Debunking Joe Powers' 'Psychic' Secrets feat. Richard Wiseman - The Man Who Contacts The Dead

After Derren watches Joe live, he reviews the footage with psychologist, author and magician Richard Wiseman (Quirkology) and they figure out his techniques used in the show.

Alien Abduction and Psychic Powers - Derren Brown

Messiah is a Derren Brown special originally shown on Channel 4 on 7 January 2005 at 21:0

Derren convinces a hugely influential figure in the world of UFO abductions that he was abducted by aliens, and as a result can now read people's medical condition.

Derren Brown: Miracles For Sale - Exposing faith healing

Derren Brown: Miracles For Sale.
Originally aired Monday 25th April, 2011 - 9pm, Channel 4.

Innovative entertainer Derren Brown returns to Channel 4 in a unique TV experiment lifting the lid on faith healing.

The one-off Easter Monday documentary special sees Derren go undercover to investigate the reality behind the faith healing phenomenon, in America, and the belief in faith-inspiring miraculous recoveries.

With the cameras in hot pursuit, Derren undergoes 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 is then tasked with six months in which to learn the trade and flourish across the pond as a convincing Pastor.

The final phase of the volunteer's extraordinary challenge will see them attempt to perform faith healing miracles live in Texas - will Derren's new recruit be accepted as a faith healer or cast away as fake healer? Is the belief in divine intervention really justified or will Derren expose the industry as one giant hoax?

On his first TV pursuit into faith healing, Derren says 'You are about to see a world where greed and deceit raise their ugly heads, where lives have been needlessly lost and where hope, the most precious gift of all is pedalled at a price'.

Derren Brown: Miracles For Sale is produced by Objective Productions for Channel 4. Derren Brown, Anthony Owen, Andrew Newman and Shirley Jones are Executive Producers, David Vallance is Series Producer and Simon Dinsell is Director.

Derren Brown and Martin Freeman Experiment with New Age Crystals

From Derren Brown: Trick or Treat, Series 1 Aired 4 May 2007
Martin Freeman, star of Sherlock, fails to deduce why he is so affected by the mystical crystals.

Fooling 'Professional' Psychics - Derren Brown

In Messiah, Derren travels around America and showcases his abilities to cast doubt on pre-existing, dubious belief systems under the guise of a fake name and identity. First stop - remote viewing in Sedona.

Messiah is a Derren Brown special originally shown on Channel 4 on 7 January 2005 at 21:00. In the episode, Brown travels to the United States to try to convince five influential figures that he has special abilities in their particular field of expertise: psychic powers, Christian evangelism, New Age theories, alien abduction and contacting the dead, with the objective of getting them to endorse him as a practitioner in their field.

Derren Brown asked a leading figure at a psychic training school to go into another room and draw a number of simple pictures on any topic she wished. After each picture had been completed, Brown would have his prediction of what the picture was of written down by the other members of the training school in the room with him. He was mostly correct, the one slight error being a cross instead of a Star of David (though he did state it was some kind of religious imagery - maybe a cross?). On one occasion when Brown was telling the participant to draw the next picture, he instructed the lady to "let some ideas sail into your mind" and not to go "overboard on detail". She drew a boat on water.

Do You Believe In Telepathy? - Derren Brown

A Young Derren (with hair) uses his astonishing mind-reading skills to great effect yet again.

The Numbers Preventing Psychics Being Real

I wanted to have a brief look at why we never see the headline "Psychic Predicts Lottery Win And Wins £100,000,000 The Following Day", now I am sure there will be a lottery winner somewhere in the world who claims they are psychic, purely by statistics this will either have happened or will happen, but one thing I can guarantee has never happened and will never happen, is for a psychic to predict they will win the lottery or some high odds gambling bet, and then win it! This is because no one can predict the future, since the future hasn't happened yet!

Here is a great story with the famous headline Psychic Wins Lottery
The problem with it is that she just happens to work as a psychic, and AFTER winning claimed she "had a feeling" Months earlier! Not quite the amazing story it tries to be is it! If this was considered proof of psychic abilities, than I bet you could ask every Lottery winner ever, and they would nearly all say they "had a feeling", sorry unless you make the prediction BEFOREHAND, I don't accept that.

In fact more convincing was Derren Brown's amazing trick whereby he picked the numbers "live" and then won the lottery! Watch below, and no don't worry Magic Circle, I wont expose how it was done, but for anyone curious there are plenty of debunking videos on Youtube




Don't get me wrong, I can predict the future and know I will be proven right, but I do that using common sense and logic, I am talking about predicting a future event that has very high odds.

So for me to say "I predict a member of the Royal Family will give birth to a baby girl within the next ten years", there is a pretty good chance this will happen, since it is a very big family, and people have babies. However if I was to say "I predict that on February 27th 2019, Prince Charles will become King Charles" that is incredibly unlikely to come true, (if it does people please remind me of this article!), And that is the problem with psychics and future predictions, it all comes down to odds, and realistically speaking, psychics never beat the odds.

Lets take a quick look at the odds of winning various Lotteries

Lottery Draw Country Odds of winning the jackpot

Lotto - United Kingdom - 1 in 45,057,474

Lotto - South Africa - 1 in 14,000,000

Powerball - South Africa - 1 in 24,435,180

El Gordo de la Primitiva Spain- 1 in 31,625,100

EuroJackpot - Europe - 1 in 59,325,280

EuroMillions - Europe - 1 in 116,531,800

La Primitiva - Spain - 1 in 139,838,160

Powerball - United States - 1 in 175,223,510

Mega Millions  - United States - 1 in 258,890,850

SuperEna Lotto - Italy - 1 in 622,614,630

I think you get the point.

Psychics convince people they have powers, by predicting things that have very low odds.

So they will tell you the sex of your unborn child. This is literally a 50% chance, or 1 in 2.

They will be right half the time. And the half of the time they are right, their clients will tell the world, "hey Jon the Psychic KNEW my child would be a boy" Where as the one who got it wrong, is soon forgotten.

So ok the lottery is way too hard for a psychic to win, as they would need genuine powers to do so.

Their usual excuse is that their powers don't allow them to make huge amounts of money! But what about smaller amounts of money, afterall they do take payment from people, £50 here, £20 there. It all adds up.

So surely the best place for a psychic would be a casino, at such a place they would be betting to win lower amounts. But what would the odds be in a casino if you do think you are psychic?

 Well if you wanted an easy game to win, Blackjack has the best odds, as you are only playing against the dealer. But that is hardly proof of psychic powers is it? 

Poker, nope that is no good, as not really a game of odds, but a game of skill.

What about Craps, well you are betting on the roll of a dice, so odds are about 50/50, again not good proof that you are psychic.

Now roulette, this is a game that you could prove yourself on. Lets forget about betting on red or black, as that is nearly 50/50 (don't forget the green 0)

So if you bet on a normal number it is 36 to 1. So how about this, if you were to get this right 3 times in a row, and you claimed your were psychic, I would find it incredible hard to say you weren't.

Now one name I always get thrown at me as proof of someone who could predict the future was our old friend Nostradamus, or Michel as I used to call him.

Not sure who he is? Read this from Skeptics Dictionary...

"Michel Nostradamus was a 16th-century French physician and astrologer. His modern followers see him as a prophet. His prophecies have a magical quality for those who study them: They are muddled and obscure before the predicted event, but become crystal clear after the event has occurred." Source: http://skepdic.com/nostrada.html

One of his famous quatrains is below.

The year 1999 seven months

From the sky will come the great King of Terror.

To resuscitate the great king of the Mongols. Before and after Mars reigns by good luck. 

So reading that, what do you think he is predicting?

So the year 1999, that's clear, then seven months, so that would be July.

Something happening in the sky, so that could be a plane crash, a meteorite, a huge storm, some kind of natural disaster. Something about a King?

Ok it is vague to say the least.

Many have claimed it predicted the death of John F Kennedy Jr.
On the 16th "John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are killed in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. The Piper Saratoga aircraft was piloted by Kennedy."

So that is the year and month right, but JFK Jr was not a King, nor a King of Terror, and no link to anything else. 

On the 27th Pro Skater Tony Hawk is the first skateboarder to land a "900", he is the King of skateboarding? And a 900 is in the air I guess?

ANA Flight 61 was hijacked in Tokyo, Japan, on the 23rd, but it didn't crash. And Japan is about 3000km from Mongolia. So no connection there.

On the 23rd Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Al-Hassan is crowned King Mohammed VI of Morocco on the death of his father, but his father died of natural causes, so nothing really special there.

So the only thing that comes close is JFK Jr. And that is the problem with predicting the future, and especially when being so vague about it. Be specific and you will be wrong because the odds are simply against you. Be vague, and almost anything can be twisted to fit what you said, which is pretty much how ever prediction made by Nostradamus is treated.

The point is the psychic industry is clearly flawed, flawed to such an extent that it does not work, no psychic will ever predict a win on a high odds gambling bet, and then win. Whether it is the Lottery, a casino or an online casino site such as Lucky Nugget that offers a simulation of a real casino experience. No psychic has ever predicted a major future event and got it right.

Yes there are stories of people who have "drawn the future" but even when these are investigated, it is the odds that end up working in their favour. Draw or paint one picture that shows and event, if that comes true, then that would be impressive, but in every case, we always find out that the "psychic" has in fact drawn or painted hundreds if not thousands of pictures, and then when an event happens, they just try and find one of them that kind of matches what has happened! The more events you draw, the more you lower your odds of eventually being proven right.

So remember folks, you can't predict the future, it hasn't happened yet, you'd be better off spending your money on the roulette table, than predicting the future, as at least in the casino you have an actual chance of winning!

By Jon Donnis

Competition: Win Derren Brown: Svengali on DVD

To celebrate the release of Derren Brown: Svengali on DVD on April 1st, we have a great competition for you, and 2 copies on DVD to give away!

Synopsis:

Derren Brown presents the truly magical, award-winning theatre show that won him the 2012 Olivier Award for Best Entertainment.

The master persuader and entertainer extracts secret confessions from the audience, paints an extraordinary portrait, and has an audience member possessed by a two-hundred year automaton.

Win This:


For your chance to win just answer the following question... 

Which award did Derren receive for this show?

 

To enter Email us with your answer, along with your name and address. 

When the competition ends as indictated on this page, any and all entries received after this point will not count and emails blacklisted due to not checking this page first.

Winners will be chosen randomly and will be informed via email.

Colin Fry was nearly on Derren Browns Experiments show about Luck!

Remember the TV show that Derren Brown did The Secret of Luck? You will remember a brief appearance of Sally Morgan on the show where she was totally humiliated after claiming she could pick up psychic feelings from the so called Lucky Dog in the village. Well what she didn't know (despite claiming to be psychic) was that the dog was not lucky, and instead was a gimmick set up by Derren Brown. As usual Sally ended up making a fool of herself and further cementing her reputation as one of the worst psychics in the country.


Well did you know that Channel 4 and Derren Brown had originally put psychic Colin Fry in the position to be setup!


I recently sat down to speak with Colin Fry about a number of topics and Sally Morgan came up. Colin told me

"Last year I was approached by channel 4 to appear in a program about luck , I booked two days to cover filming they sent confirmation day before I was due to go up a researcher called me to ask me my angle on this, I explained I did not believe that luck was a force or power but people create their own luck by thinking positive , they asked me if I would do my "thing " over a supposed lucky bronze dog in a park up north!"

Colin goes on to tell me...

I burst out laughing and said if there was any luck it was only because people had convinced themselves their good fortune was down to the bronze dog and it was bullshit, but harmless if it gave them the feel good factor, the researcher said she was surprised and I had not given her the respounce she had expected. 

Later that evening she phoned back and cancelled me - I was f*cking furious as I had cancelled two days bookings to accommodate them, we invoiced them for 50% of the agreed fee for wasting my time! 

However in my fury I told them they had played the typical channel 4 tactic of trying to stitch up a medium and the only reason they had cancelled me was that I was too clever to be made a fool of and if they wanted a someone they should call Sally Morgan, which is what they did.

Colin finished by making a very astute observation

I dispair we idiot mediums will do anything to be on TV.

And there you have it. Colin Fry was the original person chosen to be stitched up by Ch4 and Derren Brown, but "luckily" he didn't play along and instead Sally Morgan ended up being humiliated.



Funny how Colin Fry ended up being quite lucky with regards to a show about luck!