Are Relationships Cooked? - When Your Best Friend Is a Chatbot

220 million cumulative downloads of AI companion apps by mid-2025. 88% year-over-year growth. The largest platform, Xiaoice in China, has 660 million users. And 72% of US teens have tried AI companions; a third have chosen AI over humans for serious conversations.Episode 5 of Are We Cooked? closes Season 1 with the most personal question. Three years ago, AI companions were fringe behaviour. Today, it's a movement at unprecedented scale. And nobody is being honest about what it means.Anurag Sharma walks through:- The Sensor Tower H1 2025 + Common Sense Media 2025 numbers that expose the real scale- The optimist case: AI fills loneliness gaps no human could (Kuyda, El-Kaliouby, Perel, Murthy)- The pessimist case: always-agreeable AI rewires us out of real relationships (Turkle, Haidt, Putnam, Kamenetz)- What both sides miss, including the gender question nobody is studying- The split Anurag is watching with friends, colleagues, kids of friends- Three sharper questions about love, friendship, and what intimacy means nowNot a hype show. Not a doom show. A thinking show. We don't hand you the answer. We hand you a sharper version of the question.Then we let you decide.Are we?CHAPTERS:[00:00] 220 Million Questions[00:36] Meet Your Host[02:09] Why Relationships, Why Right Now[04:42] The Optimist Case[09:37] The Pessimist Case[10:49] What Both Sides Miss[12:50] Are We? You Decide.