Derren Brown's Blog, page 34

The Power of Words

This is not new, but it's a very effective advert that we somehow missed. Lovely, even if it did make someone just cry.

by Purple Content

Neurons could go to sleep even when you're awake

WIRED: When deprived of sleep, parts of the human brain may doze off, secretly snatching moments of slumber even as people seem to be awake.

That could explain why our sleep-deprived selves are so cognitively challenged: We are, if not precisely half-asleep, partially asleep.

"After a long period in an awake state, cortical neurons can go briefly 'offline,'" wrote researchers led by University of Wisconsin neuroscientists Vladyslav Vyazovskiy and Giulio Tononi in a study published April 27 in Nature. "Although both EEG and behavior indicate wakefulness, local populations of neurons in the cortex may be falling asleep, with negative consequences for performance."

To study rats' neurology, Tononi's team wired their brains to an EEG machine, kept them awake longer than usual, and looked for patterns in readouts of their brains' electrical activity.

They found that scattered neurons throughout the rats' brains gradually alternated between periods of activity and inactivity — a pattern associated with deep sleep, not wakefulness. But unlike their synchronization during sleep, these oscillations were brief and disjointed.

Full Story at WIRED

Derren Brown: Miracles for Sale – Tonight 9pm

With the cameras in hot pursuit, Derren faces his toughest project yet, going in search of an unsuspecting member of the British public prepared to adopt the guise of a pastor and miracle worker.

His chosen one then has six months to learn the trade and flourish across the pond as a convincing pastor.

The final phase of the volunteer's extraordinary challenge sees them attempt to perform faith healing miracles live in Texas, but will Derren's new recruit be accepted as a faith healer or cast away as fake healer?

The show will air tonight at 9pm on Ch4, 10pm on Ch4+1 and will be available on 4oD here.

Feel free to leave comments below.

Week in oxford

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I've just come to the end of a wonderful week working on changes to the show. This is something which we always do with the tours: the joy is to keep improving and changing and getting it as good as possible. Andrew O'Connor, one of the producers of the tour came over from LA to work on it with me, and Polly and Stephen came up too. We've spent each day rehearsing and talking and trying out new things each night. Some of the changes are quite small, others are large: it's been like being back in previews in Brighton. The last couple of nights we've made big shifts with the very end, which has been hugely exciting. The changes seem to have worked: the audience reactions do appear to be getting better and better. We've been doing notes after the shows until 2 or 3am, then up again for breakfast work, all-day rehearsals and then of course the shows in the evening. All that work has ended today and tomorrow we're off to Sunderland for some relative peace and rest. Sadly this work has not left me any time to explore Oxford: such a beautiful city and somewhere I would happily come to live. But the audiences have been bright and gorgeous and the theatre an absolute dream. After the show, a lovely chat with Nicholas Hoult and his lady Jenny, who had graced the auditorium along with Doug Hodge and his wife Tessa Peake-Jones: my first celeb visits of the tour. I wasn't entirely happy with the show as a stupid technical problem with the new ending upset the rhythm of things at a vital moment… but hey, whaddyagonnado.

Before Oxford we all had a great week in Norwich. The highlight was most likely us all heading to Adam Buxton's farmhouse for lunch with him and his wife Sarah: you'll be delighted to know that the afternoon began with Sarah's exquisite food and finished with Adam showing us silly movies on YouTube. They are a glorious, generous, bright and brilliant couple.

You may also be interested to know that my friend Patrick Hughes has a new book for sale, entitled Paradoxymoron. I can't seem to make links work in this iPad version of WordPress, so copy http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paradoxymoron... into Amazon to have a peek if you like. It was at the launch for this book that Alexei Sayle came over to speak to me. I've always been a fan of the great man, who was wearing a black suit and shirt: I plucked a white hair from the front of said shirt as we spoke to find that it was joined to his chest. Great one, Derren.

Enough ramblings. My Highland Park has run dry and I must get to bed. We've been staying at the Old Bank Hotel in Oxford and I have to say I don't think I've ever experienced such astonishingly brilliant staff. It's a terrific hotel, and we're all hugely grateful to the entire team for making this stay such a pleasure. Thank you.

Right, nighty-night. Can't wait for the new changes to bed in and feel second-nature. And I hope you like them too. Sleep well. I have just a few hours to try to do the same.

X

PS the picture of me was taken in Cromer by Dennis Grasse, a member of our team who is a great photographer. If you ever find yourself in the greenroom of the National Theatre, those are his on the wall.

Oil'd by Chris Harmon

This rather wonderfully creative little animation was created by Chris Harmon who "spent all of my free time in the last month putting this together to help illustrate just how dependent we truly are on oil".

With the 1 year anniversary upon us there's focus once again on this terrible incident, but when it's looked at from this angle, it becomes a strong message for lowering our dependency.

"Orion" – motion controlled night timelapse

 

Via Dynamicperception.com

Amazing 3D scanner for iPhone

The Hubble is 21 years old

WIRED: To commemorate the upcoming 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's first day in space, NASA astronomers released this beautiful image of two interacting galaxies in the shape of a rose.

Together, the pair of dancing galaxies are called Arp 273. They lie in the constellation Andromeda, about 300 million light-years from Earth. Though connected by a thin bridge of stars, they're tens of thousands of light-years from each other.

The larger galaxy, called UGC 1810, is about five times as massive as its smaller companion, UGC 1813. Astronomers think the smaller galaxy plunged straight through the larger: UGC 1810's inner set of spiral arms is highly warped, a telltale sign of distortion by UGC 1813's gravitational pull. Meanwhile, UGC 1813 shows an intense burst of star formation in its nucleus, possibly triggered by swan-diving through its neighbor.

WIRED

Derren Brown Interview – Radio Times

Radio Times

23 April 2011

Interviewing a man who mystifies and manipulates for a living, you are, naturally, primed for a challenge, prepared for the tricks and techniques of evasion and suggestion that have made Derren Brown a household name. From his first TV outings over a decade ago, in which he demonstrated his skills for slight-of-hand magic and psychological manipulation, to more elaborate productions such as those in which he played Russian roulette live on TV and predicated winning lottery numbers, Brown has entertainingly demonstrated how people can be read and influenced, persuaded to believe in ghosts and conditioned to do anything from choosing a desired card to committing armed robbery. So I'm ready for any sneaky strategy.

"I waffle massively, by the way, and I apologise", he says politely, pouring peppermint tea. Oh, he's good. But he's going to have to do better than that sweetness-and-light act to get around me.

The nice guy stuff, however, turns out to be no act. Brown totally confounds expectation. There isn't a sign of the uber-assertive performer who commands thousand-strong audiences at his live shows and bends individuals to his will on TV.

"I'm that guy while I'm performing, and I wouldn't necessarily want to know him," Brown says. "It's a controlling thing on stage – you're directing the action, getting people to play their role. In real life, I take being kind and nice seriously, so the last thing I'd ever want to be is that weird, controlling, manipulative character."

So he doesn't employ his techniques to win arguments, to get his own way and generally make people do what he wants?



"I'm probably more persuasive that the next person if I want to be, but do I want to be? In my head, I just don't go there. If you're a comedian, it's a bit of a choice whether or not you want to be funny when you're not performing because it might feel disingenuous. In the same way, I don't show people magic tricks in social situations any more. At my age, it's a childish route to impressing people and to need to do that is a sad thing."

This sweet diffidence may be strategic – the ultimate misdirection from the master manipulator – but Brown appears sincere. He describes his younger self as something of a loner and precocious child who was part of the not-very-cool crowd. "My dad was a swimming teacher at the school I went to. I wasn't sporty and that was a bit tricky, I suppose." That he describes his stage persona as weird is intriguing.

What inspired him to become a performer?

"I had a natural aptitude for wanting to be the centre of attention and a definite skill for annoying people. In my first year at university [he studied law and German at Bristol], I saw a hypnotist perform and decided I wanted to do that. I was never at ease in conversations until I was doing magic tricks and if you don't feel impressive in yourself, you can do these things that make people say you're amazing. Performing took care of that obnoxious social urge, that neediness, and put it into a valid outlet."

His latest manifestation is Channel 4′s Derren Brown: Miracles for Sale. In it, he trains a member of the public to become a faith healer before travelling with them to Texas in order to debunk what he calls a "disturbing, exploitative, disgusting scam". By coaching an amateur in the techniques of suggestion and manipulation employed by those who claim to heal everything from arthritis to Aids – frequently contingent on a hefty donation – brown exposes their venality.

As fascinating as Miracles for Sale is – and it is, as grim testaments to greed usually are – the programme is as interesting for what is says about Brown. It's a world away from sleight of hand and grand stunts, a foray into Louis Theroux territory. "Over the years, I've entirely grown out of the urge that got me into magic. I've pulled it into areas that I think are more grown-up and worthwhile, into areas that aren't about me going "Ta-dah! Aren't I amazing!"

Has he ever thought about giving up doing magic? "I think I would happily do the stage show and paint [a talented artist and illustrator, Brown used to submit his work to magazines - Radio Times included - before his career in magic took off]. The stage shows are a delight – I like touring and putting on a good show with my friends – but I don't enjoy the process of making TV. I never got stressed until I started making television."

Brown's interest in faith healing is made more interesting still by the fact that he was once an evangelical Christian – although he emphasises that debunking faith healing is about exposing scams rather than attacking religion. Inspired to attend Sunday school by a favourite teacher, it wasn't until his teens that he realised that not everyone was a Christian.

"As soon as I got into hypnosis in my first year at university, my Christian friends' hackles went up and they talked about how I was ushering in the devil. I felt that if that was the insight and questioning going on, I didn't want to be a part of it. I read theology books and tried to undo all the pat answers I had for things, expecting to rebuild [my faith], but the rebuilding never happened. The first time I said to someone that I didn't believe in God, I felt a guilty rush but apart from that, it was liberating."

Given that he's gay, something that's still viewed with extreme intolerance by some evangelical Christians, Brown's faith is itself even more intriguing. "It was convenient way of getting around not quite embracing the whole gay thing," he concedes. Extraordinarily, he even got involved in the fringe evangelical Living Waters movement, which tries to turn gay people straight. "More interesting than 'Read your Bible and all your problems will go away', it had a bit of depth and psychology to it, but it was just based on a false premise."

This wasn't the only way that Brown sought to avoid being gay. "I wasn't denying it in myself by I had built up quite an austere, eccentric persona – I used to wear a cape, have long hair, that sort of thing. That's an easy thing to do if you're not relaxed about the whole sex thing. But when I got to my early 30s I realised that it wasn't going to go away and I didn't want to be that weird old man in the corner of the restaurant with the fedora, the big rings and cravat."

Now, at 40, Brown is blissfully happy in a relationship. His eyes light up when he talks of his partner.

"I spent a lot of time thinking about me and working on what I wanted to be before I came into a relationship. In some ways, it's bad because you come into relationship quite late without a lot of experience and you have a lot to learn. But that can also be exciting. Certainly, it's lovely to have somebody love you and it's lovely to love someone else."

No longer projecting an austere persona, feeding a neediness through performing, or avoiding himself via a variety of means, Brown is great company and entirely at ease with the world. After much cajoling, he reluctantly concedes he may be "a joyful sceptic".

"I'm definitely not a cynic," he smiles. "Atheism gets seen as joyless and aggressive, as if not believing in fairies somehow makes you a misery. There's a Douglas Adams quote: 'Isn't it enough to see that the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?' If you start talking sceptically and say that you don't believe in ghosts or God, people go, 'So you think we just live and die and that's it?', but I have a problem with that word 'just'. How does 'just' come into that? There is so much that is so extraordinary about life."

Pick A Card…

Brown's Master Magicians:



Chan Canasta: "A Polish psycho-magician in the 1950s and 1960s, he was a real inspiration."

David Berglas: "He had an illustrious, industrious career from the late 1940s on, and last had a series on Channel 4 in the 1980s."

Teller: "Though I admire Penn and teller as a duo, Teller and I share a lot of thoughts about magic. I've learnt a lot from him – some of the things he does are heartbreakingly beautiful."

How to Catch a Liar: The Cognitive Clues to Deceit

Huffington Post:  The long-running TV show "NCIS," a drama focused on the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the hero is Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a former Marine and disciplined detective with an uncanny ability to observe and interrogate criminal suspects. He doesn't say much or display much emotion in the interrogation room — indeed, his cool demeanor is his trademark — yet he is a keen lie-spotter.

Psychological scientists are fascinated by real-life versions of the fictional Gibbs. Detecting lies and liars is essential to effective policing and prosecution of criminals, but it's maddeningly difficult. Most of us can spot barely more than half of all lies and truths through listening and observation — meaning, of course, that we're wrong almost as often as we're right. A half-century of research has done little to polish this unimpressive track record.

But scientists are still working to improve on that, and among them is cognitive psychologist Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth, in the U.K. Vrij has been using a key insight from his field to improve interrogation methods: The human mind, despite its impressive abilities, has limited capacity for how much thinking it can handle at any one time. So demanding additional, simultaneous thought — adding to cognitive "load" — compromises normal information processing. What's more, lying is more cognitively demanding than telling the truth, so these compromised abilities should show up in detectable behavioral clues.

Full story at Huffington Post