The field of binary stars and multiple systems has undergone a revolution in the past decade, thanks to the Gaia and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) space missions. However, there are still open questions regarding the processes that govern the formation of short-period binaries in hierarchical triple systems. One of these questions concerns the existence of a circumbinary desert, which refers to the scarcity of stellar and substellar companions in close orbits around short-period eclipsing binaries (EBs). On the one hand, EBs orbited by a close stellar companion are rare among the entire population of hierarchical triple stellar systems. Such systems, referred to as compact hierarchical triples, are thought to form differently than wider triple systems, most likely through a sequential disk fragmentation mechanism. On the other hand, there is a clear deficit of circumbinary brown dwarfs (BDs) with orbital periods less than 1000 d, which might indicate different formation mechanisms for close-orbiting BDs and isolated ones. Indeed, it is commonly accepted that BDs in close orbits around main-sequence single stars can be divided into two populations distinguishable by their physical and orbital properties. One of them consists of high-mass BDs formed like stars through the fragmentation of molecular clouds, while the other consists of low-mass BDs that are thought to be formed by disk instability in the same manner as planets. In this seminar, I will present the first results of our search for new circumbinary systems using high-precision TESS photometry.