Psychological Tricks To Manipulate ANYONE | Hypnotist Derren Brown

hey welcome to the show I'm Jordan Harbinger this episode I've been trying for 12 years to get Darren brown on this show and I'm very excited to have in mind what was even better is we went and did this in London in his house and this place was everything you'd expect from Darren Brown's house it was like a Museum of oddities and rare antiques there were like two-headed taxidermied animals and six legged piglets and secret passages and all kinds of cool stuff in there he even had the model of Boerne from his show the push

and it was just everything I expected it more he's an amazing guy super cool for letting us do that as well today on the show we talked about what goes into his shows how he designs the tricks how susceptible we really are to all this manipulation and persuasion what's real so to speak and what's not in his shows and a whole lot more so enjoy this episode here with Darren Brown and by the way if you want to get the worksheets so that you can solidify everything that he teaches here in this episode go to

the website Jordan Harbinger calm go to the show notes for this episode and the worksheets will be in there and if you want to learn how I network and create a circle that includes amazing folks like Darren brown go to Jordan Harbinger comm slash level one I'm teaching you all my networking secrets if you will there for free as well all right enjoy this episode with Darren brown one of the things that I've liked about your work for a long time well first of all this this was a pleasure to prepare for because very rarely

do I get to watch 20 to 30 hours of magic and illusion Rita a good book about happiness and Stowell you've done that you've done your research oh yeah and and then of course go and try things that I tried 10 years ago I was telling you before the show with with a switch of the painting and a link to this in the show notes the the YouTube video where people are walking by I remember trying this in law school I guess us sort of failed or escaped ex lawyers escapee oh yeah right right we're

always like I have a hypothesis that we just went that way because we didn't know what else to do with ourselves and then went screw it I can't do this is exactly correct yeah it's sort of like we have what it takes to do something and we aim our energy in the wrong place because can't go wrong being a lawyer exactly which is exactly my everyone's telling you because here in this country you choose you're making those decisions you've got a you've been do your a-levels when you're 1617 around already having idea of what you're

gonna study at University which course is only the one your one subject so that's going to be law so at 16 you're choosing the a-levels you're going to do to sort to support that which means in the level below a-levels your GCSEs which are kind of like 14 you're really beginning to think what direction you've got ahead in because you're narrowing your subjects down and it's just ludicrous by the time you yeah by the time you're actually old enough to know what you want to do it's you it's that thing of always thinking in the

future isn't it always thinking these rungs up the ladder as opposed to just right you know yeah of course the one of the reasons I went was because I didn't know what else to do with my life couldn't get the most basic of retail jobs other than maybe selling CDs at Best Buy which I think here is called like JB hi-fi or virgin rekt our records whatever yeah and I just thought well I'm not gonna do that with my four-year education and somebody who doesn't know you from Adam is like you should be a lawyer

you like arguing oh okay let me spend one hundred and twenty thousand dollars yeah you'd fit right in with all these other people everyone hates so why don't you join them it pays well from what I hear ya take never did it you know I actually did I went through passed the bar in New York City went to work on Wall Street and then when this is not what I want to do but I'll only do it for four years and luckily well my luck no one else's because you look about 1900 38:38 right well

long enough to yeah well I did pass the bar I go and work there for a couple years the economy tanks and I'm doing mortgage-backed securities which is exactly what no longer works the subprime mortgage loan pool things and so they go hey look all you have to find a new job more likely you know so I apply to be like a patent lawyer and they go great you've got to do all this other stuff and I went screw this I just like do an interview so I'm gonna do these interviews for a little while

and then once I really have to get a real job then I'll figure it out and luckily I'm still waiting for that moment where this all comes crashing down I would imagine that happens with any creative career you ever wake up and go what happens if no nothing works out for me anymore and I have to start over I kind of got I feel I got a lot of strings to my bow now so I don't worry about it too much because actually the stuff the stuff that is least I'm the sort of mic control

like a broadcaster going that's it weird that's all the stuff I can't even sort of enjoy least anyway the stuff I really do enjoy it's just me getting not doesn't not necessarily the stuff that earns me money too I suppose but it would probably just kind of enough to tick by but I enjoy it more so that's I kind of don't worry about it too much yeah I suppose at the point of which you're doing a Broadway show coming soon with any Sunday luck and then double Netflix all over the UK a household name there's

a point at which if everything comes crashing down you're just like I'm retired it's so yeah that would be that would be that would be nice but I do I said I don't know whether I'd stop what being signal is you know you realize what you do because you have to and what you what you'd feel a bit lost without you know I don't think that happily it happy not made TV but I wouldn't want to not tour but that if you got a tour you kind of need you need to have the presence that

TV gives you otherwise no one wants to come and see you on stage so I don't know don't know how it worked but I paint and take pictures write and write that'd be mine how would you describe what you do because magician doesn't really it doesn't seem like that's quite the same thing you know I mean think magician you think pick a card any card oh my gosh I barely saw that where's the where's the coin right and there's like there's anything wrong with that but what you're doing is kind of like wait how did

you convince someone to murder that man which is right and where's the coin and where's the coin and vote bogey you see that's that's yeah I I started off as a hypnotist all right when I was at university I studied law as we said and I saw a guy do a show which unusually for a hypnotist wasn't it wasn't a kind of embarrassing you know festival of horrendous nasai a lot of stage hypnosis is it was actually it was fascinating and hilarious but it was intelligent and it wasn't embarrassing so I left the show that

night thinking and saying to my friend I remember I am gonna I'm gonna do this so that was my first love was learning how to hit retire so I was a student but lots of other students around me that were really interested in in being hypnotised so I and I was you know just desperate for attention and had that performer thing in me and I was insecure and I think hypnosis really taps into a desire to control obviously as does magic in its own way so if you don't feel very impressive in yourself both of

those really tick that box yeah and so it kind of became a real a real passion and then I drifted it more into doing close-up magic because it was a bit more commercial it was a bit of an easier thing to to actually make a living out of them hypnosis where you kind of want certain conditions to work under and so on and then I I wrote I lived I never worked as a lawyer I was just ticking by performing and I wrote a couple of books for magicians and got known in that world and

I drifted into this psychological type of magic called mentalism and at the time I there I think they're really only like four or five mentalists around there's a lot more now yeah probably because of the the shows I did in the UK so it became a very popular thing in the UK and that I guess that spread out a bit and yes I I I got signed up by a TV company that spent a couple of years looking for someone that could do that kind of thing this was back in 99 2000 the first special

went out in 2000 on channel 4 in Britain and they repeated the show the repeat did quite well so they commissioned another one and then and then and that point it was David Blaine had just become a he'd been a big thing and I think we in Britain wanted like an answer to that so I think I sort of fit that niche for a bit and then slowly it kind of became its own thing and I that was 2000 so it was a while ago and and as I grew up the the desire to kind

of go hey look at me aren't I clever became less interesting and and I realized that I think one of the reasons my magic becomes um ditions start off being interesting and then after a while become easily kind of lampooned and you know fun to make fun of is that your kind of you are you're just sort of posturing and people sense that after a while so I tried to move because there is something there is something interesting about magic but it isn't certainly isn't a magician pretending to have special powers that's not interesting what's

interesting to me is that taps into the the way we tell ourselves stories about what's real and the way we're constantly editing our experience to sustain a narrative for ourselves which we need to is the only way we can navigate through life but amid weirdly a magician is providing a really neat sort of example of how that works you know if you watch a card trick and you go well I picked a card and then he never touched the cards and the car disappeared it was in my pocket how did you do that you've you

probably everything you need to answer that question you've seen and has happened right in front of you but you've edited those bits out because they didn't seem important at the time and of course we do this in life right all the time so I've tried to move over the last few years away from that standard remit of look at me I'm clever too I take more of a backseat and the the the stars of the shows if you like are the members of the public that are going through normally big truman show like psychological experiments

but they don't know they're part of a show and they're surrounded by actors and big kind of dramatic like we ended the world for one guy so I did a [ __ ] ellipse yeah so there's like quite big high concept things he wakes up in a zombie infested post-apocalyptic after we'd spread like months putting cameras in his house putting fake news feeds into his phone and his TV we were recording special edition special episodes of TV shows that it'd watch that would have like news guests on so he could get well-known scientists coming on

and talking about meteors strike that was going to happen so we ended we end of the world and but actually it was the whole thing for him was a lesson in valuing what you have there's an old stoic lesson about to to value what you have and not take it for granted you you should rehearse not having those things you know so and you kind of forced him we sort of thought that yeah it was that situation on him but it you know it worked it was lovely thing so yeah this is it's they've sort

of grown up with me over the years so it's a really long waffling arm so it's okay I love the guys with it and I'll back up a little because I think a lot of people are going what are you talking about what you're seeing with like sacrifice which is on Netflix in the bush which is on Netflix Apocalypse which is on YouTube sorry we're encouraging people to like steal your these are like you said The Truman Show if people have seen that movie this is everything around them is sort of staged and or faked

and so this kid wakes up it said he thinks he's going to a concert or something like that with his brother I guess wakes up in a fake Hospital zombies all over the place some guy picks him up in a van he's got a rescue this little girl who actually turns out to be well I don't want to spoil it but yeah actually has to rescue this little girl and he sort of finds all these levels of courage that he you obviously never had because this is a guy who can't keep a job sleeps on

the couch and goes drinking every night yeah and like doesn't try and do is find a fine a strong dramatic hook and am excuse me and a good reason for for doing it that's the real message of the show so sacrifice which is the new ones this this is on Netflix it's a bit more accessible is I take a guy who's a very right-wing American died with strong anti-immigration red as he says I'm not racist I just I'm not really like people yeah maybe you should Google what racism was actually defined as yeah and I

have him lay down his life for a Mexican illegal immigrant to take a bullet for a fern illegal immigrant in in a essentially a gun standoff gun fight not a gun fight there's one gun somebody fight with one gun is okay but a standoff it's very I say yeah so that's that's that's the idea so it's part of this world he knows that there's some filming happening because he thinks as part of a documentary so I'm not completely out of it normally I I'm not in the show at all because obviously people know me at

least in the UK so this was we had a sort of a half fiction thing where he he felt he was part of one show that had then finished and was being filmed in England then he goes back home so he's gone that the change process has happened for him I used these psychological techniques to change him and change his feelings about immigrants in particular open up some empathy and and change that and then as I do this a lot with the shows I the idea is then if they felt that if they know they've

been part of one show for the actual final test there has to be no sense that it's part of a TV show at all it has to be a real life and a life-changing thing for him so he goes back home and then a couple of months later we've staged a thing he doesn't rely he thinks he's going to see a friend and in Vegas but gets stuck in La outside of La in the desert the car breaks down and one thing leads to another and he's in the middle of this hidden-camera elaborate experiment where

you as a gun pointed out you know he has a chance to step up and save a life by laying down his own and it's extraordinary and there really emotional things to go throught a committee I mean clearly for the guy these these are huge emotional things but also also for us and for me you're going through it they're very yeah she's spending there's been like a year making these things and you know they're very ambitious and difficult you have to sustain a whole fiction for the person going through it as well as actually do

it so yes I've done a number of these and they've taken an interest in illusion and persuasion and and just you know good ways of living and thinking and that whole business of the stories that we live by and trying to put them to to sort of in you know good and entertaining use what are we actually seeing here because I think a lot of people when they think hypnosis they're thinking and I've seen this and elsewhere in your work where they're carrying the guy outside and he wakes up on the lawn and he's like

wow how did I get outside and then he walks back in people or that somebody's gonna walk around the stage and then click like a chicken we don't necessarily think of a subtle psychological manipulation or hypnotic suggestion which is kind of what's happening with especially in sacrifice where you're playing a jingle and it cues something up you know these sort of suggestions to get people to take certain courses of action it if you don't know anything about what you're doing mmm there's probably plenty of people online and I haven't seen this but I would imagine

there's a lot of people that go this is just fake the guy's pretending it's almost dated I've always had a lot of a lot of that I think it's maybe because it's it's not necessarily stuff that would work on everybody so with most of the shows and it varies but most of the shows I'm using people that I've selected from a group of applicants and you see this this is how the shows start here are the applicants and I've got to choose one and I'll choose the person I think is suitable so in the sacrifice

the guy Phil that we use I needed somebody with these strong views but also somebody who's suggestible and and and also it's important with him he's not like a monster racist guy he's actually although you probably start off not liking him very quickly you kind of you kind of thought enough of the guy really as it goes on I'm not bad for him initially he just didn't seem like the sharpest like something he'd obviously gone through something that made him doesn't like people that weren't white yeah he said it was his upbringing but it might

have also been maybe you couldn't get a job and he was yeah having a rough time yes easy scapegoat yeah and so yeah I wanted a kind of everyman figure that we kind of sort of relate to as well not just a monster monster races guy so so maybe that's one reasons that people totally understand people are skeptical because it is that they're quite ambitious things but if you choose a guy if you choose somebody that if choose the right person it obviously makes life a lot easier so I'm not saying that these techniques that

I use will just work on everybody that drop over hat they wouldn't and I try to explain that throughout the show once I've got my guy what I'm generally doing is attaching strong emotions to certain triggers so either overtly with my involvement or completely covertly and just something that happens in the guy's life normally I'll make some event happen that makes him feel something very like a strong emotion and then there'll be a sound or a thing that he sees or something that happens in that environment that steals that trait it's like you know when

you break up with a girlfriend and never some song playing on the radio a lot of the time and you don't hear the song for five years and then you hear it again it brings back all those feelings right so it's actually very straightforward it's sort of conditioning really anchoring is that what the NLP language its anchoring or its conditioning or its triggering whatever yeah but it's that that's the idea you're just kind of attaching emotions to two triggers so again normally with these shows and sacrifice is a good example I want to get somebody

in to a point where they do something extraordinary and life-changing for them without them knowing that that's what the shows about so I can never approach it directly but what I can do is break down I kind of look at this final thing like I want him to put his own life on the line and save a life for somebody else who's the last person he'd ever stand out for so I kind of break that down I think what what are the components of that that are needed and then and then of those things on

their own can be framed as entirely positive and quite sort of benign things that why wouldn't anybody want a bit more of like the desire to act and to feel more empathy or be more open or whatever so I create situations where those things can be explored and and created within him and then I attach them secretly to triggers in the end scenario I can play or present those triggers at the same time and hopefully were the rush of all those things as they come together and the situation that's being presented in front of him

and this sort of opportunity that's that's there hopefully he takes the bait that's none of that's the idea and he's you know he's a changed man because of it it's yeah I would imagine he has to rationalize that he did that of his own free will so he couldn't possibly actually dislike yeah it's I mean with some of the shows I did one that was about um taking us with very similar structure but to make people hold up a security van and steal 100,000 pounds yeah it's called the highest again it's it's an older show

as it'll be on YouTube somewhere yeah we'll put links to all these so that people come right I highly recommend because sometimes they're hard to find there's that little you watch them in the US like you fake ones yeah that one was fascinating the one where they're holding up cuz I just thought all he all you did was well there was all this prep room but then the trigger was you're just on the phone with them and then suddenly they're walking down this empty street and they decide to hold up the armored car and I

thought but there's like five different triggers that are going off hey Carla the color of this is colors been important there's a slogan there's a bit of music that plays on a car that drives past I used similar techniques with getting somebody to assassinate Stephen Fry who's a I know he's known in the u.s. is certainly a huge name here and the idea was to the idea was to see whether so sirhan sirhan who's still in prison for assassinating assassinating Bobby Kennedy always said that he was hypnotized by the CIA and it sort of become

one of those conspiracy right like oh maybe he was yeah well it's just it's sort of the question for me was regardless of whether he was or wasn't is it even possible is it even plausible that the sort of tech and he laid out what they did and how they did it oh he did yeah yeah he's got the whole story of how they did it which is you know his story I mean he's also quite a plausible guys there's a really enticing premise could you do that could you have somebody only believe I mean

at the last minute it's a blank ball it's not a real that's not a real bullets number obviously not actually going to harm anybody but as far as his concerned his is assassinating somebody using the same techniques so wait wasn't he you said he was on stage was the audience in on it the audience were not in on it so they must have freaked out well that was another whole thing that was interesting so yeah so we've basically the guy has gone through again what he thinks is a documentary about hypnosis which allows me to

set up some of these triggers without him realizing what they're for because I can openly hypnotize him as part of one TV show he thinks it's part of when actually there's a hidden agenda so the situation arises when he's just gone to an event nothing to do with us has no idea is being filmed the audience are not in on it at all and Stephen Fry who's his target is Stephen is on it and he's wearing squibs everything he knows scary he knows this may happen yeah so he's out on stage and then we set

off these triggers and it was a polka dot dress which sirhan sirhan said was one of the triggers that they use they conditioned him to feel certain things with the polka dot dress there was a ringtone that we used someone's phone went off and it was a little jingle little tune that he'd also been conditioned with and now he does do it not diverts it it's a spoiler but he does do it but it was interesting because we had so we had this whole crowd control thing set up because what happens when the 300 people

in the audience free Stampede yeah the ones right did road they didn't because there was this thing called normalcy bias which means in these emergencies situations you just you sit and you look around no one else is panicking so you don't and and then of course I had the thing of everyone going how its fake because why didn't the audience freak out but they they didn't freak out because they don't freak out there was a story of a Pan Am flight that um had it had landed in a foggy runway at night and another plane

had taken off over the top of it and ripped the side of this plane off and there was a period of a few minutes that people could escape before this plane was engulfed in flames and the only people that did were ones that either been in a similar situation before or had had training in this kind of world everyone else just sat there and just burnt because they looked around and I was someone will take care of it it's fine bystander effect yeah it is it is it's a that it's like if you have an

emergency you know there's gonna be a flood or there's gonna be you know you just sort of oh it'll be fine it's not really gonna affect me and right it's like natural bias towards it it'll be fine if this house was on fire right now and you didn't move I probably like oh it's just one of Daren's like things that he's yeah fire alarm is such a great exam isn't it a firearm goes off the one thing you know is it isn't a real fire you know one thing you don't think so anyways there was

that was that was an interesting aspect of it but yes but that's that's sort of what I do my background is in magic and sort of mind-reading area of magic and over the years I've tried to move into this other area but I also do stage shows so yeah hopefully I should be in Broadway this year I did an off-broadway show for which we won the Drama Desk Award which is a no big deal I think it was most a unique unique hist stage production week is one of those words we don't I don't know

what the award would be but it was something like that which is very which was amazing but yeah so that I did this off Broadway version a couple of years ago and hopefully hopefully this year hopefully in the spring I should be there doing him a Broadway version so that is more of a kind of more traditional kind of stage show of it but even then I try and know the last show is about faith healing I did faithfully there was awesome I this is what Netflix was yeah miracle it's it's really good I'm trying

not to be super Fanning all over cuz I think that's the instance yes yes no no let's please bless my ego it's fine that was really interesting and that's something I want to ask about more later but I know you were a Christian until it was at your mid-20s yeah yeah I was until yeah it's so sad yeah mid universities at a time yeah when you look at historical healers old biblical miracle stories and things like that knowing what you know now about influence persuasion psychology illusions how much of the stuff how much are illusions

high-tech and how much do you think wait a minute this this technology if you will was around 3000 years ago this could be faked this could have been something somebody did to as a scam and now it's now it's this lore and that we base our lives upon I think well I think in terms of I do sort of have people ask sometimes what do you think the miracles in the Bible were just magic tricks I think it's sort of the wrong question I think the how those stories arrived is more I think more to

do with how those how those tales get formed after the event so that you can you know if you're if you're a a young Christian community growing up in some other part of the world and you kind of need your run you need your backstory to to justify your response to the difficulties that you're facing in your own time so you need your you need your stories and it was very sanded in those days to recreate stories and put words in the mouth of people that your view of your figure your guru that long since

died so I think a lot of those stories are really just things that have come out since in order to to tell a story or teach a lesson that is useful for those communities you know 100 200 years later so I think that's more than the world you're in rather than actually how did he turn the water into wine Oh Kemosabe which they didn't have oh it's this yeah that makes sense you hear about like Roman writings then having some quote from like I don't know Marcus or really whatever and then it's like oh wait

a minute that now that was said by this prophet and it's like well we have this written over here in this other part of the world and then it went up through Greece and then suddenly they said by this religious guy yeah well I think the basic I mean we look at the the Oracle at Delphi that people were you know receiving these amazing messages and and there may be an all sorts of hallucinogenics involved but essentially it seemed to be people sort of wanting to believe something and letting information sit and taking ideas that

were probably quite general and symbolic and letting them fit the specifics and that's really no different to what a you know medium does today a minute so I think I think that at its heart that our capacity for self-deception or at least a you know former narrative that serves us from whatever information we're being given that that seems to be ages old and just part of who we are it it is interesting to see even now something that you would think people have gotten the memo about such as cold reading in psychic fraud there was

a video you did I don't know 10 plus years ago now where I should I'll show people this because they'll go oh I friend of mine goes I went to this fair at my university when I was visiting my sister or his alma mater and they had a psychic there and I thought oh what the hell and oh my gosh I think maybe there's something to this and I said let me guess he's an Indian guy who's a graphic designer and I said I'll cold-read you you know I'm not a psychic here's what I got

your parents are disappointed in your choice of occupation they want you to be a doctor or a lawyer or a professional your mom's really sad but she's just glad you're happy she really is more concerned with who you marry your dad however he wishes that you could have done something a little bit more quote-unquote respectable they don't understand the work that goes into your craft and he's like whoa are you psychic and I'm like I'm telling you I told you no you're just like every other Indian dude in America whose parents are immigrants every other

graphic bizarre literally yeah you didn't become a doctor or a lawyer if part of your family's disappointed your mom wants you to marry a nice indian girl and your dad is kind of annoyed that you didn't become an engineer bien like this is universal and then you get the I mean the problem the worst things I've seen a sitting in a studio audience you know the psychics that come out on a TV show and have their audience and then before they started filming that this guy comes out and says is anybody hoping that someone's going

to come through today and all these hands go up and he just asked people so who did you lose how did they die what was their name is this some bit of information that would prove to you that it's genuinely them and people just giving this information then they start the cameras rolling and he comes out and just settle that stuff straight back and it's and just if you have a dose of skepticism you're sat there going this is so transparent this is yeah but I think that because the lie is so ugly it's just

so much easier to believe oh he must be doing it for real because he wouldn't just be asking us what to say and then just saying it just to make us cry because it looks good on camera surely wouldn't just be doing that you'd have to be like a proper bastard yeah really nothing yeah I think I think it's easier to believe the the lie because it's it's sometimes the truth is so ugly having said that I mean I although I I've spent a lot of my career debunking that stuff again I think the I

think it's more interesting I think the question of our is psychic our psychic powers real or the mediums real well I mean no but I think that's not it's not really that interesting the interesting question to me is you know why we why why are the so why are the mediums so perennially popular and and you know what is it about our narratives around death for example that you know as we've as we've dispensed with superstitions so much over the last couple of hundred years particularly anything morbid and that now you know death is now

something that is to be you know fought off it all means is the it becomes became the enemy I mean our system of our system of medicine a couple of hundred years ago was still the ancient Greek medicine about you know humors and the the flemeth of fire and the pile and all of that I mean it was only fairly recently we've sort of embraced what to us now seems you know proper medicine you've really a few hundred years ago so given that and given the lack of cultural narrative now around death it provides would

provide us with a sort of real meaning we don't have we don't have any meanings around death unlike a lot of cultures that do so there's so only the only real narrative we have in place now is the the the brave battle that someone's fighting that's that that's that's a sort of a narrative that tends to fit into play so it doesn't do any good for the whole person that's dying of course makes everybody else I think feel better for that that one person you're now adding failure to a long list of problems that already

exist so it kind of makes sense that at that one time when actually because it is the one time and you need to be most aware of the narrative that you're forming when you want to take authorship of your story because you know but when a book finishes that last scene or when a film finishes that last scene it makes sense of everything that's happened before and this doesn't happen in life right so we have to just end so we have to really find our own stories at this time that matters most and it there's

nothing there to help us with that if we don't find it on our own because there's all those narratives have sort of gone we don't really respect that anymore but of course this opens up a big gap for any tawdry peddler of some semblance of meaning to come along and pack out right we're filling the gap in like a you guys like Erie Geller like outright charlatans that just have no shame whatsoever that guy must be some kind of sociopath or something I mean he just has no qualms about telling people that he's talking with

their dead relative or taking money and going this is where your family members very I think he's avoided that I think it's how he's avoided it very just into positive thinking now I think help guy now yeah I I don't know but certainly there are plenty people that do and I even one of my stage shows I had 50 people up on stage and I would do this kind of thing right and I was I would do the mediumship and at the same time be debunking it so I would be giving information that was totally

correct you know I'd say I've got you up your grandmother here her name's Alice and she's saying and she's not saying anything I'm lying to you you understand us but she's saying that she had little dog who Teddy and they used to play with teddy when you were young I'm just taking this up but is this true yes so I was sort of trying to keep it in that interesting it's fake it's real and at the really early on in the in the run I went out to Stage Door and you know was talking to

people afterwards and signing things and this girl said to me can you can you put me in touch with my dead grandmother and I said what do you do get from the show that I'm not really doing it I'm trying to kind of debunk it and show that it's not real she don't know no yeah I know I know it's not real but could you could you put me in touch with her oh man it was fascinating just just how first well how you can completely hold those two realities right yeah and and and and

just what what that is just what that a appeal I mean I'm you know I don't I don't believe in any of that but but I lost my grandfather shortly afterwards I was talking to a woman who said she was psychic and when she started to say oh no he's here is here in the room now it's hard to just let that mean nothing and just brush over you I mean you're either gonna get annoyed about it which actually was my response I said well don't don't you know tacky just tacky yeah all you want

it or what is ooh what's what did you say you know but it's it's um it's very hard to select that right like I mean you want it so bad and that there's a point zero zero one percent chance that this is real like I'm gonna hear this person out and you just get emotionally invested in crap that they're feeding you I guess at that point yeah I'll I did a whole I did a documentary series called Derren Brown investigates and I I would spend time with people that were making some sort of supernatural claims

of some sort and one of them one of these guys was in it was a psychic and I think by any standards he was fake I mean looking back on it I mean that the we just caught him as close you can absolutely I mean can't prove a negative candy but it's close you can catch somebody cheating I mean we just sort of did it again and again so there's really no doubt about it in that sense Bart the the fact that he seem to be clearly just getting information from here and passing it off

as something else he's still I think in this in a strange way maybe I've just been charitable but sort of still believed it and if he he was having people say to him oh yes you must be psychic and you're helping me by saying this he was sort of helping people and have-not was able to rationalize this in his own minds yeah just felt like a strange sort of closed loop that he was in I thought well maybe in a weird way maybe he is he is the psychic he's playing that role and and also

why is he letting me into even film him anyway if he knows if you know that you're just fake why would you risk that sort of you know exposure and it was just it was interesting just seeing how you when you get close to it how it's a very grey complex area from the outside it's an easy yes or no no is it real is it not well no but as you get into it I think it's a very rich interesting area about again how we just how the stories that we form and what we

what we what we need to hear yeah I think that well you're an amazing performer but I thought I think there's a little heroic aspect in a way yeah of deep well of course right I've debunking the psychic fraud and the faith-healing and things like that and one of the performances was you train this I think it was like a scuba instructor oh yeah and he'd taken for like six months and you're like you're gonna be a faith healer and he really looked a party in long hair and he kind of dressed up and sharply

in a suit and then he comes to the United States and he fills half fills this room because you didn't want it he didn't want to abuse this publicist to fill the room up massively he's trying to convince people that he's a faith healer yeah and then at the end he's kind of like and this is completely fake and people are just crying because they wanted to believe it and it's it's almost like a medical procedure on a child where you're like I hate hurting this kid but I can't leave this yes it's really sensitive

it was a tricky it was a tricky thing that was yes that was my first taste of the faith healing so in the last this last stage show which is the one on Netflix called miracle I I did it myself because I was I just really got the bug for it but from training this other guy so that other show is called miracles for sale which was a channel for show a few years ago and yes there's a documentary following this guy it was a it was it was so interesting I think what the what

what I learned from doing it myself in the stage show was the it's the psychological component of suffering so what I'm doing I've got an audience so you're cutting forward to the stage show that I did so an audience that are skeptical like me they are not coming to the show thinking there's going to be any healing which is your biggest your biggest weapon really as a as a healer to you and weapons about perhaps the wrong word but you know what makes it work normally is you have an audience of believers that are already

expecting easy so they're bringing up their already psychologically prepared for it and I first night I'm going out doing this show I've got 2,000 people in the audience something I'd oh I really don't know if this is gonna work I had enough things that I could kind of work mechanically like the some of the tricks that they use so I thought well I can I can get through that section and get to the end and have an ending but if it doesn't really work much beyond that then I'll think of something else but and I

just say to the audience look I know you don't believe in this any more than I did but just go along I'm gonna play the part just go with it because it's in it's it's interesting and people did and then like within and it isn't just I thought people would come up and they'd say oh well you know my back hurt and now it doesn't and there'd be these small improvements but I had people you know slain in the spirit which is when you know you touch them on the head and they collapse they're shaking

on the floor and all just what's going on there well I found what did work was showing little clips of what I'm talking about faith anything just little clips that would just show those little scenes like that and it's just which they kind of know what to do yeah which is course exactly happens at the churches anyway because you're seeing it happen again and again on stage so you're sort of being educated as an audience member without realizing the suggestion is is settling in but I remember within the first week there was a woman who

came up she'd been paralyzed on one side of her body since she was a kid and she's in floods of tears she's 40-something I guess and can you know move her move her arm and night after night there were these it arid but very often quite dramatic very physical things but nothing's changing like if you had an x-ray before-and-after clearly there's no change but in that gray area that's more about again to repeat myself this story that they've settled into about their ailment you know if you wake up every day believing what I can't do

this because I have this does that after a while create the problem when maybe the physical side might have like I had a bad shoulder for a long time I still have and I got so used to putting on my jacket with like a bit of a dead arm and pulling pulling the sleeve up with this I still do that I don't know if I really need to do that now and if somebody got me up and saved and said your shoulder is healed I made a big fast I said now go on now put

your jacket on and do it normally and with a bit of adrenaline that's gonna kill the pain anyway I'd probably be fooled into thinking oh my god you've just healed my shoulder I've had that v tears so it's that sort of process but the results were extraordinary and even then I started to think more maybe I could do this on a grand scale and I could tell people it's this is an entirely secular thing and it may not work it may only work for the ten minutes you're on stage or it may stay or it

may you know but that's when you do start to get mad and get into a whole ethical world of pain because you know I get my doing this for their own good and so it's okay if I'm not exactly so how do you not stop go mad once you've once you've seen that but it God it was it was extraordinary and really eye-opening and literally eye-opening sometimes you know blind things like sharing again not not full like you know organic blindness but so I think if they're kind lived here but they're only like maybe 80%

deaf so now they're convinced they can hear out of that ear yeah there's lots of tricks around that that they use then you're into the world of sort of moving out of the suggestion that makes it work into just tricks some of them some of the mechanical tricks that I've sort of been put through by healers there's a lovely one where you sit on YouTube a lot if you if you type in leg length no that's the one yeah you've seen it one where they're just loosen up the person's shoes sort of again if you

believe it right it's such a stupid trick that I think if you ability you if you approach it as someone that believes it it looks like someone's so you're showing like here's a guy with a short leg which is why they limp and now we're gonna lengthen the Lord's going to lengthen this person's leg and as you look this person's leg I mean that their heels are sort of in the healers palms like this you see this leg stretch out and then they walk without a limp and it's one of the oldest tricks in the

book and I have sat on stage and had the guy do it to me you choose someone with shoes that you can loosen and actually what you do is you you everyone's watching this leg lengthen so you don't do the trick on that leg you do the trick on the other leg you you've pulled first of all they don't limp right there is no problem with the leg you just say look they're limping there's what so they just sort of go well I didn't see him limp but he said he was like oh so he

must be that must have just missed that and you think you've seen it then that they hold their feet like this and they pull out one so the other foot the other shoe is just pulled off a heel a little bit so now it does look like if you measure the legs that this this leg is a little longer therefore this one's too short actually this legs fine this one you just put the heel off and then as everyone's watching this foot and you're saying this foot is lengthening you're just slowly pushing this heel of

the shoe slowly back onto that thought but it does look like if you're watching the other leg it kind of looked like I'm watching the short leg yeah you're watching you're watching the other one so it's it's sort of believable interesting and then you get them to run around and say look no limping they can run around fine and everyone thinks of healings happen they could run fine anyway and I I have been brought out the audience and had this done on me my quite big name healer in Dallas while we're making that documentary show

and the really interesting part of it I left with was it isn't remotely fooling for the person going through it and just how oddly kind of insulting that is that you're you're sort of there's no sin doing any good for that person it's just about the showmanship it's just about creating an effect for the audience you're really kind of I mean I wasn't bothered by it but you're exploiting a potentially very vulnerable person who's there wanting a healing God knows what's wrong with him so just that I mean it was a sort of quite ugly

ugly thing but yeah it reminds me of Andy Kyle you know this Andy Kyle the Filipino or I don't know like Thailand healer and he just starts laughing because he's looking down as this guy sort of like scrapes bloody chicken meat on his guts and he's like oh man yeah same thing right he's he's since it's being done on him yes and he sees it he just goes this is all [ __ ] yeah yeah yeah which I've done that on stage as well that's telling out the chicken for and pulling up and letting out

the bits of use little bits of sponge it was a bit less gross to do every night but yeah otherwise chicken entrails is what is what gets you guys yeah and you're kind of reaching into someone's stomach and pulling the stuff out and again not always very convincing for the person yeah because it's like oh I'm not feeling anything oh well I have a magic spell so you don't feel the pain this is your cancerous bad stuff where do people learn this stuff there's it can't be I haven't looked online but I assume there's no

school for like hey you want to become a con artist here's a bunch of faith feeling tricks yeah and again do you know for me the interesting part of it is it's an it's a strange parallel between that and say you know the secret you know the the you wanna burn manifesting things yeah because the message is and it's a sort of a faith model but the message is like you know throw your pills away the Lord has healed you and if if at any point this illness returns which of course it's going to right

that's good you didn't have enough faith maybe you even thought about taking a pill again or what it but either way it's your fault certainly than the lord's fault and it certainly isn't the healers full it's your fault because you didn't have enough faith and in the secret she explicitly says that it is it is your fault you didn't believe enough you didn't you know you know how you're supposed to visualize whatever it is you you want which is sadly always about money and jewelry yeah necklace yeah and and then you have to act as

if you've already got the thing you have to totally commit to it which i think is such a damaging it it's the same thing the problem is it just creates anxiety and a feeling of failure and self blame when of course that is sometimes not going to work that model of believe in yourself ignore all the haters ignore the haters ignore the naysayers believe in yourself have a vision and stick to it is occasionally a model of success it's also a perfect model for failure the tropics we never read the biographies of the businessmen who

just who failed because they don't read those it's called survivor bias yes follow your dreams and it's like oh that sounds great look Mark Cuban's this rich entrepreneur says it well there's a 10,000 other people for each one of them who is at home in their mom's couch like the guy from apocalypse he's gone I'm following my passion but I just not making any money yeah exactly and you don't tend to read I got lucky I got really lucky right no no we see the guy who spent 30,000 hours trying to figure out how to

get people to be persuaded by a jingle and a fake news story and other psychological triggers I how much practice do you think you've had yeah altogether like 40,000 hours 30,000 hours you ever tried no I don't I don't know I started when I was 20 and I'm 47 now very soft skin but good thank you yeah yeah that's a it's a lot of it's a lot of practice and a lot of trial and error I would imagine yeah I remember having a real seminal moment in I had people would come to my rooms as

when I was a student and I'd hypnotized them and I remember I I'd leave them if they were responsive if they if they were good I'd leave them with a suggestion if they came back and I said sleep click my fingers they'd go straight to sleep you need that I need that we got jet lag for days she's gone she's gone sorry that's not a toy and I had this guy come back who I thought I'd hit my size before and I said I can't sit down look at me and sleep and he went straight

out and then I we did whatever the hypnosis was and then afterwards I realized I'd never met him four so then I'm thinking well how how did you and none of the ground work with no none of the ground work was there so why did he respond to me clicking my fingers and saying sleep which clearly there's nothing magical about doing that and then I thought okay well it's it was actually just my my belief and my confidence at the time just and the fact that he again I luckily he was very suggestible made that

work so that things like that just come not from necessarily the hours and hours I mean they do I guess but then it's not about technique per se other than just realization of I think all I do is all everything I do is about seeing the thing from another person's point of view and just that that's the toolbox that's that that's the toolkit as someone else is ongoing what participant population is that suggestible where you think maybe you can just get him to sleep or maybe not quite that suggestible but it probably ties him that

people respond well to placebo it's probably you're dealing with the same kind of you know in the Venn diagram of those things is but probably thirty percent maybe something like that okay but like what I'm do it serve a lot what then it depends what you want so when I'm doing my stage shows and I've got a couple of thousand people like with it with the faith healing that I was doing [Music] you know I might get 300 people come forward from an audience of say say 3000 and then I might get like the best

10 up so now you're dealing with such a small yeah Ascenta genuine they're always that's always going to be and it's that 1% in a room is always going to be kind of extraordinary isn't it so that helps that kind of thing else it doesn't mean they might feel like the whole audience is responding to something whereas the reality is you're whittling down to the to the best so you can create the illusion of it being more successful is yeah that makes sense what are you looking for with these suggestible people yeah like in in

the push for example you test them hey who stands up and sits down when they hear the bell yeah yeah the Netflix but are other things work are you ever just walking down the street and you see somebody and you go this person has these nonverbal characteristics of a highly suggestible type of person is that does that exist I've I've done it for a long time and I I've given up trying to do that because I don't I'm always surprised by I mean you know openness and a natural tendency to sort of go along with

ideas and so on feels like it should be a good signifier of suggestibility and a lot of the time it is but I know how I am socially with people I probably seem like that was I'm not a very good hypnotic subject but I probably am quite responsive to may be things like Percy beau or things like I don't just an expert that I admire telling me stuff that I'm gonna absorb and take on as my own which is another form of suggestibility but I'm not very responsive to a hypnotist hypnotizing me I think something

in my ego sort of made me watch that and likewise people that seem very standoffish and and seem very kind of you know detached arms folded like the last person you'd think would respond sometimes that all comes from an oddly insecure place and if you get them into the right sort of type of interaction that hypnosis is they suddenly become hyper responsive so I've given up I've given up trying to predict it I do it in situations where I can throw it out over a large number of people and work with the ones that right

look for the response yes yeah how do you come up with some of the tricks or the illusions I'm just kind of like you're walking through the mall with your partner and you're like you know what if I made something like that come to life and then vanish that would be pretty cool right no I don't know I maybe no I I normally have a two-week period where I'll say with the stage shows it's like I'm maybe a month but the TV shows maybe a couple of weeks where I've got to think of an idea

so with the TV it's nothing to do with like magic effects of any sort it's something like what can we like in the push for example which is another other one on Netflix we were thinking about coming up new ideas for sort of plots for one of these things to put somebody through and then out of a sort of frustration I can't we just it's a big party everyone's an actor apart from one person and can we make that one person throw someone off a roof yeah just so sometimes out of a ray oh I

can't we just blur there's an idea that's like oh actually that's quite yeah right cool so now it's an exercise in social compliance so the first thing there are so they're helping out at the party the first thing they're asked to do is to mislabel meat-filled sausage rolls as vegetarian sausage rolls so they're they like there's that little bit of kind of you know you get your foot in the door the little thing they're asked to do and then bit by bit could you build that at the point that they would actually kill somebody because

they're told to so that that became that became the show so it's it's it's that really it's it's trying to come up with a fun strong hook and then make sure that the shows kind of got a good reason you know and a good message and actually the show on social compliance that one the push went out in Britain a few years I've quite mm I don't know 16 or something but some over the last few years that idea of like good people doing bad things and how we can get persuaded by these narratives that

we buy into has sort of become more relevant so it sort of became it was it was became a different show somehow a minute when it was put on the bushes on Netflix the push is probably one of my favourites if not my absolute favorite because of the social compliance aspect yeah and because when you watch that unless you are really good at rationalizing things to yourself even even I who I know it's certain extent what you're doing with the little vegetarian flags or like getting people to sort of dig a little deeper into the

lie that they're telling yeah unless you are really really in denial I think all of us can watch that and go shoot I could have probably done up to this point like oh I wouldn't kill the guy you know I would have given the speech about the hell I'm the donor or I probably would have liked not have hidden the body or I wouldn't have kicked the dead guy but I but what I would I have kicked the dead guy I mean he was watching well I threw most of my career I've had people say

to me oh I wouldn't I wouldn't do this or I'd have done that but I wouldn't have done that and I think what's what's interesting to me is how are we think about what we would do with the sense of a self that we have which we think of in isolation we think of ourselves and again this is this is an Enlightenment idea that stuck around that we are sort of these that we should be these separate entities that are not being influenced by other people around us that we should be you know whether it's

separate events I'm kidding yeah this wouldn't work on me I'm too smart I'm too principled and to insert good positive quality here yeah this guy would never be able to form and of course that that idea of the self like that was born at a time when it was important not to be influenced too much by the church or the King there was actually making a statement of saying that we are we should be free individuals is important but we've bought so much into that idea that we miss that actually the self I think is

it is a verb I think we self you know it's something that's very active and it expands out fluidly into our environment into our relationships and and it's very hard to make judgments about what you would do in a situation when you're not in that situation and that that's even something that extreme as murder you it's it you just Chardin you can't judge from a distance and say well I wouldn't I wouldn't do that because you're making that decision in isolation and it's totally different and that's when when you're there and to me that is

it's fascinating because it's I mean the shows it's it's a funny and it's a bit like sort of weekend at Bernie's that was the kind of inspiration from it and the guys called Bernie the character that dies in it yeah I never caught that there you go and it's but but actually at its heart was I think to me was that thing of what it yes the social the the how far can compliance go but also what what our sense of self is and how that drastically changes from context to context how do you test

this kind of stuff because I'm imagining you know how do you test whether someone's gonna rob an armored car you can't really know right I mean the whole thing could just end up not working yeah absolutely absolutely so then then well there's different ways of doing it so in some shows we can be following four or five people yeah so it isn't just hoping that wise it doesn't need to work on all of them because either way you've got you know that's your result if it worked on one out of five it worked on one

out of five in a show like sacrifice which is that the current one if he doesn't do the thing at the end I mean there's no going back and doing it again you can't say we're gonna retake that so you'd have to find a way of letting that failure sit within a narrative that would then maybe continue and find a another way of going or a way of finishing that would still leave you with a satisfying ending so that's that's the joy of TV it's not it's not changing what happened but you can you can

let what happen sit within a story that can of course you know continue and you can be truthful but still make the story satisfying so failure is important and there are failures within that show sacrifice that a part of it and they sit they sit fine within it I think it's it's a bit like a juggler dropping a ball actually occasion it's it's it's good to be reminded these things aren't aren't just going to happen like some kind of me I don't want to jump off into the rock yeah exactly yeah yeah and that's that's

all right that failure but like if he was like I'm not taking a bullet for that guy shoot him shoot him Kip you know now how do we do at the production where he just looks terrible but it would have been I mean it would have been amazing to watch that and see it fail and then you'd be like what are they gonna do right how they're gonna get out of it or something then so that's that's still an interesting dramatically interesting place is that up to us to make sure that it we do do

something interesting with nervous for you when I say that though because I'm imagining you're in this control room going just shoot them and then jump in there please you know I've got to go to the bathroom hungry desert [ __ ] town for like three weeks filming this just shoot them and get it over with man yeah shoot him or give me the gun yeah exactly have you had ever had any close calls where it's like someone almost blows it like they're setting something up and the guy gets home from work early and you're like

don't leave the shed uh we've had God don't leave the shed there was actually in one of the show in Apocalypse so this is the end of the world was rb1 so yeah so we had just just it's just a glimpse of how much work goes into these shows so we had we'd recorded a special episode of a TV show that he watched I don't know it wasn't that it was the electrical interference from the meteors so we were we were taking things out of his car that he'd the car this car wouldn't run and

the phone his phone would die and the TV suddenly just died right and as they're watching it and it's all being explained by there's been warnings on the radio about the electrical interference so to make that happen we got two guys in the shed in the garden I don't know why we had to but we did who we're gonna pull the just the cable but they couldn't then leave this little garden shed to go because the room that he's watching TV and backs onto the back garden so you might see them he's bedroom does the

same so they had to sleep these two guys had to sleep in this [ __ ] this is after like three months without a day off anyway to see a level of work on these is just enormous for this one at the moment that no one really remembers from the show is not a great part the drama it's just a you know fun little bit so yeah it does happen but the other thing is which as sort of I've realized over the years of making them that we're all a lot more nervous about the fiction

being run then we need to because if you run if you're having dinner with Jen here perhaps in a fashionable London restaurant and you spotted a camera behind a curtain you wouldn't think okay alright this whole thing is fake all these people are actors where's Darren Brown I would be excited if I yeah somebody left a camera yes so many it's stolen we've had a couple of near misses like that that we've all been you know yeah like that about I love that I've never seen that expression but I know exactly what's that I am

definitely gonna use that for those of you who couldn't see that it's it's this questions do that yes I spend a lot of my career like that I I can't can't believe I have what have I done my whole life now having this exactly it's a simple itthat's couldn't be more perfect yeah cuz I'm imagining and imagine those two guys on the [ __ ] going you know I think I'm gonna apply to that job that office job after all freezing their ass off in the shed in the middle of winter and that was a

tough it was a tough job for everyone there cuz yeah it's eight months and there's never enough budget for these things so this chest it does everyone's living it and God here who writes all the dialogue because I for people to really understand this it very much is The Truman Show like there's a fake chair the in the push there's a fake charity gala there's security team for the gala there's a gatoring team for the gala there's all these gifts there's all these people attending there's car service there's the assistant and there's performers or whatever

and in the hotel everybody's in on that you can't have people wandering in that aren't part of it no well that's what reduction team is really helpful but hey they have to be like secret production yeah oh yeah yeah yes it's and the other thing is like you're putting somebody through something quite potentially quite dark even if the end result is a positive one less so in the push it was all quite dark so you you've got to make sure that they're robust enough psychologically so there's a whole vetting procedure that has to happen with

those people as well but again they can't know that they're normally they're told they're not being used you know they apply to be part of the show then they're told sorry we're not going to use you and then by that point they've signed they find the thing that lets us use them and then months later it'll happen so you have to vet them so they have to go through of independent psychological procedures with the psychologist to make sure they're robust enough because if they're going to like witness a car crash for example you can't have

them having witnessed a traumatic car crash and they were younger that sort of thing so you've got a psychiatrist who knows or a psychologist who knows the the plot but it's you've got a they have to do that but also believe that everybody else is doing that because otherwise it would tip to them that they're being used for it you know it's there's totally out of things that you never even see in the show but just the level of work yeah it has to exist around it to make sure that it and all the people

that like you've got to have that person's wife or girlfriend or boyfriend whatever involved to make sure that they actually go to this event that we've stayed what if they change their mind at the last minute I feel another headache I'm gonna bail on ya why don't you go bring this I much yeah oh my it reminds me of a surprise birthday party I had in Germany in like 1998 and I wasn't gonna go out that night and I told my my friend Peggy who had set the whole thing up I said I didn't really

want to come out tonight what were you gonna do if I was like I got a headache and she's like yeah we thought about that cuz you know I'm mister I don't want to go out tonight like it back then I know it's far I don't wanna get on the bus it's cold she's like we had because all the way to Germany yeah yeah we're this elaborate plan of her coming over and being like she had a whole big idea she was gonna like she said the idea that was in her back pocket was she

was going to tell me that her friend and her wanted to like give me some sort of special birthday present if you will and I was like yeah that would have worked it was good but I would have been really disappointed if all I got was the surprise yeah and where's my sorry there was a present of that oh that was fake I'm going back home you often show that people are being primed to pick the giraffe or to draw something how much of it and then you say well look here's how we primed them

this display this billboard had a giraffe on it and this kids t-shirt had a giraffe on it and then when they were on the bus there was the word giraffe was written on the window is that the real explanation or is that like oh crap we did this trick and now we got to show the audience why this person did this it's it really varies I mean these this sort of suffice to do years ago I haven't done for a long time now but I in the same way that when Penn & Teller would reveal

a trick they it wasn't just a witless reveal or here's how he did it you'd show the method when the method was more interesting actually than the trick so what you go away with his was amazing they showed how it was done it was really clever and it was probably more clever than then how you how you have to do that right because the the overall effect that you want to communicate is the joy of watching how it's done so that was sort of the approach that I took as well with those things so they're

a mixture of kind of real or sort of tweaked I'd say certainly theatrically kind of tweaked because ultimately that's the bit that you know that's going to be the really fun part is seeing how it was how it was done and also you can anybody show the stuff that's sort of visual because it's like that's you're watching it on TV and some of the stuff is is some and you're trying to tell a story very neatly of how you did it doesn't always lend itself to those you know that kind of clear visual narrative so

there's yeah it's sort of a mix but I kind of figured I had a license to approach it with the same kind of sense of theater as there as the trick itself I think you have to you right because if the answer is oh well that's just a guy with my same build in a mask it's like oh but if it's like no this group of kids had the t-shirt and then there's the sign on the pub yes as they were driving they saw three billboards and they've been here all week driving back and forth

so it's been repeated in their brain or they think it's just like the principles are sound enough yeah they would theoretically have worked so that's a better explanation then well actually they picked a bunch of other things and this giraffe happen to be like the most convenient item for them to pick up at the time yeah it can be a mixture can be a mixture I think I think it's um that's part of the part of the fun of it for me particularly with that early stuff was kind of you know some of its real

some bit isn't and what was the my background is you know hypnosis suggestion all that stuff that's real in whatever real means but that's real that's not my people sort of playing along or instantly is what it is and then and then the magic side the conjuring side that you tricks decide where you're going for an effect and you know you're going for the an illusion so everything was sort of sitting somewhere in both of those worlds and I think I think that's sort of what made it fun yeah I like the idea of that

is it perception without a man without a way yeah is there something that we can do should we even think about this all right is there think something that we can do to counteract that because it seems a little dangerous if we're so easily influenced by these things should we strive to maybe pay attention to that because it not everybody's doing it on ghosts see now your life is really happy now you value your family more because of this fake zombie apocalypse there's gonna be plenty of other people that go now we're doing this horrible

thing as a country because we were all convinced that mmm it's the Jews or like now we're doing this horrible thing to this because it makes us all money forget it like it's scary to think that we're so easily influenced and we don't understand it yeah and we're not able to counteract it yeah are there is there kind of like a self-defense for this I think there's no obvious self-defense I think a lot of those things that happen sort of environmentally those kind of influences and things that are going on that we don't realize are

influencing us have their parallels within us psychologically you know we in Carl Jung said that the the greatest bird and the child has to bear is the unlived life of its parents right they're gonna have every welcome I've got a lot of insecurities get again a notebook yeah that's a starting point and then you you you know from an early age we developed these templates of what relationships should be what love is what are who we are in relation to this world you know we get essentially the message you're you're small and weak and the

world is big and strong and and and this is all the kind of priming isn't it it's the same thing that happens environmentally and then you you grow up and all of that feeds into well your relationships most obviously what you demand from your partner what you project onto them the things that you try and hide from yourself and they've those things always come back and bite you in some way the things you pick overcompensate for become addicted to know this is it's happening all the time within us and the best we can do is

try and be more conscious of those things that are essentially unconscious because there's only they only own you and they're unconscious and the moment you have some sort of conscious appreciation and they you know they lose some of that power and I think that's the best that we can do and we can only do that within ourselves and we can only work on ourselves and do the best you know we can so I think there's a parallel there I think it's just and you can never entirely that union path of individuation as he called it

you you know you you could never you never quite get to the end when you've become the self that you're really truly supposed to be outside of all these influences you it's only your journey and I think what's the best we can hope for in that parallel example of what's going on environmentally if we have all these influences around us and we have hypnosis that is not fake right it's it's realistic and we're creating compliance in people at what point do we decide that humans in our level of free will is maybe a lot more

limited than they like do you believe in free will it's a sort of more philosophical concept I think but I okay I I think in life what we a big part of growing up is realizing that things in life are ambivalent and they are ambiguous and they're complex and they're messy and they're active they're things like happiness we reduced some nouns and when we do that they certainly become neat things that we can put in the box and then not happiness is really it's a it's an active it's a messy verb thing and likewise we

love and hate things at the same time we things are right and wrong and hard as it is to accept left and right are both doing a valid and important thing the right-wing world is protecting the group and the left-wing world is protecting the individual and we do actually need both of those things in some form or another so life's complex and ambiguous and I think we're simple yes and knows and simple right and wrong has exist then that the point is those both of those things need to exist so my answers the free will

thing it's I think both I think I'm very happy to let both sit I think in some ways of course you can argue that everything is caused by the previous things that makes no sense to talk about free will but then the trouble with that is it's almost too easy you go okay right then it makes no sense to talk about free will so then it why bother doing anything or try to change anything about yourself or trying to gain any mastery over anything at least of all yourself so I think that it also makes

sense to talk about it as if it is real and I think they're just two models for understanding the same thing I don't think it I just don't think it quite makes any sense to go yes or no and then and then end it there just I think it's useful no I don't think it's a reflection of how we of how we live the dangerous of course of that approach you just end up agreeing with everything but I think I think it's reflects more than reality is there a way to use some of these some

of the mentalism for either personal growth or I think self defence was one of the uses in in the highest there was the guy gets caught shoplifting yes it was like this happened to me the wall around my house is not four foot high yeah guys like whatever yeah yeah that's a good example but this actually happened to me in real life I wasn't shoplifting but I was sure you were borrowing it just boring I was walking from one hotel to another quite late at night it was I was at a magic convention in Wales

I was wearing a three piece of velvet suit because why not that's why not and I I mean short of having punched me hard in the throat tattooed across my face I was yeah look clearly looking to be fought and so this guy is you know he's really drunk and he's clearly yeah looking for a fight and he is with his girlfriend and his all its Adrenaline's kind of you know up here and he starts shouting at me and says something like what are you looking at what's your problem or something so I my my

only toolkit is just the other person's experience it's really all mine can work with so I said to him because in that situation you can't respond with oh I'm not looking anything because then you're on the back foot and they've got power or yeah I'm looking at you what's your problem because I either way you're gonna get hit probably right you're sort of you're furthering that dynamic that they've set up where you can just not play that game right from the outset so I said the wall outside my house isn't four foot high this is

where this phrase came from as I said it on that time that occasion so it makes sense it's a statement makes no sense within that context so he now feels he's miss something so now he's on the back foot so his reaction to that is a bit of a pause as I what and I said all the worn-out supper house isn't isn't four foot high when I lived in Spain the walls there were quite high but here that tiny I mean they're nothing so so he then I think there's a martial arts technique which is

an adrenaline dump a similar thing I think where you before you strike you have somebody you make somebody relax you best century take them off guard so this is why happen to him all his adrenaline just kind of dumped he he went I was hoping to just basically confuse him right and then stick his feet to the floor or do something more overtly hypnotic because that confusion state renders is very suggestible but what actually happened was he just went oh [ __ ] and started crying his girlfriend walked off and he sat down by the

side of the road I sat down next to him and started asking about what had gone wrong that night I think his girlfriend had bottled somebody that'd been some fight and weirdly that I'm giving giving him advice yeah but it was it only happened because I had been talking about what to do in those sort of situations @qa things that I'd been doing after hypnosis shows and I'd sort of said the only reason why it was in my head and ready to go to play it like that was because I'd sort of spoken about it

theoretically but so the idea is have I mean it can be a song lyric it can be it's just not playing that game that the other person is setting up and making them feel that they've missed something and then the dynamics completely changed immediately if they're running you with a knife all right there's not much room for this kind of thing but you know it's like if you're on a train and you want to keep the seat next to you free don't put your bag there because that's what everybody else does so they know what

you're doing and they're going to get annoyed pat the seat nod and smile at people as they walk but no one's no one's gonna want to sit here just yeah I'm ready have a seat so yeah so that that was that ended up being my sort of self defense technique was have a song lyric or something or I was talking about friend of mine about this thing and he M he was an artist and used to walk home from his studio late at night through a rough bit of London and there were always these kind

of like gangs on one side of the road so he'd always cross over away from them and then of course they'd always see that and it's always this horrible uncomfortable intimidating thing so we spoke about it and then the next night he crossed over the road to them and said good evening as he walked past them but of course they left him alone because he just seemed like a strange yeah he's crazy it's just weird yeah good evening so yeah wants to see a magic trick no thanks man get away with mice yeah what are

your parents think about your career choice like I'm imagining they're watching your show and they're like the audience is winged and eyeing and they're like oh you think that's a surprise our son the religious Christian boy pence he's a he's yeah is he's a gay atheist now do you want a surprise and that was this approach theist okay I'm claiming gay theists now a trademark that they seem are they seem proud and happy my neither parent went to university or anything like that so I think when I came home and went I'm not going to

be a actually had this conversation I'm not going to be an international lawyer so I was doing more in German I'm gonna be a magician my mum said oh great that sounds ugly I thought she was so okay with it that I thought okay maybe I need to rethink that maybe that's a bit of a rash decision my part but it all worked and that's where the persuasion comes from right like oh yeah that's a good idea would you tell him when you said he was gonna become a magician I told him it's a great

idea he's never gonna do it now yeah yeah yeah but as it turned out I did but um yeah that's that was there was at a very relaxed approach I wrote them a letter in my first year at university because I was with all these law students that were feeling terrible they weren't going to pass their exams not for themselves at what their parents might think and I'd never experienced that so I wrote them a letter saying thank you so much I realize that you just let me do what made me happy which I just

presumed everybody did and I see now that isn't that isn't the case so you think he'll have kids at some point is that in the cards for you oh I don't know we've been talking about that so I'm 47s a certain I've gotten far myself very caught between that you know how Nietzsche spoke about become who you are so there's that what I think I was a vertical sense of like this is my life and I need to be doing that and everything else needs to clear out the way and it's all quite selfish but

there's that urge which doesn't sit well with taking on other responsibilities like I've got two dogs and that's kind of enough of a of an affront to that urge and then the other edge which is the sort of leveling vertical urge of or maybe that sense of self becoming who you are is already in the relationships that you have and these things that maybe that's who I am and you know so I'm I I'm of an age where I'm I think is partly what middle age is about it when you kind of get a bit

caught between that your ego your ego has to step down that's the again young in terms you've slain the dragon in the first half of your life and now you have to rescue the princess you have to second half of life I think is about serving something else finding the thing that's bigger than you and finding meaning in that I think it's too quiet which kids naturally will sort of do I just haven't quite made my peace fully with that idea some I at the moment no but it's a you know it's a it's a

discussion but I'm still as so many things that I just do and demand my time yeah I don't know and you've got all this whiskey out yeah I've got a lot of whiskey to drink as well which isn't not necessarily now although kid somewhere here by the wayside you don't drink that much otherwise they would all be all be that gone just before I pass myself off as an alcohol right yeah yeah you might have to that would be a difference there's a whole lot of whiskey in here people can't see it but well maybe

we'll do some b-roll surprise yeah well thank you for using your platform as well to help people because a lot of TV is I mean to say the least it doesn't help humanity and you see things like apocalypse the push sacrifice where these people's lives are changed yeah well that's those those are the there'll be the things that I'm you know a man will be proud of is you know television is a fairly fatuous occupation but if you occasionally you know when something happens in the real world that's helped that person that is genuine is

a is a nice thing I don't do these shows so often that people are just being churned out on some kind of conveyor belt of some sort of makeover practice I only do like one of these things a year so it's and the all these people have become friends you know I've stayed in touch with them and and part of me wants to make sure that the the work of the show continues right that they do actually isn't just a show that they didn't they felt great for a bit and then they went back to

where they were so that's that's important to me as well so yeah thank you what what are you designing now a Broadway show you said was a show that you've done before are you are you constantly designing new things or thinking of new illusions or new tricks that you can put in somewhere so I am okay so where am I now so I'm I'm hoping for a Broadway show in the spring so I'm just waiting to hear on a theater for that so it could suddenly happen like might be out there in like April or

or not it might be later in the year or not at all I'm starting a new book or getting my head around a new book so I'll write this book on happiness right the clarity it'll be linked to the shown earth thank you that that's available in America now which is quite a new thing and it's a lot of it's about stoicism and an approach to happiness is very different from the sort of normal self-help book approach so I'm starting to get my head around a second book around those sort of questions if you know

what it is to flourish and and be human really and and then I'm I guess there'll be another TV thing that at the moment there are three shows on Netflix there's the push which is the guy getting pushed off the building story miracle which is the stage show right of the faith healing and sacrifices that is the new one and so we working on a fourth that these are all projects for this year and then maybe even looking at sort of Europe there's some other sort of countries that seem to they've had my TV shows

for a while I've never gone over there and performed that'll be fun so yeah there's lots of fun things to explore Broadway is the I enjoyed myself so much now that before they'll do that hasn't happened yet it seems so I brought us some Broadway shows that are nowhere near is interesting is watching something that you would do live oh but I've also been really surprised at how long it's taken us to go hey this Darren brown guy kind of knows what he's doing because I used to find these things on YouTube ten years ago

or whatever maybe not even YouTube maybe some other video say ten years ago and I was like this is amazing how is this not more popular and I'm sharing these things and then I'd say have you heard of you've heard of Darren brown right and people go oh I don't know and I'm like the guy in the Netflix and then of course now I show people and they're like whoa this is incredible I'm thinking like how long is it gonna take for people to get it like what is work what is going on here currently

also we sort of held the show's back a bit from the stage so they sold them and - around Europe but we held back from the states because it meant that we could kind of do that properly at some point and in a more kind of yeah just in a more kind of concerted effort and make it all happen part of a plan at some point I have no I never have any ambition or anything with these things at all so I'll leave that to the grown-ups that sort of you know plan my career like

that I just I just like to do what what's enjoyable and all feels worthwhile at the time but but that's why doesn't it we actually held it back in the last few years we've sort of gone right but some studying some stuff so that's why it's slowly now that's exciting that's exciting I mean you cuz you're out essentially a household name in the UK yeah yeah well I don't know but yes so certainly no one knows me in the in the States yeah we Jeff and now a lot of other people as well so hi

yes thank you very much lovely to meet you likewise thank you so much for having me on thank you thanks Jen you