Esther Perel: The secret to desire in a long-term relationshipLybrido, a drug to treat women with low libido, is in clinical trials and could be presented to the FDA for review as early as this summer. In The New York Times Magazine‘s look at this new drug, TED speaker Esther Perel is asked about the conundrum of desire for women in long-term relationships. “Many couples confuse love with merging,” she says. “This mix-up is a bad omen for sex. To sustain élan toward the other, there must be a synapse to cross. Eroticism requires distance.” Watch Perel’s talk “The secret to desire” »

Philosopher Dan Dennett has a great new book, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking. Read an excerpt containing his “seven tools for thinking, or check out any of his four TED Talks »

Last week, NASA announced the shutdown of the Kepler spacecraft mission. On the TED Fellows blog, Lucianne Walkowicz – an astronomer who worked on the project – shares her thoughts on its end. Watch her talk “Finding planets around other stars” »

Henry Markram: A brain in a supercomputer The new Wired takes a detailed look at Henry Markram’s years-long campaign to build a supercomputer replica of the human brain — a plan he shared early on at TEDGlobal, in fact. The piece begins, “Even by the standards of the TED Conference, Henry Markram’s 2009 TEDGlobal talk was a mind-bender. He took the stage of the Oxford Playhouse, clad in the requisite dress shirt and blue jeans, and announced a plan that—if it panned out—would deliver a fully sentient hologram within a decade.” And it gets weirder. Watch his 2009 talk »

CERN physicists share with the TED-Ed blog what it was like to have their words — and sometimes their personas — animated in five TED-Ed videos that boil down concepts in particle physics into understandable terms. Watch these five animated lessons »

Rose George: Let's talk crap. Seriously.Related to Rose George’s talk, “Let’s talk crap. Seriously”: On Monday, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India, 184 couples wed in a mass ceremony — before which the husband-to-be had to prove he had a toilet or would build one within the month. As a reward, The Wall Street Journal reports, “the state covers the costs of the wedding and gifts for the groom’s family, which are traditionally provided by the bride’s parents.” Watch George’s talk »

Finally, fashion website Refinery 29 admits that Meg Jay’s talk “Why 30 is not the new 20” got their “entire office buzzing.” Watch the talk »

Congratulations to TED Fellow Kellee Santiago for being named one of Inc. Magazine‘s ”5 Most Powerful Women in Gaming.” Read a TED Blog interview with Santiago about the inspiration behind the game Journey »

Esther Perel: The secret to desire in a long-term relationship

For a fascinating look at why we’re experiencing this “crisis of desire” (hint: it’s the first time in history when we’ve expected marriage to be about passion) and how we can boost out erotic intelligence within the space of a great relationship, watch this talk. And below, more great TED Talks in the areas of love, passion and sex.

• Helen Fisher: The brain in love
• Mary Roach: 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm
• Hannah Brencher: Love letters to strangers
• Helen Fisher: Why we love, why we cheat
• Jenna McCarthy: What you don’t know about marriage
• Thomas Dolby: “Love Is a Loaded Pistol”
• Isabel Allende: Tales of passion