hey guys,

just wondering if anyone here is familiar with the entertainer Derren Brown? i have been recently watching some of his shows on youtube, he may be on TV where you are and he has a couple of books. he refers to himself as a magician, psychological illusionist, mentalist, painter and skeptic regarding paranormal phenomena. in his shows he claims to use a number of psychological techniques (such as subliminal influence, reading body language and suggestion) to imitate psychic phenomena, and while this is quite entertaining and illuminating, the blur between genuine psychological techniques and illusion and misdirection makes me wonder if it's all part of the act too.

i wont say much more just now, i'll put up a few links to videos that might be of particular interest, if anyone would like to share their thoughts i'd love to hear:

Derren 'punches' a Kung Fu student with nothing but the power of his mind http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=d...own&hl=en&emb=0

Derren Brown shows how mediums work
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=G18NfN76bAs

Derren Brown shows how psychics fool their audiences using a technique called cold reading
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=btP_vy5cQq4

Derren Brown challenges the beliefs of a New Age believer with the use of a Voodoo Doll http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=lW2yKlNFFuU

Derren uses a suggestible film-student to make himself seemingly invisible
http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=d...&emb=0&start=20

Derren Brown uses NLP to influence someones selection of a gift
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=befugtgikMg

and this is a longer one (23mins) but really fascinating, he teaches an 'average man' to speed-read a library of encyclopedic information and then asks him any questions and puts him in a quiz competition. the man says he doesn't know where the answers come from, but he just sees images in his mind and he can get all the answers http://video.google.com.au/videosearch?q=d...=en&emb=0&dur=3

there's many more too, but i'm sure that's plenty for now. any comments welcome!

cheers,
CosmicInferno

(editing to fix links)

This post has been edited by CosmicInferno: Aug 9 2008, 08:56 PM