The Observer

Spiral | Tortoise Investigates

No. of episodes

118

Latest episode

2026-11-03

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  #13
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  #22
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  #29
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  #31
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  #34
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  #56
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  #67
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  #86
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  #88
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  #93
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  #145
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  #166
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  #177
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  #190
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  #195
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  #198

Where can you listen?

When The Observer’s Technology Editor, Patricia Clarke began investigating a new phenomenon initially dubbed ‘AI psychosis’, she found lives upended by long, intimate conversations with chatbots. But as she followed the evidence from a psychiatric ward in Bristol to the safety teams in Silicon Valley, a far darker story emerged.

Guided by AI industry whistleblowers, grieving families and hundreds of pages of chatbot transcripts, Spiral exposes how big tech is running an unprecedented experiment on the human mind.

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