#143 — The Keys to the Mind

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2018

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Derren Brown about his work as a "psychological illusionist." They discuss the power of hypnosis, the power of expectations, the usefulness of Stoic philosophy, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
0:12.1	hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing
0:16.2	the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense
0:20.7	Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharis.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed
0:26.1	to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads
0:31.2	on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers.
0:35.8	So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
0:46.8	Today I'm speaking with Darren Browne. Darren, as many of you know, is a fantastic magician.
0:54.0	He calls himself a psychological illusionist, which is to say that the effects he achieves
1:00.0	really are at the level of manipulating the behavior of his subjects. He uses hypnosis and other
1:09.6	forms of suggestion. He creates the most elaborate ruses by which to manipulate people's expectations
1:20.0	and assumptions. If you've seen any of his television specials, you'll know that he puts people
1:25.1	in situations where literally everyone around them is an actor who's in on the gag,
1:31.8	and people just have no way of understanding what is happening to them, and so he can drive them
1:38.3	to do things that are really astonishing. In fact, if you haven't seen any of Darren's work,
1:45.2	I would strongly encourage you to pause this podcast and go on YouTube and watch some of the many
1:51.4	fragments of his specials that you can find there, or better yet go on Netflix and watch his
1:57.9	most recent one, Sacrifice, or Miracle before that, or The Push. We talk about all of these,
2:04.8	and you'll certainly get the gist of our conversation if you haven't seen his work, but you'll enjoy
2:09.9	it much more if you have, because it really is hard to exaggerate how ambitious these changes in
2:18.4	people's behavior are and how successful Darren is in producing them. It really is amazing. Anyway,
2:25.6	we talk about his career as an illusionist, his reliance on hypnosis and other forms of suggestion
	...

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