Forty years ago this weekend, more than 900 men, women and children died during the Jonestown massacre, including Rebecca Moore’s two sisters. She writes that by fixating on the tragedy – and the infamous Jim Jones of Jonestown – we miss the larger significance of Peoples Temple, which was one of the few long-term experiments in American interracial communalism. Moore, a religious studies scholar, describes the early years of the Temple, its mission of service and social justice, and why it attracted young, idealistic Americans like her sisters.

If people are aware about space debris, they probably view it as a technical challenge. How will humanity figure out how to clean up the thousands of fragments of satellites and other spacecraft now orbiting the Earth? But University of Washington space expert Saadia Pekkanen makes the case that dealing with space is debris is also very much a question of national security.

A trip to the movies can be a thrilling or amusing escape from everyday life. Arizona State risk innovation scholar Andrew Maynard suggests sci-fi flicks can also be instructive, even if the science on the screen is pretty far-fetched. Watching Hollywood characters work through the relationships between people and technology can help real-world inventors think about how to innovate responsibly.