The body

As well as being a fantastic piece of machinery (Do the maths) the body comes in a dazzling variety of shapes, sizes and colours (The shape we’re in), all crafted by millions of years of evolution in different settings. Today, the environment we live in still profoundly influences our body shape (Supersize me), starting before we are even born (Life sentence). It has transformed bodies in industrialised nations dramatically over the past half-century (In your dreams), making westernised ideals of physical perfection seem ever more outlandish (Vital statistics). The pressure to conform might explain some of the strange things we do to our bodies: from our love-hate relationship with body hair (Smooth operators) to our demands for increasingly drastic alterations (Extreme surgery). Even old or broken parts can be made as good as new, or better (Bionic bodies). Love it or hate it, your body says a lot about you. Your build dictates what kind of Olympian you might be (Built to win), while deceptively innocuous things such as the length of your fingers can reveal a startling amount about your sex appeal (Secret signals). Read all about it.