A lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots. Everyone has heard that chestnut, but Sinan Aral has actually proved it. He was one of the first to warn about the corrosive effects of social media with a celebrated Science Magazine cover story, a seminal book, The Hype Machine, and a vast study showing that fake news spreads faster and farther than the truth. Sinan is a marketing, IT, and data science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, so he sees disinformation through the lens of marketing. In this episode, we will also discuss what Sinan calls “the end of reality” in political discourse, the role of professional media in its own demise, and the strategies democracies need to take to defend the truth.