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Welcome to the Double X Gab Fest for Thursday, May 30th, the Monkey Desire Edition.

I'm Hannah Rosen, editor at Double X, and I'm joined in the New York studio by Noreen Malone. Hi, Noreen. Hey, Hannah. And Allison Benedict, yay, who's back for maternity leave. Welcome back, Allison. Hello. Hello. The other editor of Double X, who has arrived back with proof that her baby was born, that her baby exists. She sent out pictures, so we know she wasn't lying to us. And we're very

happy to have her back. So our three topics today are first, we're going to talk about the female

libido. Does it need to be fixed with a pill? Second, gay marriage and what it teaches us about

straight marriage. And third, high heel name drops. Is it sexist to mention stilettos and profiles of powerful women?

So let's start with the female libido.

The cover story in this week's New York Times Magazine defines a frightening new category of women called the undesiring, which may be a small dysfunctional part of the female population or it may represent all of us at some point in our lives. These are women who love their husbands or boyfriends and used to love to have sex with them, but now they just don't feel like it. As one woman in the story says, not that she doesn't do it or doesn't have orgasms, and here's her quote, there's something that's stopping me from wanting it. That quote really stuck with me. So now pharmaceutical companies are, of course, trying to solve that eternal dilemma with a pill. On the show today, we have Daniel Bergner, who's the author of a new book out next week called What Do Women Want, based on a New York Times magazine story he wrote of a couple of years ago. And he's on to talk about the implications of this hunt to reignite desire in American women. Hi, Daniel.

Hi, Hannah.

So I want to start at a place your story didn't, which has really touched me that the search for this drug begins with a broken heart.

Can you tell us about that, the researcher who started it and what prompted him to look into this?

Adrian Tweetin, who came up with this drug, began this search long ago.

He was basically a furniture maker and a belated university student,

you know, was in love with this woman, had been in love with her since 13.

She broke up with him abruptly, and that sent him on this search,

basically to understand the biochemistry of women's emotions,

the biochemistry of desire,

and ultimately sent him on the path of trying to develop this drug

...