Steven Poole

The twin poles of the modern imaginarium about technology and society can be represented by two masterpieces of popular culture. In James Cameron’s film The Terminator (1984) and its sequels, a global computer system called Skynet becomes sentient and proceeds to try to exterminate the human race by means of time-travelling Austrian bodybuilders. In Iain

From psychology to AI, pandemics to popular culture, we survey the bigger picture

Arik Kershenbaum’s account of the wonderfully rich and strange evolved behaviours that constitute animal communication

Like the railway and the telegraph, western civilisation was invented in the 19th century. It had located its noble roots in classical Athens and Rome, and from then, so the story went, white Europeans embarked on a smooth progression of gradual sophistication and enlightenment that culminated, not coincidentally, in the glories of the British empire.

If you know 20 people, it's likely that one of them is a sociopath. You know the type: charismatic, entertaining, manipulative, doesn't care about social norms or anyone else's feelings.

Sociopaths shouldn’t be treated like monsters, argues Patric Gagne – a sociopath herself, and a therapist – in her eye-opening memoir

Viewers of Christopher Nolan's Oscar-hoovering biopic about the physicist J Robert Oppenheimer will have learned a lot about the race to build

From ancient myth to modern militarism, a brilliant exploration of Cyprus’s long history of cultural resilience