This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. In the middle of a work day in April 2013, the

Associated Press sent out a tweet.

Breaking, two explosions in the White House, it read,

Barack Obama is injured.

The tweet caused panic in the financial markets.

Within minutes, the Dow plunged more than a hundred points as traders rushed to sell off

stocks amid the threat of political instability.

The news was bogus.

There were no explosions and the president was safe.

The AP's Twitter account had been hacked.

Within a few minutes, the information was corrected and the markets recovered.

When we think of misinformation, we often think of stories like this. Blatant cases of lies and falsehood perpetrated by deceitful and malevolent agents.

But in recent years, social scientists have found that misinformation comes in many flavors, most of which are far subtler than the

erroneous AP story.

These forms of misinformation prey on our mental blind spots and take advantage of our passions

and loyalties.

This week on Hidden Brain, the many insidious forms of misinformation

and how we can all get better

at separating fact from fiction. If you have a computer or a smartphone, you have answers.

Want to know what your Abraham Lincoln was born?

Look it up.

Curious who invented the Winsock? You can find out in 30 seconds.

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