Anthropologist Helen Fisher takes on a tricky topic – love – and explains its evolution, its biochemical foundations and its social importance. She closes with a warning about the potential disaster inherent in antidepressant abuse.

Why do we crave love so much, even to the point that we would die for it? To learn more about our very real, very physical need for romantic love, Helen Fisher and her research team took MRIs of people in love -- and people who had just been dumped.

In our tech-driven, interconnected world, we've developed new ways and rules to court each other, but the fundamental principles of love have stayed the same, says anthropologist Helen Fisher. Our faster connections, she suggests, are actually leading to slower, more intimate relationships. At 12:20, couples therapist and relationship expert Est...

Love often feels inexplicable, the most unpredictable of forces. Using science, math and methodical observation, these speakers offer clues to understanding it.

Anthropologist Helen Fisher studies gender differences and the evolution of human emotions. She’s best known as an expert on romantic love.

These talks examine where (and how) relationships and love factor into our technologically-driven world.

These eye-opening talks call into question some of the popular misconceptions, fallacies and exaggerated rumors of modern civilization.

A few things you've always wanted to know about sex: why we enjoy it, how to explain it, and, importantly, how flowers do it.

Love: it’s what makes the world go round. And also: all you need. As well as that thing, in addition to war, in which all is fair. Here, TED Talks about this most basic of human emotions.

Ever wondered, why did I just do that? These fascinating talks explain the hidden reasons why we do what we do.

A year in reflection of what we learned about our personalities, health, hopes and world as we know it.

After watching these charming talks, it'll feel like love is always just around the corner.

No matter how long you've been together, it never hurts to have a little refresher course on what really matters.

Spellbinding, stimulating, seductive ... science? Here, the 10 most-watched science talks on TED.com. See why.

简体 我今天要讲两个下世纪的大趋势，也很有可能是未来10,000年的趋势。但是，我想首先从我对爱情的研究讲起。我和我的同事对32个深陷爱情中的人进行了功能性核磁共振大脑扫描。这些人中的17个人获取了异性的芳心，其他的15个人则刚刚被甩。我想先讲一下这个实验，然后是我对爱情的理解。 莎士比亚曾经问道：“爱情是什么？”我想我们的祖先对这个问题的困惑，从一百万年前他们围坐在篝火边或者躺着看星星时就开始了。为了找到浪漫爱情的内涵，我翻阅了45年来心理学方面的研究成果，发现当人们陷入爱情的时候会发生一些特殊的现象。 首先会发生的是，另一个人开始被赋予了“特殊意义”。就像一个卡车司机曾经对我说，我的世界有了一个新的中心，那就是玛丽.安。 而萧伯纳用不同的方式表达了同样的意思。他说，爱情中的人...

Love isn’t so much an emotion, says biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, as it is a brain system, one of three that’s related to mating and reproduction. It’s those other two systems that explain why human beings are capable of infidelity even as we so highly value love. Here Fisher explains more about cheating -- why it occurs, how common it...

About this event: Join us as we celebrate our end of Winter Reading Program with our next TEDxProspectHeightsLibrary event where we will watch a set of prerecorded TED Talks on that crazy little thing called love. We will learn why we love, what it means to love, what makes it work, and what doesn't. The videos viewed were"Talking about Love” presented by Mandy L...

  My high school English class had just finished reading Madame Bovary, and we were all confused. (For those of you who have not read it, please skip to paragraph two. Spoiler alert!) Emma Bovary, a listless housewife in search of the passionate love she’s read about in books, has many sordid affairs, falls deeply into debt and kills hers...

Esther Perel begins today’s talk with an intriguing question: “Why does good sex so often fade even for couples who continue to love each other as much as ever?” It’s a question that’s highly appropriate to think about on Valentine’s Day. Perel, the author of the book Mating in Captivity, offers a compelling theory for why desire is so hard t...

For the past week, Amy Webb has been inspiring people to calculate their own algorithm for love. Her laugh-out-loud TED Talk, about reverse engineering her online dating profile and, essentially, data-ing her way into her perfect relationship has gotten a lot of attention, including on The Frisky and Pop Sugar. As Webb’s talk continues to ta...

After watching the collection of talks on Understanding Happiness, read a thoughtful recap of the major points in this TED Study, and learn where experts believe things are headed. Positive psychology: The wrap-up The field of positive psychology has already helped us to better understand happiness. As Martin Seligman explained, traditional psyc...

Each week, TEDx chooses four of our favorite talks, highlighting just a few of the enlightening speakers from the TEDx community, and its diverse constellation of ideas worth spreading. Below, give this week’s talks -- all about love! -- a listen. Logic needs love: Jacob Berkson at TEDxSussexUniversity Love does not exist outside of reaso...

Everyone loves a good quote. They challenge us. They change us. They make us think and make us laugh. They are -- in their most compressed and contagious form -- ideas. So today, we're launching TED Quotes, a new initiative that collects memorable quotes from TEDTalks, groups them by category, and makes them as easy to share as our talks the...

Get exclusive, behind-the-scenes access to TEDSummit inside our Facebook Live Studio. Join some of your favorite TED speakers for conversational interviews -- and you can ask them your questions in the comments. See everything on TED's Facebook page as it happens: Here's the schedule: Sunday, June 26 4pm Eastern: TED speaker coaches s...

“Science: It’s a Girl Thing!” That’s what is claimed in a goofy public service announcement, made by the European Commission, which aims to convince young women that science careers are in fact “cool.” Naturally, for a few days the Twittersphere has been atwitter over the very pink ad, which instead shows that girls can simultaneously do scie...

At TED University, members of the TED audience get a chance to step on stage and give a talk -- about their work, about their passion, about their life. The talks are always incredible. At TED Universities past, Nina Tandon shared how tissue engineering could potentially lead to personalized medicine, Graham Hill urged us to have less stuff an...

Being lucky in love isn't like being struck by lightning -- it’s a lot less random (and painful). Psychologist Barry Schwartz and biological anthropologist Helen Fisher share their opinions on the subject. “A lucky relationship is created, not discovered,” Barry Schwartz said when Barnaby and I called him one morning. A longtime professor at...

About this event: You are cordially invited to the next TEDxTheHague salon! Our October edition — themed Love, Lies and Technology — is curated by TEDxTheHague: "Is it possible to love well without lying? Romantics have argued that love will lead us to The Honest Truth. Both about ourselves as well as the ones we love. But from an early start, love and lies — o...

Yesterday, Twitter user @ademoor wrote: Thinking of organizing a #TEDtalk video night w/ some friends. What's your absolute favorite must-see talk? Great question! We RT'ed on @TEDNews. And the replies are worth sharing: @WackyFiasco: I really appreciated Dan Gilbert's talk on happiness ... @ozteethtweet: hans rosling, can't get ...

In Session 2, our speakers debunked received wisdom, looked critically at common knowledge -- and restarted conversations we thought were closed. Here, our report:  Antique lamps, new sound. Brothers Ryan and Hays Holladay opened Session 2 completely unseen. In near pitch-black darkness, broken antique lamps lit up one by one -- each perfectl...