How do you know what to believe anymore? In this episode of Intentional Living, Mari breaks down why dramatic, false information spreads faster and farther than accurate information online — and it's not your imagination, it's documented research.

Drawing on a landmark MIT study published in Science analyzing over 4.5 million tweets, current data from Pew Research and the Knight Foundation on how much misinformation people encounter and even knowingly share, Stanford researcher Sam Wineburg's research on "lateral reading" (the specific habit that separates professional fact-checkers from everyone else), and Cambridge psychologist Sander van der Linden's research proving misinformation resistance is a trainable skill, Mari makes the case that overwhelm, reflexive cynicism, and confusion about AI-generated content are really the same missing skill wearing three different outfits.

Walk away with three tools: how to verify a claim in under two minutes, how to check whether a claimed credential (or even a claimed human) is real, and how to use your own emotional reaction as an early warning system before you share.

• Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science.
• Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). Lateral reading and the nature of expertise. Teachers College Record.
• van der Linden, S., et al. (2017). Inoculating against misinformation. Science.
• Pew Research Center (2023) and Knight Foundation (2022) misinformation survey data.

Relevant Prior Episodes

• Episode 11 — social media and comparison research, a different angle on the same general subject