*british and the show is Richard and Judy

Adding video to channels (British) - requested by alien_concept.

Extremely impressive.

Just shows the power of religion. If he wasn't so honest he'd have the biggest cult in the world and be significantly richer than he is. I have a lot of time for Derren Browm for not selling out, and in fact going to some lengths to make sure everyone involved knows this is just a trick.

I joined in and started thinking of a low-heeled woman's boot. What the?

I caught "Can you both look, (foot), just take your hand down..." at 5:17. Anyone else catch anything? Also his hand gestures, starting around 5:30 and ending when he has Richard settle on something, imply an object around the size of a shoe (as opposed to a large landscape or room or building or person, etc.)

Derren is looking down all the time, I imagine he's looking at their shoes. He is also talking about sitting and the ground all the time.

I agree with both of you. The only other thing I noticed was he said the words send, screen, psychic, shout, and shouting a few times each (maybe not on "psychic"). However, I didn't notice it until the second time through when I was only listening for words similar to "boot", "shoe", "foot" or "leg".

>> ^Haldaug:
Derren is looking down all the time, I imagine he's looking at their shoes. He is also talking about sitting and the ground all the time.

>> ^handmethekeysyou:
I caught "Can you both look, (foot), just take your hand down..." at 5:17. Anyone else catch anything? Also his hand gestures, starting around 5:30 and ending when he has Richard settle on something, imply an object around the size of a shoe (as opposed to a large landscape or room or building or person, etc.)

But how can he be so confident that this would work? It seems like one of those things that would not work on everyone. What if he does the trick and it fails on live TV?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Derren Brown, mind reading, tricks, psychic' to 'Derren Brown, mind reading, tricks, psychic, NLP' - edited by RhesusMonk

>> ^SaNdMaN:
But how can he be so confident that this would work? It seems like one of those things that would not work on everyone. What if he does the trick and it fails on live TV?


This is called Neurolinguistc Programming (NLP) and is based strongly in Gestalt psychology and a huge amount of statistical data produced in the 1970s and 80s concerning how human brains associate speech, concepts and sensations and what the testable results of those associations are. The actual origin of the phenomenon/heuristic is fascinating (literally a combination of psychology and math), and is a must-read for people interested in how humans influence and are influenced. For a long time it was used as a kind of quick-fix psychotherapy a la behavioral modification in clinical settings (patients would be imparted with associations of sensation and cognition without conscious awareness in order to relieve symptoms). These days, it's used in board rooms and at card tables as well. Not all of it works all the time, but unless you're performing tricks for an audience, no one is even going to know you're trying, so failure looks the same as doing nothing at all. Derren Brown is not just a practitioner of this art, he is a major contributing pioneer; he is, as he mentioned, aware of the risks of failure, and he has even stated that this awareness, imparted to his subjects, is immensely influential in getting the tricks to succeed.

Once you've seen a couple of his routines, the vocal cues he gives are incredibly obvious, especially when you know that every sound and gesture he makes is for a reason.

it seems his asking that they play along helps a lot. The first bit, i played along and i came up with "a" as well. The next i could not play along with, but the third i intentionally tried to divorce myself from anything they were saying and i came up with something wildly different.

My guess is if he asked for people to think of random things, it would not work. But, since he has the psudo-psychic angle he's basically asking people to be suggestible and then they are. Still, very awesome.

Now i need to figure out how to use this technique to get a raise

>> ^RhesusMonk:
>> ^SaNdMaN:
But how can he be so confident that this would work? It seems like one of those things that would not work on everyone. What if he does the trick and it fails on live TV?

This is called Neurolinguistc Programming (NLP) and is based strongly in Gestalt psychology and a huge amount of statistical data produced in the 1970s and 80s concerning how human brains associate speech, concepts and sensations and what the testable results of those associations are. The actual origin of the phenomenon/heuristic is fascinating (literally a combination of psychology and math), and is a must-read for people interested in how humans influence and are influenced. For a long time it was used as a kind of quick-fix psychotherapy a la behavioral modification in clinical settings (patients would be imparted with associations of sensation and cognition without conscious awareness in order to relieve symptoms). These days, it's used in board rooms and at card tables as well. Not all of it works all the time, but unless you're performing tricks for an audience, no one is even going to know you're trying, so failure looks the same as doing nothing at all. Derren Brown is not just a practitioner of this art, he is a major contributing pioneer; he is, as he mentioned, aware of the risks of failure, and he has even stated that this awareness, imparted to his subjects, is immensely influential in getting the tricks to succeed.


I'm aware that it's NPL, but NPL doesn't work with everyone, just like hypnosis doesn't work with everyone. Yet he supposedly uses this technique in situations where he can't afford for it not to work. That's why I think he's using some other trick and just says that it's NLP.

^The situations you suggest are created by Brown. I should have mentioned in my previous post that he is a showman, and a former conman. All of the "this is a unique situation" and (if you've seen it) the Russian Roulette bit is set up. The participants are screened without their knowledge, and often groomed for weeks. What's great is that Brown is upfront about these fact. But the setup is only what creates the drama, and not what seals the deal itself--that's the NLP.

I understand the skepticism, but if you read some actual NLP literature (eg. rapport, anchoring and reframing) and try some of it for yourself, you'll get the idea pretty quickly that theses techniques are responsible for the effects you see in Brown's performance.

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His use of 'NLP' in the majority of his tricks is a running joke among magicians. It is the 'trick' behind most of what he does only in the sense that he is performing conventional sleight of hand and other tricks, but covering it with talk of NLP. It's much like magicians in the 40's talking about black magic or African voodoo being behind the sleights they are performing. The thing is that Derren Brown has just done an exceptionally good job of making it look like NLP is the only explanation for the effects he performs.

One example would be his trick where he gets a person to pull a coin out of their pockets and hold in their fists while Derren's back is turned. He then names the year the coin was printed. He doesn't succeed everytime, but most of the time he gets it dead on or very close. He has revealed though that real trick though is that he somehow came to know that 1992 was by far the most printed year for a specific coin in Britain. All he needed to do was select people who had that particular coin and bias them to choosing that particular coin. Pure chance from that point was enough. By all appearances to everyone though it looks like an impossible task without some kind of bizarre explanation like NLP or reading body gestures.