This is NPR's Life Kit and Mary El Segara.

I just don't know what to believe anymore.

That is a common thing I've heard and said, honestly, over the past couple years,

whether we're talking about politics or COVID or something else entirely,

we are getting served up a lot of information all the time in the news on social media,

from friends and family, and it's just a lot to process.

And often you read things and later find out they're not true at all.

But it'll be time to vote soon and it's important before you do to know what information is reliable

and how to filter out the rest.

To help us do that, we have Miles Parks who covers voting for NPR.

Hey, Miles.

Hey, happy to be here.

Yeah, happy to have you.

So covering misinformation is actually part of your beat, right?

It is and it didn't start that way.

I started covering voting shortly after the 2016 elections.

But I don't know if you noticed over the last couple of years,

covering misinformation and covering voting,

kind of feels like covering the same thing.

And that's not just for me as a reporter.

I mean, election officials I talk to who run voting at the state and local level

say a huge part of their time, 10 or 20 years ago,

...