EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,016 words- 0:00 – 15:00
Four, three, two, boom.…
- JRJoe Rogan
Four, three, two, boom. What's up, man? How are you?
- DBDerren Brown
Hello.
- JRJoe Rogan
Thanks for being here.
- DBDerren Brown
I'm pleased, uh... Well, I'm pleased, uh, to get here. It's a, kind of a strange day in this part of LA, isn't it?
- JRJoe Rogan
This is as strange as it ever gets.
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The, the big concern in Los Angeles has always been, according to a firefighter that I talked to once, that the right wind catches a fire and it takes it all the way through Los Angeles down to the coast.
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not quite that. It didn't go through Hollywood. It didn't go... They think one day it's gonna happen-
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and with the right wind, they're not gonna be able to stop it, but-
- DBDerren Brown
Jesus, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is pretty bad. This is about as bad as I've ever seen. It happened all in one day.
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah. It was extraordinary driving down the road to get here. Just these huge just p- (laughs) just huge, pillowy, the... I thought it was just, you know, mountains, and I thought it was a strange cloud formation, but it was just simply-
- JRJoe Rogan
Smoke?
- DBDerren Brown
... smoke, yeah. Terrifying.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it looks like a giant gray mountain-
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in the distance.
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, it's insane how bad it's gotten. I've, I've had it happen, um, three... This is the third time I've been evacuated-
- DBDerren Brown
Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
... since I've moved here 20 plus years ago.
- DBDerren Brown
Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it gets rough, but this is the roughest I've ever seen. Jamie and I were doing the podcast yesterday, and when it was over, I had like five text messages from friends that live in my neighborhood saying how bad it was. And then when we got home, the wind was just crazy and it just, it's just... It's humbling. You know, I mean, it's super unfortunate for all the, the people that are, uh, losing their homes and, and losing their, you know, losing their property. But the reality is, this is, um, it's nature. You know?
- DBDerren Brown
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is just something that you just can't avoid.
- DBDerren Brown
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's nothing you can do about it. It gets dry like this, and I don't know what started it. I hope it wasn't a cigarette.
- DBDerren Brown
Hmm.
- 15:00 – 30:00
And they just sleep?…
- DBDerren Brown
and say, "Sleep," and show them their hand like that. Or, or-
- JRJoe Rogan
And they just sleep?
- DBDerren Brown
And, well, it's not sleep, but it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) But they-
- DBDerren Brown
... a kind of, um, y- it looks like... I mean, they, they'll do anything from eyes closed, head drops down, to just drop like a, like a dead weight on the floor. You know what I found that's most interesting actually, was, um, like, applying this in slightly more useful everyday situations, was as a sort of, um, like a self-defense technique. I was walking, uh, between... So I was like, must have been like 20 or something, and I was at a magic convention. And I was walking from one hotel to another, and I'm dressed in, like, a three-piece velvet suit.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DBDerren Brown
I was this skinny British lad. I might, might as well have, you know, "Punch me in the throat" tattooed across my face. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DBDerren Brown
And this guy comes up and he's like a, he's drunk, uh, it's about 3:00 in the morning, drunk, aggressive, he's with his girlfriend, clearly looking for a fight. And, uh, he sort of, he comes up to me and he says, "What, what are you, what are you fucking looking at? What are you looking at?" And because I'd spoken about this, how to deal with this sort of thing, but I'd never found myself in this situation, I kind of had it all mentally rehearsed. So I said to him, I said, "The wall outside my house isn't four foot high." And-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DBDerren Brown
... I guess there's an equivalent to this with a sort of adrenaline dump, I think it's called in, uh, in martial arts. But there's a, it, it just, like, he's got all this adrenaline, and then a thing like that from me, which is just out of context, like, it makes sense. I'm not, like, talking gibberish.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DBDerren Brown
It makes sense, but it's just out of context.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DBDerren Brown
So now suddenly he's thinking, "I've, what? I've missed something." So now he, he was sort of, he went, "What?" And I said, and then his, his girlfriend walked off, and I said, "The, the wall outside my house isn't four foot high. I spent some time in Spain. The walls there were very high, but if you look at the ones here, they're, they're tiny, they're nothing." (laughs) And then he just sort of broke down. He sort of went, "Wah." And, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Started crying?
- DBDerren Brown
Well, you know, he, no, it wasn't quite crying, but it was just, it was like all the adrenaline and everything just, just flooded out of him. And he sat down-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DBDerren Brown
... and I end up sitting next to him on the, uh, like, you know, on the roadside, um, asking him, you know, so what... I was, the plan was I was gonna try and stick his feet to the floor, and I had this whole plan, but he just kind of collapsed and sat down. So I, so I just-
- JRJoe Rogan
You were gonna stick his feet to the floor with hypnosis? (laughs)
- DBDerren Brown
I was gonna stick his feet... Yeah, that was the, 'cause I knew it'd be like this highly suggestible state. And like either way, the, the moment of aggression-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- DBDerren Brown
... had passed. But I ended up, ended up weirdly sitting with him asking him what had happened that evening, and his girlfriend had, I think she'd bottled somebody or something horrible had happened.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus.
- DBDerren Brown
So he'd got out with all this aggression. But it's a, it's a good one, isn't it? If you just have like, um, it could be just a song lyric or just some, some weird kind of thing that you can just go into in, in those situations that... I mean, if someone's running at you with a knife, it's a bit difficult, but the, you just, you, you're kind of strangely taking control of a situation. Otherwise, what are you gonna do? If they say, "What are you looking at?" Y- you can't, y- there's no way you can answer that without being on the back foot.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DBDerren Brown
So it just kind of nicely kind of inverts the situation and puts them on the back foot, which anyway, it worked. It was, uh, it was kind of fun.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, isn't there, like, a process required to hypnotize someone? You could just do it that way and saying it, just talk them through some sort of a program that makes them think their foot is stuck to the floor?
- DBDerren Brown
I, it, it all depends on the moment. I had, I used to hypnotize people in my, um, (laughs) in my room when I was a student, right? So I was the guy that did hypnosis.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Mm-hmm. …
- DBDerren Brown
it down, it's like not that amazing. But when you, when you, when you see the, the, the more kind of extreme and exciting ends of that, it's, it is mind-blowing. And then you realize how these performers, how you start to go mad yourself and think, "Well, I've got this special gift."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DBDerren Brown
And I could pack out stadia doing like a... I did think at one point, "Why don't I do, like, a secular healing show?"
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DBDerren Brown
I could say, "Well, this is, it's just, you know, it doesn't work on everybody, and it may only work for 10 minutes, but it certainly works in some meaning of the word." Anyway, I, I didn't do that, but, you know, you can start to go...... mad.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, the processes of the mind, I mean, the- the idea of the placebo effect is fascinating. The f- the idea that your mind has some ability that you can't tap into consciously-
- DBDerren Brown
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... but you can, in some sort of a subconscious sense... Someone gives you something, and if you're convinced that it's doing something positive, it actually will have-
- DBDerren Brown
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... some benefit to you-
- DBDerren Brown
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... a real, tangible, measurable benefit.
- DBDerren Brown
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it doesn't seem to make sense. There's, there's no mechanism that we can trace.
- DBDerren Brown
There's no mechanism, no. It's... What, what I found works really well is, I've done a few shows on placebo, is... For me, I find the key is, the person gets to absolve any responsibility for the change themselves. So they... I've done a couple things where... This new show I have on, uh, Netflix now called Sacrifice, a guy thinks he's got a microchip implanted in him, which is doing all the work. Uh, another show I've done is, was, uh, placebo injections they were getting, so they feel the i- the drug is doing the work. But the key is, they don't have to... They, they, they don't think, they don't think they're doing any work at all. "This thing is taking care of that for me." And that's really powerful, 'cause suddenly it's, it's, um, that thing of, "I, I don't have to do... I don't..." Th- the person thinking, "I don't have to make this happen myself, there is no onus on me, I don't have to do any- anything. This, this magic formula is somehow doing it," is hugely powerful. Um, so that, yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a... I think that's a big, a big part of it, which is why a lot of the... when we, when we, when we did the placebo program, we created this whole, like, um, fake, uh, pharmacological building. We had a building, we just, you know, k- filled it out with actors and equipment and stuff to just create this environment that was gonna be convincing before the injections were even given, and these were on people that had various, like, fears, or problems, or things that we're just gonna just investigate and see how well the placebo worked. And, uh... Yeah, it did. But that, that, that's a helpful thing, ha- feeling there's just something in you making it, making it happen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, almost like a subconscious optimism or something like that.
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I've, I've wondered if that sort of mindset that allows you to experience a beneficial result of a placebo, if that, s- in some way, transfers over to everyday life events, if having this, uh, maybe unfounded sense of optimism or this, uh, biz- bizarrely positive outlook, or this, uh, almost undue confidence-
- DBDerren Brown
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... actually can have some sort of a beneficial, tangible result in the real world, in terms of actual events that take place. Whether it's because of the way you interact with other human beings-
- DBDerren Brown
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that they are being influenced by your positive attiti- attitude and energy, and then confidence and enthusiasm, and then therefore things go smoother-
- DBDerren Brown
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... or whether it's really some sort of a factor of the way you interchange with reality itself, and that your attitude actually has an effect on events.
- DBDerren Brown
I think it gets vastly overrated. I'm a big advocate of strategic pessimism. I think the, the problem with that kind of, um... the problem with unwavering self-belief- (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DBDerren Brown
... is that it just doesn't, that doesn't quite map into how life works, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DBDerren Brown
I think, like, I think the Greeks had this down. So if you imagine a kind of, a graph. So you've got your, your... is it the Y-axis going up here? Of your aims and things you want to achieve. And then your X-axis is just what they used to call fortune, stuff that life-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
(laughs) …
- DBDerren Brown
when actually, there was this whole other thing going on.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DBDerren Brown
But a lot of the time, they have no idea.
- JRJoe Rogan
How long was Push for? Like what-
- DBDerren Brown
Push was- well, that was only like a- that was a- it was only like one evening of actual filming.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DBDerren Brown
But the- because it was just one, like, real-time event.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DBDerren Brown
Um, but the preparation for it, you know, goes back a bit. I did a- the biggest one was- I did a show called Apocalypse, which isn't on Netflix. I- I mean, if- if you go down the rabbit hole, it'll be somewhere on, uh, YouTube, where we ended the world for somebody. So we- we took control of his, uh, news feed, uh, his TV. We filmed, like, special editions of TV shows-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DBDerren Brown
... like news shows that he'd watch, fed them into his TV.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, no.
- DBDerren Brown
And drip-by-drip, created the idea the world was gonna end, there was gonna be this meteor strike. Even like he'd be out in a cafe and there'd be radio in the cafe 'cause he'd know he'd be in that cafe, there's a radio playing with DJs that he knows that are talking about this thing that is supposed to happen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, my gosh. (laughs)
- DBDerren Brown
And then, we stage it. We stage this pyrotechnic end of the world thing in this kind of, uh, sort of controlled enough environment we could get him into where we could stage that convincingly. And then, he wakes up in the second sort of epis- it's a two-episode thing, in this post-apocalyptic, seemingly like weeks later, in a hospital. Like everyone's gone, the place is abandoned, um, uh, some infection has spread, so there is like this zombie plot.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DBDerren Brown
And he then lives through the plot of The Wizard of Oz to find his way back home, and the point of it was this Stoic idea of valuing what you have because this was somebody who, by all reports was, you know, lazy, selfish, took advantage of his parents who he was living with, never had a proper job. He was just kind of like needed to value what he had. So the Stoics would say, you know, just rehearse taking everything away, so when you return to the stuff you have, you value that rather than just always desiring more. So that was that idea kind of writ large, just take everything away, end of the world. But again, um, like he was transformed by it, really changed his life.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're still in touch with this person?
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so, uh, w- uh, is this- this is a permanent shift?
- DBDerren Brown
Permanent shift. He ended up being a teacher in a special needs school that he's kind of worked his way up through and is now like- you know, he's getting married and it's- yeah, it's- it's lovely.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's crazy.
- DBDerren Brown
Not that I can take credit for all of that, but you know, it was definitely a- a big part of that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, near death experiences are often incredibly beneficial to people.
- DBDerren Brown
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
They- they make big giant shifts in their attitude and their- their perception of the world, and they realize that time really is finite and that it could have been taken away from them, and they feel like they have a new lease on life. I mean, you really can become a totally different person after something like that.
- DBDerren Brown
I think so. Well, that's- that also- also what's happened with this guy, Phil. So in the- in the- in this new show, which is also the first like brand new thing I've done for- for Netflix, there's a couple of other shows, but they-
- JRJoe Rogan
And what is it called?
- DBDerren Brown
It's called Sacrifice.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sacrifice.
- 1:00:00 – 1:05:54
Yeah, we cut him…
- JRJoe Rogan
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah, we cut him and, yeah, yeah-
- JRJoe Rogan
Stitch him back up again and the whole-
- DBDerren Brown
We stitch him back up, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DBDerren Brown
Um, I don't think he needs... No, I don't think he needs stitches for it. It's a kinda, kind of a small cut, but it's, uh, scalpel going in, horrible. Um, so he thinks he's using this app which is kind of, um, helping motivate him, but what it's doing, it's atta-... It's giving him this sound, like this little jingle, that gets attached to all those feelings of motivation. So that means that when he finds himself in this kind of final scene where he has this choice to step in and save a life, that we can have the same jingle on the radio that plays and... You know, it's like that thing of you hear a song when you're breaking up with someone and it's a horrible period of your life, and then five years later you hear the same song, and it just-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DBDerren Brown
... brings it all back.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DBDerren Brown
You know? It's that, that process.... um, or obviously, like, you know, advertising is the big example of that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Isn't that the premise behind something like The Manchurian Candidate that there's some way they can (snaps fingers) snap and then you go back to this state of mind where you followed
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah. Well, that... Yeah. That's more kind of, I guess, overtly hypnotic.
- JRJoe Rogan
... them, I think.
- DBDerren Brown
That's like a post-hypnotic suggestion. This isn't. This is more gentle because he needed to make the decision himself.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DBDerren Brown
The idea was not that he'd be some kind of hypnotized robot, um, if that would even work anyway.
- JRJoe Rogan
And-
- DBDerren Brown
You know, this is, this is, this is about a creating... A trigger f- There's feelings of empathy are important. A lot of the show is about empathy, and a lot of the show is about the desire to act. And then, he's, he finds himself in this situation which is extremely... He has no idea at this point it's anything to do with... Like, the filming's finished. That all happened in England as far as he's concerned. He's gone back home, had time to forget all about it, and then ends up stranded in this situation where it all happens. Um, and then I trigger these things off, so I'm giving him this kind of psychological nudge and then it's, you know, what, what will happen? Will he, will he, will he rise up and take it? Like, like the guy landing the plane is kind of like, what, what, what... Ultimately, you know, it's that guy's decision. And it's also, I think... It's, it's a story about stepping out of the kind of the, you know, the, the... I guess the show resonates politically, but it's not a political show. The, the, there's like... There are political narratives we get constrained by and we forget that actually it's the dialogue between the sides that, you know, where humanity emerges and where we find truth. So this is also I guess a story about a guy coming out of his particular sociopolitical narrative and just finding something that ultimately is just a, a, a human, you know, a human quality, kindness, compassion. And these are not political qualities, although they end up getting politicized, but, you know, they're not. They're not.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think that a lot of people are gonna watch this and want that to happen to them. Like, "I need some sort of a transformative prank played on me to, to..."
- DBDerren Brown
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause I think people do... I mean, we, we do get caught in ruts, right? We do get stuck on momentum. We g- we get stuck following the same patterns over and over again. It's very difficult to change your life.
- DBDerren Brown
This is... This is it. This is it. Well, b- the thing that makes us so great at evolving our ability to adapt is the same thing that just... It, um, ties us down, so like all through life. So from an early age, like, we emerge in this world and we're very quickly given messages about what our relationship with that sh- to that world is. "This is what people are like. This is what they'll want from you. You are not powerful. The world is powerful." You know? And that, that is, it's gonna be skewed. Jung said that, you know, the... I love this, that the greatest burden a child has to bear is the unlived life of its parents. Such a great thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- DBDerren Brown
So your starting point is this skewed story.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DBDerren Brown
And then you just... You go through life looking for things that just fit and recreate tho- those patterns because they feel so comfortable. You know, your... What do you learn about love from your parents, you start to bring to your adult relationships and project all that stuff on, uh, on your partner. If you think about it, you know, the, the... If you've had a nice loving upbringing, you are getting a ridiculously skewed version of what love means. Like, we know as adults how difficult it is raising kids, but we never saw that as kids. We never saw our parents going off and screaming at each other in the next room once we'd gone to bed. We just have this sort of impossibly, uh... Hopefully, you know, if we've had a, had a happy one, we get this impossible, um, template of what love is and should be, and then we just dump that on our poor adult partners, which nobody can live up to. So our ability to adapt, to internalize stories about who we are and then, like, mistake that for reality, is just, uh, is just what makes living just difficult and complex. And, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Also, the narratives that come through fiction, narratives from films and books and even songs.
- DBDerren Brown
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The, the, the versions of romance and-
- DBDerren Brown
Yes, particularly with Roma-
Episode duration: 2:10:46
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