It is the kind of story that rarely makes headlines, yet it speaks to something deeply fragile in our everyday lives: the quiet trust we place in the people who are supposed to protect us from small injustices. Picture a passenger in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon, hailing a taxi after a long day. The driver refuses to take them, or maybe the meter runs suspiciously high, and the passenger feels cheated. They file a complaint, expecting that someone in the local government will look into it, that a fine will be issued, and that the wrong will be set right. But behind…

In the early, frightening months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when information was shifting by the hour and uncertainty filled every newsfeed, a strange thing happened: posts and videos promoting natural remedies for the virus—steam inhalation, ginger, garlic, vitamin C megadoses—began to spread like wildfire. Some were harmless; some were dangerous. And yet they were shared by people we love, by people who read the news, by people who should know better. Why? Why does misinformation, so obviously false to some, travel so quickly through our social networks? Many scholars and commentators have pointed fingers at cognitive bias, at lazy thinking,…