If You Weren’t There, How Do You Know?

Justin Bieber

So my favorite part of this entry is that Ryan is in the middle of a big thought about television, and he just turns to his smart speaker and says, Alexa, is there a lot of people who take no interest in television whatsoever? Like she's a guest on the show. And she answers! She's got numbers ready.

Roxanne

I love that. He's building this whole argument, he's, you know, laying out his four terms, AI, fiction, nonfiction, and the TV symbol ratings, the parental controls thing, and then he stops to fact check himself with a device. Which, I mean, is kind of the whole entry in one move. He's asking a voice he can't see for proof.

Debbie

And the number she gives is real, at least as far as the survey goes. It's from Attest, and it was reported by Forbes and The Streamable in June of 2025. Twenty eight percent of respondents said they don't watch any live TV on an average day. That was twenty percent in 2023 and twenty four percent the year before that article. And among Gen Z it's forty one percent.

Justin Bieber

Forty one! And Ryan's reaction is, interesting, they mentioned podcasts, that's where my interest has been lately. And then he goes, I don't even know what Generation Z is. Is that a new generation? Don't really need to know, I don't think.

Roxanne

That's so honest. I kind of respect it, because he's not performing expertise. He just says, I don't know that, moving on. And the survey says those Gen Z folks are swapping the couch for streaming, and Alexa added books, games, hanging out offline. About half of Gen Z said they stream at least an hour a day, so they're not watching nothing. They're just not watching it live.

Debbie

Which matters for his point, I think. He started with the idea that TV has no label for fiction or nonfiction. A library has it. You walk in, there's a section, you know what you're holding. A broadcast gives you a little parental rating logo in the corner of the screen and that's it. That tells you who it's suitable for, not whether it's true.

Justin Bieber

Right, and he says the same goes for the digital cable box, commercials, TV shows, news, none of it says fiction or nonfiction. He's talking about America there, he says he doesn't know about Canada, Mexico, or the rest of the world. Hey, Canada, Ryan sees you, he just can't confirm.

Roxanne

Okay, and the eyewitness thing. This is where he really lands. He uses Real Time with Bill Maher as the example. You say, I watched this show and this person said this and that person said that. But you weren't in the studio. So you don't actually know it was the studio discussion. You don't know, and he says the audience really doesn't know.

Debbie

And he takes it one step further, which I thought was the sharpest bit. Even if Bill Maher came out and said, this is live, this is a true broadcast, you'd still be taking his word for it, or TV's word for it. He's careful to say he's not claiming anything about Maher himself, he's just using the show as an example.

Justin Bieber

It's a callback to that episode we did before, Roxanne, the two minutes out of twenty four hours one. Wolf Blitzer, you only see a slice of the guy. This is the same itch, but bigger. It's not just that you see a slice of a person. It's that you can't verify the slice is even what it says it is.

Roxanne

So then he anticipates the obvious answer, which is, okay, just check it afterward. Look it up. And he says, fine, say you check ten sources after the show. How do you know the ten sources aren't wrong?

Debbie

His scenario is a huge cyberattack. Websites cloned, scammed, manipulated, specifically the top ten trustworthy sources in America. And he says people will tell him that could never happen, and he won't say never. His line is basically, in this world, anything could happen. Cyberspace is cyberspace, television is television.

Justin Bieber

I mean, I can't prove it's impossible, so I'm just going to sit here and feel uneasy. That's the energy. But honestly, it's kind of fair as a thought experiment. Consensus feels like proof, ten out of ten sources agree, but if the sources are all downstream of the same compromise, ten is just one wearing ten hats.

Roxanne

Ha, ten hats. And that connects to what he says about AI. He calls it double the confusion. Because we never even got the basic labeling right, fiction versus nonfiction, and now AI gets added to the picture. And some people label it AI, some don't, some label things fiction, some don't, so everything gets a question mark.

Debbie

But he gives the other side too, and I appreciated that. He says some people might find AI more entertaining and more appealing, so they're not looking to validate anything at all. They're not asking, is this true? They're just enthusiastic about it. So for them the labeling gap isn't a problem, it's just, you know, not the point.

Justin Bieber

Which is a little wild to think about. One group is anxious because they want facts, another group is vibing because they don't need them. Same screen, totally different relationship. I'm not saying which one's healthier, I'm just saying that's a split.

Roxanne

And then he goes to the moon. I was not ready for the moon. He says, is there a moon in the sky, is it as far away as scientists say, and he compares us to ancestors who didn't have newspapers, magazines, television, or school textbooks, so they were left guessing.

Debbie

This is the part where I part ways with him a little, and he'd probably be fine with that. He asks whether it could be David Copperfield at his best, a mirror in the sky and a light. And he says the astronauts would know, if they went, because they'd be eyewitnesses. But he can't be sure of that from where he sits. I'd say that's a lot of doubt to carry around, but I understand the logic. It's the same logic as the studio, just pointed upward.

Justin Bieber

And he's clear that he's just reasoning, he says, I don't know what philosophy this falls under, but it has to fall under some kind of philosophy. He's not announcing a discovery. He's saying, if I take not being an eyewitness completely seriously, where does it lead?

Roxanne

It leads to the CIA, basically, which I guess explains the title. He imagines an order from the president or the CIA to make a TV show a complete cover up for national security reasons. And he says, in a world of war, in a world of threats, yes, that could happen. Even Harvard wouldn't know, nor the most intelligent prep school. Nobody can be certain.

Debbie

To be fair to everyone, he's careful there too. He says he's not claiming it happens a lot or a little or at all. His observation is that the conversation itself seems absent from TV, he's never heard anybody talk about it the way he has. And he treats that absence as another reason for skepticism.

Justin Bieber

Okay, here's the proposal that I think is genuinely funny and also kind of interesting. He says conspiracy theory should be a school subject. Kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade. He was there for years, and nobody offered a class called conspiracy theory.

Debbie

And his reasoning is that you're not an eyewitness to most of what's in your textbooks or on your TV, so doubt is a reasonable response. He says if you have skepticism and conspiratorial thinking in your brain, there's a reason for it. It's what happens when you're asked to accept secondhand facts. He even goes into the biology of the brain, though he admits he doesn't know that part.

Roxanne

What I like is that he's not insulting people who think that way. Usually conspiracy theorist is an insult. He says, why be one? Because you're not an eyewitness, that's why. And whether or not you'd teach it that way, there's something in teaching kids how to ask, how do I know this, who told me, was anyone there?

Debbie

That part I'd actually back. Media literacy, how to weigh a source. Calling it conspiracy theory is his framing, but the habit of asking where something comes from, that's practical wisdom. It's just that, you know, at some point you have to live your life and trust some things, or you'd never get dinner on the table.

Justin Bieber

Ha, yeah. Trust the dinner. Oh, and he wonders if Japan has had AI since TV first hit the market. He says, supposedly there are other countries in this world, so where does that leave your brain? And his answer is, in a big question mark.

Roxanne

And then he turns it on himself, which got me. He says, you're not here. Is this really a journal entry? AI may claim it is. Was I forced to say this stuff? You don't know. You weren't an eyewitness. He aims the whole argument at his own recording.

Debbie

It's consistent, I'll give him that. If the rule is that you can't trust what you didn't witness, the rule has to apply to the person making the argument. He doesn't exempt himself. And then he hands the question to the audience. How big is the question mark after hearing this entry? Bigger or smaller?

Justin Bieber

And his own answer, from general observation, is that it's getting bigger. But he adds, maybe you see it differently. I like that he leaves the door open.

Roxanne

I keep thinking about the Alexa part, because the one thing he actually checked, he checked with a voice from a speaker. And the number turned out to match a real survey. Twenty eight percent, forty one percent for Gen Z. So the one verification in the whole entry is also the one that, you know, kind of proves his point and undercuts it at the same time. He still had to trust the speaker.

Debbie

Which might be the honest ending. We all take someone's word for something. The question he's really asking is how much, and whether we know we're doing it. And I'd say that's worth a question mark, even if I'm keeping the moon.

Justin Bieber

Keeping the moon. That's the title of the next song.