Have you heard of Derren Brown? He is an English Psychological Illusionist and skeptic of Paranormal Phenomenon. He has had a TV show on Channel 4 (British Public Service Television) since 2000. On July 26, 2007, the US based Sci Fi Channel began showing six one hour episodes of a series titled Mind Control with Derren Brown.
I had heard of him before from a discussion regarding NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) on an international Aikido list I belong to.
An important assumption of NLP is that emotion, thought and behavior consists of, and is influenced by, how the sensory-specific modalities (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory) are organized and give rise to consciousness.[1] Further, the mode and limits to the underlying mental representations is revealed by unconscious choice of words, sensory-specific predicates (eg. visual language) and non-verbal cues (such as intonation; gesture; posture; facial expression and eye movements).
In the course of this discussion, Derren Brown came up, along with a link to YouTube video of his called Derren Brown NLP. Here is that video:
This video just blew me away. I started looking into NLP (although not as much as I want to, it is on my “to-do” list). But especially, I started looking for more Derren Brown information and videos. My first place to look was the wikipedia entry for Derren Brown. And of course, I also looked on YouTube and found a very large number of clips from his TV show and specials.
Go browse those YouTube videos. I guarantee you will be astonished and amazed. And what is particularly interesting is that he frequently goes back and re-shows the clip, explaining what he did. And sometimes you wonder how you could have missed it and every time, you wonder how he did it.
A couple of nights ago, the SciFi channel broadcast of Mind Control was on and my husband got to see it. There was a chess challenge between him and 9 extremely good chess players (champions to Grand Masters). His challenge was to win against the group challenge, playing each player individually. And he did. And then he explained it and it was an amazing “outside the 9 dots” solution which made perfect sense (although I’d challenge anyone else to be able to do it). Of course, he didn’t explain the number he had written beforehand. But I’m sure it would be logical. Here is the YouTube video of this.
Here is a list of great books on NLP on Amazon that also reference Derren Brown. I have several saved off in a wish list that someday I hope to read.
(I’m going through a transition now from buying books to getting books from the library and it is taking a little adjustment. It is so easy to find and save books in Amazon (or any online seller) and then just order them. But I retired and am more careful with my money now!)
Anyway, at least take a look at the YouTube videos. It will amaze, amuse and astound you.
~Susan Mellott
All Things Web 2.0 
September 15, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I was amazed too. Almost too amazing don’t you think. I have been looking into this a bit and it does seem far more believable that he just switched the card to say “leather jacket” – all the stuff about B-M-X may be the real misdirection. An old trick dressed up in new clothes.
He does a lot of other “mental” stuff though which I’d love to understand.
September 17, 2007 at 10:20 am
That is a very good point. I think you very well may be right since that really is almost too amazing. And he has repeatedly said that anyone is foolish to believe what he says is the truth. But regardless of how he did it, he sure did it well. I’m certainly impressed.
And what a mind he must have to come up with these things and pull them off. There are a few magicians/mentalists that blow me away and he is one of them.