Bill Moore is what you might call a televangelist for big dicks. At AdvancedYou, an anti-aging aesthetic clinic specializing in " biohacking and wellness treatments" that he runs out of a Dallas strip mall, Moore offers men a unique form of personal salvation through PhalloFill. It's a penis enlargement procedure that, while not able to add inches in length, involves injecting hydrocyanic acid dermal filler for increased girth. In Daniel Lombroso's new documentary, in theaters this week, the director tracks this desperate quest for sexual adequacy among men who find themselves struggling with self-worth and the crisis of modern masculinity. As headlines about the male loneliness epidemic were making the rounds a few years ago, which Lombroso felt were "sort of thin and maybe navel-gazy," he decided he wanted to tell a more "propulsive story" about what was going on with men in America.

Vladimir Putin was not in attendance, but his loyal lieutenants were. On 14 July last year, the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and several members of his cabinet convened in an office building on the outskirts of Moscow. On to the stage stepped a boyish-looking psychologist, Michal Kosinski, who had been flown from the city centre by helicopter to share his research. "There was Lavrov, in the first row," he recalls several months later, referring to Russia's foreign minister. "You know, a guy who starts wars and takes over countries." Kosinski, a 36-year-old assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford University, was flattered that the Russian cabinet would gather to listen to him talk. "Those guys strike me as one of the most competent and well-informed groups," he tells me. Kosinski's "stuff" includes groundbreaking research into technology, mass persuasion and artificial intelligence (AI) – research that inspired the creation of the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Five years ago, while a graduate student at Cambridge University, he showed how even benign activity on Facebook could reveal personality traits – a discovery that was later exploited by the data-analytics firm that helped put Donald Trump in the White House.

In 1844, a laborer from a small town in southern Italy was put on trial for stealing "five ricottas, a hard cheese, two loaves of bread […] and two kid goats". The laborer, Giuseppe Villella, was reportedly convicted of being a brigante (bandit), at a time when brigandage -- banditry and state insurrection -- was seen as endemic. Villella died in prison in Pavia, northern Italy, in 1864. Villella's death led to the birth of modern criminology. Nearby lived a scientist and surgeon named Cesare Lombroso, who believed that brigantes were a primitive type of people, prone to crime.

Soon after the invention of photography, a few criminologists began to notice patterns in mugshots they took of criminals. Offenders, they said, had particular facial features that allowed them to be identified as law breakers. One of the most influential voices in this debate was Cesare Lombroso, an Italian criminologist, who believed that criminals were "throwbacks" more closely related to apes than law-abiding citizens. He was convinced he could identify them by ape-like features such as a sloping forehead, unusually sized ears and various asymmetries of the face and long arms. Indeed, he measured many subjects in an effort to prove his view although he did not analyze his data statistically.

Soon after the invention of photography, a few criminologists began to notice patterns in mugshots they took of criminals. Offenders, they said, had particular facial features that allowed them to be identified as law breakers. One of the most influential voices in this debate was Cesare Lombroso, an Italian criminologist, who believed that criminals were "throwbacks" more closely related to apes than law-abiding citizens. He was convinced he could identify them by ape-like features such as a sloping forehead, unusually sized ears and various asymmetries of the face and long arms. Indeed, he measured many subjects in an effort to prove his view although he did not analyze his data statistically.

Soon after the invention of photography, a few criminologists began to notice patterns in mugshots they took of criminals. Offenders, they said, had particular facial features that allowed them to be identified as law breakers. One of the most influential voices in this debate was Cesare Lombroso, an Italian criminologist, who believed that criminals were "throwbacks" more closely related to apes than law-abiding citizens. He was convinced he could identify them by ape-like features such as a sloping forehead, unusually sized ears and various asymmetries of the face and long arms. Indeed, he measured many subjects in an effort to prove his view although he did not analyze his data statistically.