The Adam Buxton Podcast

[Twit 2]

Re: Brexit/election chat at the beginning, what are the chances that Buxo will be voting labour? He comes from a very wealthy background, he must be rolling in cash, his kids all went/go to the most expensive private schools in Norwich (must be paying around 45k in total per year on fees, way more than most people's entire incomes). I know people who either went to or currently work in those schools and it's Tory central as you can imagine. Really hope he's a champagne socialist, but given his propensity to have the odd disappointing view I can't hope too much. I suppose it shouldn't matter, but I just can't bring myself to fully like/respect someone if they're a Tory.

[marquis_de_sad]

It'll be Lib Dems or the Greens.

[olliebean]

Is that something he does during interviews? As far as I'm aware he's always been at pains to point out that he's a magician/illusionist with a particular interest in psychology, as opposed to some sort of spooky wizard touched by genius.

Are you thinking about a different Derren Brown? Surely his whole schtick is to pretend that he's using NLP-style psychological manipulation and insight, rather than the magician's trickery he actually uses.

[Ambient Sheep]

That was early-period Derren, which he apparently now regrets, as it gave NLP a credibility which in his eyes it didn't deserve.

He doesn't do that shtick any more, AFAIK.  Although since I've not watched anything of his since his National Lottery disaster, I could be wrong, but I don't think so as he's even written stuff regretting it IIRC.

[olliebean]

The last thing I saw of his I think was the Netflix one where he psychologically manipulated some racist American guy into taking a bullet to defend a Mexican. How much of it was real I can't say (obviously the bullet wasn't), but he was definitely still claiming it's all psychology.

[popcorn]

I don't understand Derren Brown. He seems to do some good anti-woo stuff exposing how people misunderstand statistics and so on - like the episode where he seemingly comes up with a way to win at gambling - but he also deals in weird fuzzy mind control stuff that I can't get a grip on. Is this a science or isn't it Derren????????

Re: Brexit/election chat at the beginning, what are the chances that Buxo will be voting labour? ... I just can't bring myself to fully like/respect someone if they're a Tory.

There's no way in hell he's a Tory, and if nothing else we know he opposes Brexit.

[popcorn]

I've not watched anything of his since his National Lottery disaster

Can someone summarise what happened in this and what was disastrous about it? the Wikipedia summary is terrible.

[rasta-spouse]

Can someone summarise what happened in this and what was disastrous about it?

Derren won the Euromillions and gave the money to Crispin Odey.

[DrGreggles]

Can someone summarise what happened in this and what was disastrous about it? the Wikipedia summary is terrible.

He 'predicted' the lottery numbers, but it was just a split screen trick.

[popcorn]

What was the disaster? Is a split screen trick not a good trick?

[DrGreggles]

Not when everyone's immediate reaction is "I bet that's a split screen".

[selectivememory]

As someone commenting on the YouTube video says, it should have been called "Derren Brown successfully predicts the lottery numbers after they've been called out."

[popcorn]

Reading more, it sounds like the real fuckup was the follow-up "explanation" saying he predicted the numbers through the wisdom of crowds. Fuck off.

[rasta-spouse]

Can't remember the full story but because of the hullabaloo (perhaps to do with the instant split-screen exposure) he was called into a meeting with C4 bigwigs and the subsequent explanation show had to be hurriedly changed/re-edited, but details on this are scarce.

[Bennett Brauer]

The initial fuck-up was with DB's invisible assistant who replaced the reversed balls (numbers not facing the camera) with the winning balls while DB watched the live draw - he/she didn't put the last ball fully into the slot, so when the winning balls were patched in for the reveal, one ball was slightly higher than it was before. Internet forums picked up on it almost straight away.

The subsequent show filled with pseudo-scientific nonsense to explain how he did it just made things worse, and as these two excellent Captain Disillusion videos show, annoyed fellow magicians too. (The trick is fully explained in the second link, Part 5.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DODGRfzdfNU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpN4Yurzns0

[popcorn]

Thanks for this.

This is the thing that irritates me about Brown I was getting at before. I'm fine with illusionists doing tricks and not explaining how they did them. I'm not fine with them giving pseudoscientific explanations that further the spread of guff ideas.

[DrGreggles]

But Derren always opens his shows (live and on TV) with a disclaimer stating that he's essentially just a magician, and repeats this in interviews.
If he makes a subsequent claim otherwise during the performance, then isn't that just part of the show?

[popcorn]

But Derren always opens his shows (live and on TV) with a disclaimer stating that he's essentially just a magician, and repeats this in interviews.
If he makes a subsequent claim otherwise during the performance, then isn't that just part of the show?

Dodgy ground though innit. I think a lot of people could easily be persuaded that the "crowds" thing is how he guessed the numbers.

[DrGreggles]

Perhaps, but it's far more honest and upfront than a lot of other similar performers are.
If your start with THIS IS JUST A MAGIC SHOW, and people ignore that and think he's got special powers, then that's on those people.

I read an interview with Tom Binns where he talked about how his psychic character is supposed to show that it's just a trick that can be learnt, yet some people still believe that he's psychic.

In short, people are the problem.

[popcorn]

Perhaps, but it's far more honest and upfront than a lot of other similar performers are.
If your start with THIS IS JUST A MAGIC SHOW, and people ignore that and think he's got special powers, then that's on those people.

I read an interview with Tom Binns where he talked about how his psychic character is supposed to show that it's just a trick that can be learnt, yet some people still believe that he's psychic.

In short, people are the problem.

The thing is, Brown mixes his messages.

I haven't seen much of his stuff, but I remember being really impressed by his episode on gambling, where he convinced someone he had found a way to predict which horse would win at the races. He ends the episode by revealing that actually he had thousands of people gamble using his various predictions, and of course statistically one of them was going to win every time - the woman in the episode. This is a brilliant demonstration of how human beings are bad at understanding numbers and probabilities, and was entertaining, informative and intellectually honest all at once. It really stayed with me.

In the lottery one, he purports to do a similar thing. He "reveals" that he predicted the numbers using a similar-sounding method of statistics and randomness. But it was actually bollocks. I think that's misleading, especially in the context of his other stunts.

[mjwilson]

I could be wrong but I think there were suggestions that what we saw might have been plan b. There was some filming which people saw which wasn't used in the show. So there was a theory (possibly a bit of a conspiracy theory) that he had originally planned something else which had to be ditched last minute, explaining the slightly crappy split screen thing.

[mjwilson]

Oh that's on the Wikipedia summary already. Sorry

[thugler]

Re: Brexit/election chat at the beginning, what are the chances that Buxo will be voting labour? He comes from a very wealthy background, he must be rolling in cash, his kids all went/go to the most expensive private schools in Norwich (must be paying around 45k in total per year on fees, way more than most people's entire incomes). I know people who either went to or currently work in those schools and it's Tory central as you can imagine. Really hope he's a champagne socialist, but given his propensity to have the odd disappointing view I can't hope too much. I suppose it shouldn't matter, but I just can't bring myself to fully like/respect someone if they're a Tory.

How in fuck do you know where his kids go to school?

[olliebean]

But Derren always opens his shows (live and on TV) with a disclaimer stating that he's essentially just a magician, and repeats this in interviews.
If he makes a subsequent claim otherwise during the performance, then isn't that just part of the show?

The wording of that disclaimer was:

This program fuses magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship. I achieve all the results you'll see here through a varied mixture of those techniques. At no point are actors or stooges used in the show.

So he's not claiming that he's "just" a magician, but also that he uses suggestion and psychology, and the presentation of the tricks implied that these were the main methods used. Essentially he was doing mentalism, which is mostly done through trickery, but rather than dressing it up as actual mind reading he was dressing it up as NLP-type shit.

[DrGreggles]

The wording of that disclaimer was:

So he's not claiming that he's "just" a magician, but also that he uses suggestion and psychology, and the presentation of the tricks implied that these were the main methods used. Essentially he was doing mentalism, which is mostly done through trickery, but rather than dressing it up as actual mind reading he was dressing it up as NLP-type shit.

He's stating that they are tricks and he uses various different aspects of 'magic' to achieve them.
This is made clear at the start, prior to the show beginning, so anything that's then included in the show falls under that disclaimer - even his explanations.

[popcorn]

What was the point of doing a whole telly episode to lie about how he did a trick though? Saying "here's how I did a trick - but ho ho not really!" isn't exactly a great illusion is it? It's neither entertaining (as a magic trick should be) or interesting (as an explanation should be).

[DrGreggles]

No idea what his thinking was on the lottery thing to be honest.
It was heavily promoted by Channel 4 too.

I don't think his 'explanations' are necessarily true either.
All part of the show.

[rasta-spouse]

What was the point of doing a whole telly episode to lie about how he did a trick though?

This is mostly a guess but I think, like most famous magicians, at that point his ego was so overblown he thought he could do anything and people would eagerly swallow any half-baked explanation from him. He was wrong, using a silly camera trick like that was insulting to the viewers' intelligence and the backlash was deserved. The 'wisdom of crowds' thing was a misguided feel-good idea about collective empowerment. You can't improve the world with nonsense.

See his recent theatre stuff for horrendously glib self-help speeches on how underdogs can go on to win. It's great he has a social conscience but it doesn't mix well with tricks.

[Twit 2]

How in fuck do you know where his kids go to school?

I know people who either went to or currently work in those schools and it's Tory central as you can imagine.

I live near Norwich (near Buxton actually, have seen him in the supermarket and said hello before). I know a teacher who taught his kids at prep school and I know a kid who goes to school with them now.

[Sin Agog]

His great (?) grand da more than makes up for whatever political sympathies Buckles has today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Buxton