hiring shifts explain only a small fraction of it. Chuck and Jenni discuss why blaming AI is the easier story to tell, and Jenni raises concerns about which human skills, like relationship building and influence, are getting neglected while everyone focuses on upskilling in AI. A new study from the New York Fed, University of Virginia, and Harvard finds remote work accounts for roughly a third of the rise in mental distress since 2011, hitting people who live alone hardest. Stanford's Nick Bloom pushes back hard, arguing his randomised trials show remote work improving mental health and that the real issue is loneliness, not location. Jenni argues it's a design problem, not a location problem, and that organisations have a role to play in creating connection without needing to justify it with a return on investment. Before getting into the stories, Jenni shares news of a new quarterly LinkedIn newsletter, Frequency Check, launching soon, along with details on Frequency Live in London this September at Unite26 with the folks at Unily (use code FREQUENCY20) and ICology's Flyover Festival in Sioux Falls on August 27. ____________________________ Want to find out more about Chuck’s work and ICology - check out the website and how to become a member here: https://www.joinicology.com/ Jenni’s a regular speaker and consultant on leadership credibility and internal communication, you can find out more about how to learn from her and work with her here: https://thejennifield.com/ ____________________________ Articles mentioned in this episode: How People Are Really Using AI in 2026 https://hbr.org/2026/06/how-people-are-really-using-ai-in-2026 Why Executive Team Offsites Fail (And How to Avoid It) https://think.fearlessculture.design/p/why-executive-team-offsites-fail The Cofounder Fired for Breaking His Own Return-to-Office Rule https://finance.yahoo.com/small-business/articles/investment-firm-cofounder-sues-being-171729024.html Gen Z’s Meager Job Prospects May Not Have AI to Blame https://www.fastcompany.com/91568772/gen-zs-meager-job-prospects-may-not-have-ai-to-blame Too Many Zooms, Too Little Face Time: Is Remote Work Making Us Lonely? https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/06/29/remote-work-from-home-loneliness-epidemic-americans/90651835007/