My Life as a Mentalist
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Mentalism is an ensemble of techniques (including mnemotechnic, hypnosis, magic tricks, a knowledge of statistically likely phenomenons and, indeed, a trained intuition) used to produce incredible phenomenons (usually psychic phenomenons or an impressive mastery of the human mind) in an entertainment setting.
One point that is worth stressing is that it is neither all real (magic tricks are great to make things look better / add some punch and anyone telling you they don't use them is either lying or very ignorant) nor all fake (anyone telling you otherwise is, similarly, likely ignorant or a magician who did some telepathy-themed tricks and think that it is all there is to it, the human mind is an amazing toy).
If you want to be entertained by a world class mentalist, I highly recommend watching some Derren Brown shorts on YouTube (as someone else suggested).
Derren Brown shows have the benefit where he can try his tricks on 100 people and just show you the successes.
The audience doesn’t know the plot of the trick, so the actual reveal can be different depending on how things go.
https://youtu.be/QI5-NDiY7IM?t=66
[0] I think Derren half-forces a red diamond picture card, by the way he asks Fry to BURN the card into his mind, but not 3 of hearts, i.e. not a number or heart. He probably can force the choice of a King of Diamonds a lot of the time. A lot of his skill lies in increasing probabilities any way he knows how, until the apparently impossible occurs.
The next ones will be in English (and Latex if my English editors agree with it...) and might get out within two years, keep you eyes open for a Nestor.
Should I start with your "how to be a mentalist" book?
https://www.amazon.com/Trance-Formations-Neuro-Linguistic-Pr...
Hypnosis for pure mentalism is different (when you are not explicitely telling people that you are using hypnosis). This is where you might want to complement your mastery of the basics with some NLP books such as the one given by an other commenter (or Steven Heller's "Monsters and Magical Sticks"). Note that a lot of NLP is not evidence based but you are fine if you keep with the founder's work on hypnosis.
(fun fact, I got started in hypnosis with some hypnotherapy books)
I know about and practiced some NLP and hypnosis, but mostly to get over some personal problems. (Bandler himself cured me of depression.) Once that was done, I kinda lost interest. But there's a nagging doubt, shouldn't I be trying to help people with this? Or at least try to spread the word?
It seems to me that the self-referential use and development of the mind is more of an Information Revolution than the transistor/logic based technological revolution, eh?
That's a good question.
I love the entertainment aspect of mentalism, I do it because it is entertaining and intriguing. As I believe that therapy has no place into an entertainment context, I do not mix it with mentalism. Some people disagree and will mix and match but I believe that the risk for harming the person by triggering something bad is too high in this context (therapy should not be done in public for entertainment, when you have time constraints and should focus on the audience's experience, I believe it should be done at the subject's rhythm and in a safe space).
However, I have taken the time to study both counseling and the therapeutic aspect of hypnosis, I have used them privately as one-off quick fix to small things and I often think that, in another life, I might have pursued this path further.
So I guess that the answer is: because I am primarily an entertainer, not a therapist.
It's interesting to hear that NLP isn't evidence based. That's a blast from the past. I had a friend in college who was very into NLP, and I could never tell if it was realistic or not. It sounded BS-y, but also plausible as anything else with with hypnosis. We played around with whatever source he had dug up, but I could easily believe our lack of results was because of the source or our (at the time) very distracted lives. I can see how some of the same techniques for hypnosis may work without being obvious to the subject.
Did you ever do any hypnotherapy or was that just the source of knowledge you had?
He us not as famous as Derren Brown but he reveals lots of party tricks. And stage tricks are often just simple tricks with more presentation effort.
You got me curious, what does a consulting mentalist do? Also, what is your book? Unless you want to keep yourself anonymous here on HN..
At a guess, they consult to stage performers rather than performing on stage themselves.
Recently he's shifted towards an honesty that I really appreciate, about where he's coming from and his own abilities. It feels so much more genuine, which makes it connect so well.
If anything he's a strong skeptic against it.
I've been to see him live (in Bristol, UK). He did the 'usual' (for him) amazing mentalist stuff, then did a physical turn. He got some audience members to break some glass bottles on the stage, hyperventilated in a bag (to slow his pulse), then lay with his cheek on the shards and got someone to press his head down with their foot. Afterwards he stood and plucked bits of glass from his (not bleeding) face.
He followed it up with a brief explanation of how he'd done one if his routines that night using suggestion, including photos of billboards/posters outside that guided attendees down certain thought paths before the show started. It was a revelation.
Incidentally he also published "Tricks of the Mind" which has a fair amount of detail about how he does some of it.
This is all for show. That's not how any of these tricks are done. Brown is famous for giving fake explanations for his effects.
It is basically never a compliment (whereas "mental" occasionally has a positive/fun connotation now).
It makes reading about Americans talking about "mentalists", including some of the comments on this page, very funny indeed.
I'm not as sure about the violence aspect of it, but certainly the rest rings true. Imagine the scene, you're driving in London and someone pulls out in front of you and does a series of weird manoeuvres, holding up the whole street for what feels like several hours. An appropriate exclamation could be "What the f*ck are you doing you utter mentalist?"
But yeah, it is now in common usage. A bit like their/they're/there and "should of", it hurts my pedantic sensibilities, but in the end, people will speak how they want to speak and if enough of them agree, the language just changes.
"You ran 15km before breakfast? You bloody mentalist" "You carried on drinking even after I left? Mentalist"
and so on.
Well some of this I include under high-risk social behaviour I suppose.
But it's a good observation. I can't think of a time recently I've heard it used positively.
I learned the trick from a Derren Brown book in which he describes a much more elaborate version. You would be amazed how well it worked. It's just one of those things: A number between 1 and 5? 3. 1 and 10? 7. 1 and 20? 17. And the famous "red hammer" trick. Humans are lousy PRGs.
Of course I could hide several cards in several pockets to increase my chances but that would be "cheating".
All "magic" is cheating.
Why not increase your chances and increase the odds of your audience enjoying themselves?
As long as you don't claim to have real magic powers and make it clear that it's "just a trick", I don't see a problem with this.
In fact the article doesn’t say anything at all.
Pen and teller use every opportunity to pan mentalists and the mentalism-explained videos on YouTube I’ve seen all boils down to sleight of hand.
If you read the comments first, don’t bother with the article.
Mentalism on the other hand is the exact opposite. The only point is to impress you with pseudoscience, as far as I can tell.
Here's an hour long presentation that James Randi gave at McGill University:
James Randi - Investigating Pseudoscientific and Paranormal Claims https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRqlvqHBVCg
This is 100% a marketing piece. It is a standard part of modern Mentalism to pretend to explain how it works by psychology, powers of suggestion, and deep study of human nature. This is misdirection. Mentalism is an illusion, like any other magic show.
Source: Like the author I also have a stack of books on Mentalism.
But you are absolutely right, this article is about misrepresenting mentalism and promoting the author.
What "real" books on the subject do you recommend?
There's another psychological trick here: we are effectively being told we must believe something happened and wasn't trickery because he tells us so. So his wife "wasn't a confederate of the mentalist". Ok, right. Where's the proof this even happened at all? Because some guy calling himself a mentalist says so in an internet article?
"So, yes, what I do is real" means that his act really is mental (intuition, suggestibility, etc), as opposed to non-mental (confederates, well-placed mirrors, trick pens, etc). He wasn't claiming to have psychic powers.
> Where's the proof this even happened at all?
Guessing names is a very common stage trick; here's Derren Brown getting the name of someone's pet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1IV_kkh1Xs
He's not?
> I perfected another where I asked a person to think of a loved one, and then I guessed their loved one’s name
I don't see how you do this one sans psychic powers unless you're at least somewhat familiar with the person and their loved ones. Guessing common names would work every once in a while, but nowhere close to the majority of the time.
Now perhaps if you research the person ahead of time, maybe frame your question in a way that they're more likely to think of a particular type of person (e.g. mention age or old times so that they're more likely to think of grandparents as opposed to younger relatives), I could see that working, but that's not what he said. "Hey stranger, think of a loved one" -> "I know their name" is impossible without telepathy.
Similarly:
> Having someone merely think of a drawing, then taking a pad and duplicating their vision perfectly?
No, you can't do this without psychic powers unless you're adding a lot more context around the type of drawing before they do it. "Hey stranger, do a drawing of something, anything" isn't gonna work. Even if you assume there's a handful of common objects that people are likely to draw -- a house, a car, a dog, a flower -- you're still gonna be wrong more often than right.
It's supposed to look like it can't be done without telepathy - that's the whole point of the trick! And yet, it is done, successfully, on stages large and small, by people who are definitely not telepaths.
Having it done in a stage environment controlled by the performer in question obviously offers the ability to do research on audience members beforehand, or even have plants in the audience.
Anyway, think this through. Derren Brown claims not to use stooges, and has been doing tricks like these on stage (per his wiki page) for 19 tours each averaging 50-100 nights. If he's using stooges, he's going through an awful lot of them, isn't he? Including his TV work, there must be thousands of people in the UK that could go on TV and blow the lid on the whole thing. I ask you, which is the more impressive feat of mentalism: keeping all of those people quiet, or guessing that an audience member drew a picture of a cat?
> I perfected another where I asked a person to think of a loved one, and then I guessed their loved one’s name
I've watched magic acts and been awed by them. I'm not a heckler.
I'm just saying, 100% magic acts are misdirection, trickery, confederates, and dexterity. It's "psychology" in the sense they know how to misdirect. The same with mentalism. This doesn't detract from it; if it's fun entertainment, and the mentalist doesn't claim to have actual extraordinary powers of perception (or supernatural powers), then everything is fair and ok to me!
But unnatural "perception" powers, mental powers, etc? Nope. Mentalism is a trick, not some exercise of wondrous mental powers. The latter claim wouldn't pass an Amazing Randi challenge.
Randi's challenge was for people making claims of genuine supernatural powers, i.e. the mentally ill. I don't see how it's relevant here.
> 100% magic acts are misdirection, trickery, confederates, and dexterity.
I assure you that cold reading has been done for hundreds of years (without foreknowledge, which would be called "hot reading"), and can only suggest reading up on it. Wikipedia has a good overview.
This is just trickery and misdirection. You seem to be under the impression that I don't appreciate it, but I do! I love a good spectacle. I just take issue with it being called some display of specially trained mental powers when it is not: it's just trickery, misdirection, confederates and sleight of hand.
PS: I recommend you read user fooblat's comment. They claim to also own a bunch of books on mentalism, and it's 100% deception and trickery, of the same kind of magic tricks. The claims of "heightened powers of observation", etc, etc, are all misdirection to make the act more appealing.
Take for example the trick where a volunteer is asked to draw a simple picture on a pad of paper, and the performer then names it (or draws a similar picture). This can be done with a gimmick (e.g. a carbon transfer paper in the clipboard you ask them to write it down on) or without (just go up and guess). What you're saying, by "it's 100% deception and trickery," is not that the latter is impossible, just that no one does it.
I think they do. For one, I went to some open mic nights in college, there were definitely some people who believed every blonde woman will draw a cat and choose the Queen of Hearts, and who sweat a lot when they don't. Second, I've seen routines where (I believe) the performer did a prediction, missed it, and then pivoted in to what looked like a fallback trick. It seems safe to presume that, when the performer gets the guess right, the trick ends differently.
(And if you were in the audience on those nights, you'd say, "That feat can't be done reliably, it must be a gimmick!" To which I'd reply as I did originally, "...or it can be done unreliably.")
Of course, a lot of mentalist tricks are indeed gimmicked. If you want an example of one that I think isn't, search youtube for any of the routines where Derren Brown cold reads strangers wearing clown makeup. I'm sure those could be gimmicked, but why would they? It would be a lot harder than just doing genuine cold reading. (You do agree that exists, right? If not, what's your theory to explain the wikipedia article? More confederates?)
Not sure what the claim about guessing means. Guessing is a probability game. You can guess some of the time through blind luck, but unless you don't stack your chances in some way or the other, it will make your show less amazing.
As for unreliability: indeed, that's my point. Wikipedia on Cold Reading states most performers have several "outs" for less reliable acts; they simply can react to or discard what misfires, and play with probabilities so that there will be some hits among the many misses. That's probabilities and misdirection, precisely my point!
Note I don't claim to know how tricks are performed. I'm incapable of explaining most magic tricks (though a magician performer who's a friend of mine explained some basic tricks to me; I think he broke some kind of magician code and now the secret cabal is out to get him).
How do you explain user floobat's assertion that in his stack of mentalism books everything is about trickery and misdirection?
(If you feel urged to reply "why should we trust what someone on the internet claims?" my reply would be... "indeed")
Edit: I re-read your examples, and in every single one you describe tricks and misdirection (like when you describe how a performer will "pivot" when an act fails, and none will be the wiser). That's actually... a magic trick. That's not some major feat of psychology or detecting subtle body signals, that's simply a trick and very good showmanship to be able to handle failures. I honestly don't understand what you're trying to debate with me anymore.
By "guessing" I meant the opposite of "trickery". The latter, I remind you, you described as meaning, "basically, already know the answer." I hope you'll concede that "guessing" means not already knowing the answer. I'm not using those terms to prove a point or persuade you of anything, just for convenience: "guessing" saves me from typing out the phrase "psychological skill, manipulation, perception, or other mental techniques" and "trickery" for "gimmicks, trick pens, hidden cameras, confederates, sleights-of-hand, etc."
So, what we're (I think) arguing over is whether any mentalism tricks rely on "guessing" as opposed to "trickery". Obviously, they all typically claim to be based on "guessing", that's sort of the definition of mentalism as opposed to other kinds of stage magic. But my position is that some subset of such tricks really are based on that, and I believe your position is the opposite, that they're all what we're calling "trickery." If I've misunderstood, please feel free to clarify.
I looked for a few more examples (all by Derren Brown, not because I think he's unique but because he is prolific and practically all of his stuff is on youtube). One I already mentioned; another is the routine he does with Stephen Merchant; another is the one where he does the "Russian scam" on strangers; and a fourth is the bit where he tries to buy jewelry with blank paper rather than money. My understanding of your position is that these must involve "trickery" - the people involved are actors, there was sleight-of-hand the camera didn't show, or some other gimmick. I think he really is just conning those people.
As for the books: compare to difficult-but-not-impossible sleights, like a perfect Faro or dead-cutting the Nth card. How many magic books have a trick requiring a Faro shuffle? Not many, because it takes a lot of practice to do reliably. And yet, there are (I think!) tricks being performed on stage which do rely on it. Same thing here, except that, unlike Faros and dead cuts, tricks based on "guessing" generally can't be practiced without an audience. "Go perform this pick-the-envelope trick in restaurants and shitty nightclubs, over and over, failing repeatedly, getting booed off stage, until you finally learn to do it reliably, and then there you are!" would not be very useful to the budding mentalist! But it doesn't follow that it cannot be done.
And as for why we're arguing, well, I just like the kind of discussion where a casual belief of mine (something I think is true, but haven't done any particular research in to) is challenged - I think they are useful and good and worthwhile. I'm not angry or trying to show you up or "win", whatever that might mean in this context. Totally ready to update my own beliefs on all this. There are at least two tricks I used to think were probably "guesswork" before this thread, which I re-watched with more skeptical eyes and now believe are "trickery". But as I listed, there also still others that I think aren't.
"Guessing" is also a trick, just like "dexterity handling cards" or "pulling a rabbit out of a hat". It's a trick because the guess is stacked in a way it will result in a hit with high probability or the performer has mastery of showmanship in a way to pivot away from a failure and turn it into a win (discreetly disregarding misses, making them seem as hits, etc). That is, the key aspect is misdirection, i.e. trickery, just like any other kind of stage magic. The article you quoted from Wikipedia on Cold Reading confirms this!
An example of "guessing" that is obviously a trick: carry a card with you, say a Queen of Hearts (somebody else mentioned this trick, it's not my invention). At parties, approach girls and have them choose a card. If they pick Queen of Hearts, you show it to them and wow them... "how on Earth did he do this!?". If they pick something else, you improvise some personality reading and move on. Do you see how this is trickery and misdirection and also guessing? Guessing is not special, it just requires showmanship and an ability to pivot... just like a stage magician!
What I am arguing AGAINST: that mentalism requires some sort of extraordinary power of observation, picking up subtle signals, hypnosis, extreme mental powers of deduction, etc. That's false. I don't have to know how a particular mentalism trick is done to know it's a trick, just as I don't have to understand how a trick with cards works to know it's a trick. So I suggest you stop sending me links to Derren Brown's acts; I'm sure I'll be impressed, because he is a top-notch showman, but they will prove nothing.
The Amazing Randi even mentions Derren Brown in his talk ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRqlvqHBVCg ). And he asserts 100% of mentalism is misdirection and trickery (which guessing is a form of). Which coming from Randi is a compliment, since he sure appreciated a good trick!
You misunderstood that whole section, so I'll try again. Those words are just labels, it doesn't matter what they are but it very much matters that they be used consistently. You said, in essence, that magic tricks are always done by using X, never Y - that whole section was me trying to define what X and Y are. I used "trickery" to mean X because that's how you used it, in your first comment:
> "But there's no way to reliably cold read a name, so it has to be done via trickery..."
Remember? You started by drawing a distinction between cold reading and trickery, and now you're saying that cold reading is trickery. Either definition is fine, but you gotta pick one, as I'm less sure than ever of what the X means. This doesn't help:
> What I am arguing AGAINST: that mentalism requires some sort of extraordinary power of observation, picking up subtle signals, hypnosis, extreme mental powers of deduction, etc.
...because of all the subjective qualifiers. How am I to know what you consider extraordinary? Take the Stephen Merchant clip, in which Derren Brown appears to dupe a guy into guessing wrong. If I claim that it was done purely with with psychology, I have no idea if you'd disagree ("No way, that would require extraordinary mental powers so there must be some gimmick!") or agree with me ("That only requires pretty good mental powers, so no gimmick required").
It seems like you're just redefining X to include anything that can actually be done by a human, and to exclude only supernatural abilities. This is illustrative:
> I don't have to know how a particular mentalism trick is done to know it's a trick.
If you don't need to look at a trick to know it's X, that would suggest that your position is tautological: "All magic tricks are X, because I've defined X that way." Well, fair enough; we certainly agree that magic tricks are indeed magic tricks, as opposed to psychic powers or space aliens or whatever.
But I don't think your position started out tautological. I'm pretty sure you began this discussion because there are real mentalists doing real tricks that you think must've been done with a gimmick and I think could've been done with skill and practice. That's why I thought it would be helpful to cite examples! But I agree that if your position is tautological, there is no point in looking at them (other than perhaps the natural curiosity about mentalism that I imagined you might have, based on how long we've been discussing it).
No, it wouldn't. Also, don't misquote me.
Please, this is getting embarrassing. I encourage you to watch the Amazing Randi's talk I and others linked to. He specifically singles out Derren Brown as someone employing misdirection. Also, re-read Wikipedia on Cold Reading: it's all tricks.
Between Randi and you, I'll stick with Randi.
PS: I don't know what a "gimmick" means in this context, I never used the word. Please don't argue with me about words I didn't introduce.
Actually, don't bother replying: we are going nowhere and I don't like your debate tactics.
With his "The push" show he either uses stooges or uses "mentalism" to turn people into murderers and risks giving the victims severe trauma and PTSD.
If the show is real the abuse carried out by Derren far surpasses the abuse of other cancelled shows like Jeremy Kyle. This is why I think its most likely the killers in this show are actors. If he's willing and able to use actors in this show its likely he has used them in others too.
I think you're underestimating how bad people are at keeping salacious secrets about celebrities.
Remember when Bear Grylls had to apologize for the "stranded on a desert island" show, after people on Reddit claimed to have worked on his production staff and revealed that he spent the night in a hotel and had help collecting the material for the shelter he built? If Derren has been using stooges throughout his career, it beggars belief that the same thing hasn't happened to him.
> If the show is real the abuse carried out by Derren far surpasses the abuse of other cancelled shows like Jeremy Kyle.
Yes, he has been roundly criticized for many of his hypnosis stunts, e.g. [0]. Are you now suggesting that those people are all stooges too? Do all stage hypnotist acts rely on actors?
0: https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/derren-brown-slammed-over...
Oh, but it IS an act of non-mental tricks (confederates, research, etc). From the comments on the link you provided, and do note this person is appreciative of the showmanship of it all:
> "Notice how the letter F was clearly not random and he specifically chose that girl from the audience. What also wasn't random was that he asked specifically if she had any pets. He did research on one of his audience members beforehand and decided upon this girl and mind-reading a pet name - because she had her pet name on one of her social medias. What makes this even better is that they probably would have chosen a social media account she hadn't used in ages or a post from years ago to maximise disbelief. It wasn't mind-reading or looking intently at her face for plosive sounds or anything. It was just audience research and epic showmanship and story-telling."
Now, I like a good trick and I enjoy magic acts. But this has nothing to do with intuition or suggestibility or mind-reading of any kind.
edit: But since you're explaining things, I would like to know how the trick he does with Matt Lucas is done!
edit: For example, here's Derren Brown reading the name of a woman's first crush in his stage show in 2005: https://youtu.be/idtbswz_mXw?t=1247
I'm sure there's more to mentalism, like reading body language but it feels like 90% magic (lots of prep work + hard work + presenting / misleading) and 10% improvisation.
One part of Derren Brown's act involves getting people to say things that aren't true at all -- playing with suggestibility in groups and cohesiveness.
Like, he'll do a quickfire guessing thing, going through audience members, guessing, "did I guess right?" thing, ramping up the speed, and he knows for sure people will say yes when they want to say no.
He's maniacally clever.
Many people have open Facebook profiles. People love talking about their pets, and about their upcoming visit to see a famous performer. I imagine a team might compile the list that a mentalist has to remember. Seat numbers can also be memorised, etc etc...
It doesn't need to be _everyone_ in the theatre, or even most of them. He asked for "someone on the balcony" and then picked someone in the front row thereof.
They just pretend to use "intuition" or "suggestibility" (not sure why, but it seems to make it more appealing), but those are not real methods...
1. They get passed information via some surreptitious source (hidden mic, signals, ode, etc.) 2. They make some kind of swap using sleight of hand 3. They got lucky/had multiple outs/the person was in on it
And the presentation beyond that is really boring, like: "pick a card", then "oh I know what it is". Once you've seen it once it's always the same. Obviously everyone knows you can't actually read minds or predict the future, so it's just a matter of what type of cheating occurs.
No, you cannot bend metal with your brain.
That would actually be worthy of our attention instead of this drivel.
> I perfected another where I asked a person to think of a loved one, and then I guessed their loved one’s name
No amount of intuition or NLP will enable you to correctly guess the name, so he's indicating that he really believes he can read minds.
Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence
It's hard to take it seriously if you consider it vs a rationalist of course. But what footing does someone who has no idea and doesn't care what any of this 'veracity' stuff is and gets amazed by crap like the shamwow guy selling them garbage on TV or horrible war crime denialist government propaganda? A big part of NLP is just boosting your own confidence that you've got this person on the hook and taking it from there, after that none of this veracity stuff matters because now we're just in the realm of manipulation of belief space, something which is demonstrably way easier than convincing people to take up enough stuff like understanding of math and probability to know otherwise.
This kind of person is the rule rather than the exception and that's why this shit works. It's a large part of the reason why everything is horrible these days. Talking down on people captivated by this stuff for years has only entrenched their beliefs harder. Us rationalists should maybe realize that we're doing it wrong if there's to be any hope for a rational future.
This guy is definitely hand waving like mad though you're right about that for sure
This doesn't need to be THE name that was thought of - a good mentalist can convince the subject that "Albert" is actually the "loved one" they were thinking of, even if it wasn't the first name to be considered. People are inclined to be agreeable, especially in an unfamiliar setting with a large number of strangers staring at them and even more so if the person is alone and elderly.
Step 1: Ask for 2 people to stand apart blindfolded
Step 2: While explaining the set up to the crowd, surreptitiously brush Person A's arm with a feather
Step 3: Walk over to Person B and brush their arm with a feather as well
Step 4: Ask Person A if they felt anything strange. Person A recalls being brushed with a feather.
Since Person A is blindfolded, they don't know what, and more importantly - when, Person B was brushed as well so it all seems rather impressive
That said: anyone have any resources of substance on how to become a mentalist ;) ?
Some of his other shows are more entertaining - for example he has one where he plays 14 chess grandmasters simultaneously and beats five, draws with four and loses to five. After the masters are duly impressed, he makes it clear that all he did was play the first master’s move against the second, the second against the third, and so on. It’s an ibvious trick but he does it so well, no one seems to notice at the time.
Or he has another where he goes horse racing and convinces the cashier at a bookies to give him money for a losing ticket. The person involved is so clearly confused and shocked that they gave money away (and is clearly not an actor) that the whole piece is pretty compelling - I just don’t believe anyone is both good enough to act like that on cue and at the same time has never appeared in any other work I’ve seen before or since.
That strategy doesn't work.
I asked one of them to pick a number between 1-4 (they were drawn in a another piece of paper) he picked 3, then I asked to another write the first veggie name that comes to their mind, he picked Carrot.
I open the piece of paper that I put at the beginning, the writing was 3 and Carrot.
They were amazed, one of them got scared of the situation,
The thing is that I wrote the numbers 1 and 2 smaller than the number 3 and the number 4 was in very bad handwrite, and the most common Veggie that people think first it's carrot
What feels like a "random choice" when someone makes it is probably just the first thing they think of. So if you can make sure they're primed to think of what you want right away you can "predict" their choice. The real skill comes in being able to prime them without making it obvious that that's what you're doing.
It teased a little supernaturalism, but the vast majority was him explaining the cons, tricks, and psychological tricks.
The article is an excellent example. It trades in generalities that sound like specifics.
The envelope with "all the picks made by the audience"... did it get shown? Did the answers actually get stated in a way they solved both options? Was there an opportunity to switch the envelopes?
So why does he not heed the advice for the article itself?
I think this is the core sentence of the article:
>My wife volunteered in a couple more demonstrations, and I knew she wasn’t in league with the mentalist. (Or, perhaps she was, which would explain our eventual divorce.)
He still doesn't know and he has spent all his life to find out.
>I probably acquired close to a thousand books on mentalism, and several hundred videos.
I'm surprised/skeptical that so many books on this subject exist.