Bruce Holsinger — award-winning author and Oprah Book Club pick — joins Dr. Dan for a riveting conversation about his novel Culpability, which explores what happens when technology, morality, and family collide through a self-driving car accident. From the trolley problem reimagined for autonomous vehicles to PDOOM numbers (the percentage chance AI will kill us all), Bruce challenges us to ask: Who is in charge of our humanity in the age of AI? This conversation reveals why AI's moral indifference is both its superpower and our warning, and why remorse, empathy, and moral growth remain uniquely human.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
Why technology is not neutral
How "life is not an algorithm"
What PDOOM numbers reveal about AI risk
Why novels are moral laboratories
The cost of acceleration on slow reading and writing
Why we're not helpless in the age of AI
How remorse drives moral growth
LEARN MORE
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September 25, 2025
Bruce Holsinger
AI, Family, and Morality: Culpability and the Future of Humanity
"One of the superpowers of artificial intelligence is its complete moral indifference."
TIMESTAMPS
00:08:25 – The scenario
00:24:39 – Novels as moral laboratories
00:25:43 – Life is not an algorithm
00:27:44 – Historical parallels
00:34:12 – The evolution of the book
00:37:12 – PDOOM numbers
00:38:22 – AI's moral indifference
00:54:02 – Remorse and moral growth
SHOW NOTES
Oprah Winfrey’s recent Oprah Book Club pick Culpability continues to fuel important conversations around the question: What happens when morality, technology, and family collide?
In this provocative new episode, Dr. Dan welcomes Bruce Holsinger, the author of Culpability to discuss and explore many of our deepest fears around AI, family, resilience, responsibility, and the future of humanity.
LINKS & RESOURCES
Bruce Holsinger
Website — bruceholsinger.com
Instagram — @bruceholsingerauthor
Book: Culpability — Oprah Book Club pick
Next book: The Beta Test (working title) — about masculinity, boys, and authoritarianism
Books Referenced
Culpability by Bruce Holsinger — Family in crisis after self-driving car accident
Silicon Souls: On the Culpability of Artificial Minds — Fictional book within the novel by character Lorelei Shaw
Clara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro — Novel about an abandoned bot
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer — Novel about AI and bot rights
GUEST BIO
Bruce Holsinger is an award-winning author of five novels, including Culpability (an Oprah Book Club pick), The Displacements, and The Gifted School. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many other publications, and he's been profiled on NPR's Weekend Edition. A Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, Bruce teaches medieval literature and modern critical thought in the English Department at the University of Virginia. His novels are moral laboratories that explore technology, family, responsibility, and what it means to be human in an age of acceleration.
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