From California to London, companies are reimagining their office spaces. Are they insufferably smug or do they make us more productive? Archie Bland grabs a desk to find out

Getting people to guffaw together has become a serious enterprise, report Sarah Morrison and Beren Cross

Q. I'm the mother of a 14-month-old baby girl and I'm exhausted. The problem is that I've never managed to find a reliable way to settle her down at night. Getting her to sleep has become a monster task that seems to stretch out over the whole evening. By the time she's finally asleep, I have little energy left to catch up with my husband.

Q. I live with my girlfriend, who I met after my divorce three years ago, and I love her deeply. But we have a serious problem. She's 32 (I'm 43) and she wants us to have a child.

Q. I am a single mother of a 13-year-old boy, and my sister and her family recently moved in next door. It's lovely for all of us, and my son spends lots of time at her house. But one thing's been worrying me. My sister and my teenage niece are strongly feminist. I'm most definitely a feminist myself, but they seem to see sexism everywhere and are very vocal about it.

Powerful enough to influence Westminster. Useful enough to pull in more than four million users. Yet spiteful enough to attract defamation cases. What's the deal with Mumsnet?

Q. At 38, I'm becoming fixated about losing my looks. I know there are so many worse problems to have, but privately, I mind like hell and I seem to have lost all my confidence. I've always been good-looking – I come from a good-looking family – and I admit I have taken advantage of this at times.

If you go down to the woods today...prepare to sweat, burn and have your stomach turned. The latest fitness fad is 'extreme outdoor exercise', and it's not for wimps, says Jamie Merrill.

Can the sportswear giant gamify your daily exercise routine?

It seems to be a function of the modern condition that we try to improve ourselves. Just who are we trying to fool?

Having a massage was something that the writer John Jeremiah Sullivan rather feared. But then he surrendered for the first time...

His diet is worth £80m and fans include the Middletons, but Pierre Dukan has stood down as a doctor and is accused of harming health. Patrick Strudwick met him

The fitness craze is taking over the world, to the delight of its three founders. Charlotte Philby ventures into the world of neon crop-tops, evangelical workouts and branding, branding, branding.

It all began with gum and skin patches in the early 1990s – ways of getting nicotine into the bloodstream without the need for a cigarette.

Olympic athletes all need a good warm-up routine. But flexing your muscles makes for a great workout in its own right