Derren Brown Interview – Pop Culture
“Derren Brown, the phenomenally popular psychological magician, and star of the Channel 4 shows DERREN BROWN: MIND CONTROL and the recent four-part series, DERREN BROWN: EVENTS, where on the first episode Brown predicted the national lottery numbers, thus securing him 3.1 million viewers, is currently in the midst of the second leg of his ENIGMA tour across the UK. Playing ninety-four dates, Brown’s goal with ENIGMA is to, “Create a theatrical event that shocks, surprises and defies explanation. The audience will be taken for a roller-coaster ride, and I hope it’s an experience that they will never forget.”
Brown recently sat down to discuss the tour as well as his exceedingly busy schedule.
Q: Derren, you’ve decided to take ENIGMA back on tour. Is it the same show or have you added anything?
Derren Brown: It is the same show – each one goes out across a couple of years. I normally take a week or so to tweak a few bits and pieces that we feel might need attention, but basically it is the same show.
Q: For those readers who haven’t seen the show yet how would you describe it?
DB: Loads more fun than you’d expect if you’ve only seen the TV work. And all based on random audience participation.
Q: You once said that you prefer performing live on stage to TV. Is that still the case?
DB: Hugely. When touring I get to travel around with my best friends, do a show I love and I’m confident people will enjoy, and have all the adrenalin that comes with performing. With TV there are constant enforced changes, restraints, and frustrations that sap much of the joy out of it. With the tour, once it’s rehearsed, I only have to go out and have the pleasure of doing the show, changing it as I like at my own pace.
Q: What was the worst thing that happened on the last ENIGMA tour?
DB: I honestly can’t think of anything unpleasant that happened. My memories are all entirely glowing. Coops (my PA and stage manager) ran over my laptop on his skateboard and dented it – that might be it. But I didn’t really mind.
Q: And the best?
DB: I really enjoyed filming the audience singing “Happy Birthday” to Coops for his 30th as a surprise, with him next to me on stage.
Q: You have a series of documentaries in the pipeline. What can you tell us about them?
DB: I’ve been spending some time with people making paranormal claims, and I’m going in with a genuine hope for the evidence to hold up. I spend my life fabricating supernatural power, so I’d love it all to be true. Of course extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, so at the same time I know what to look out for and not get fooled. It’s been a fascinating project, and more complex than I imagined.
Q: Are you planning to write a new book?
DB: I’m currently editing a book that I’ve written for release in October 2010. It’s a kind of semi-autobiographical whimsy.
Q: And how about @derrenbrown? Are you enjoying Twitter?
DB: Loving it! I held off for a while and now I adore it. It runs alongside the derrenbrown.co.uk/blog which is now rather massive, so it’s a pleasure to mix the personal tweets with the more informative blog entries.
Q: Lastly Derren, what do you do to relax?
DB: I like to show disturbing tricks to toddlers in queues when their parents aren’t looking.”
Read more at Pop Culture World News
Chinese Man Eats 1,500 Light Bulbs Over 42 Years
“Wang Xianjun, living in the Xitan community in Linshui County, Sichuan province, is a complete and total “eccentric” in the eyes of his neighbors. It is common for people to have rice or steamed buns for the breakfast, but Wang likes to eat an extra light bulb. The 54-year-old man started eating light bulbs at the age of 12, and has eaten approximately 1,500 bulbs over the past 42 years.
Wang regards himself as open-minded. When he was 12 years old, he accidentally swallowed a fish bone, and his parents became very worried. To their surprise, Wang did not feel uncomfortable at all. Then out of curiosity, he boldly picked up a piece of broken glass, and felt no adverse effects after eating it.”
Read more at People’s Daily (thanks, SuZi)
Funeral Home Presents Deceased On Motorcycle
“If you thought you’d previously seen it all, well, you’re wrong. Case in point: David Morales Colón, a 22-year-old Puerto Rican man who was shot to death last Thursday, and whose wake is now making headlines here in the United States mainland. How come? Well, suffice it to say that the funeral directors at Marin Funeral Home in San Juan’s Hato Rey neighborhood have a flair for the unorthodox. For example, in 2008, they embalmed another young shooting victim and displayed his body standing up for the duration of a multi-day wake.
Back to the present: Yesterday and today, callers who stopped to pay their final respects to the late Mr. Colón got a bit of a surprise. Instead of the traditional presentation of the body in a casket, Mr. Colón’s corpse, dressed in casual duds and sunglasses, was instead posed in a very lifelike position atop his Repsol-liveried Honda CBR600 F4. According to Puerto Rico’s Primera Hora newspaper, the motorcycle was given to the victim by his uncle, and upon Mr. Colón’s untimely demise, family members delivered the bike to the funeral home specifically for this unusual wake.”
Read more at AutoBlog (thanks, SarahWoo)
birmingham and rufus
(Rufus Wainwright by local artist, who is aiming to do a new one of him next, as soon as he gets the chance)
A really lovely run in Birmingham. Warm, responsive audiences (comparatively reserved at the end but hugely up-for-it throughout: a kind of opposite of Cardiff audiences) and a beautiful city. Birmingham has such a pride to it: when they re-developed Bristol’s city centre they did so with no sense of delight or style. Birmingham, by contrast, has become a truly enjoyable place. Found myself staying in the same hotel as Cameron and Clegg following the debates… I suppose I completed the trio, seeing as the other Brown had headed home. Hmm. I think I missed an opportunity there.
Thank you for coming if you did. I understand that some people were waiting for hours in the rain by stage door after being repeatedly assured that I had left (I had to dash off to a dinner appointment): apologies, but please do take it at face value if they say I’ve gone. They shouldn’t ever say it if I haven’t.
Spent much time around the canals, two excellent lunches at Bank, the best hot chocolate in the country (and excellent coffee) at Cafe Vergnano at the Mailbox (there’s one in Charing Cross Rd too, though the Brum one is friendlier and nicer), pottering around at snail’s pace, listening to Rufus Wainwright’s new album on my headphones. The new album – All Days are Nights: Songs For Lulu – is such a beautiful thing. I listen to RW continuously while painting, and am a hugely devoted fan. Last Monday, on a rare night off from the tour, I took group of us to have dinner and see him in Oxford, a wonderful evening. The first half was a sing-through of the new album; we were instructed not to applaud until after he had (preposterously but brilliantly) exited the stage, the second a relative lightening of mood with a bunch of old favourites. Afterwards he appeared to us few invited guests, somewhat distant as he always is, to say a quick hello, mascara in stained rivers down his face, almost as if it were still part of the performance. As often seems to be the case, Helena Bonham Carter was nearby too: I have adored her ever since watching her being interviewed on some awful red-carpet thing going into the Willy Wonka premier, inside which I was already tucked away. One sits for hours before the film starts and watches a broadcast of an endless stream of stars answering inane questions from a dedicated hapless interviewer parked outside, and occasionally a brilliant and irresponsible answer from an interviewee breaks the turgid atmosphere in the auditorium and causes a burst of grateful applause. I cannot remember what HBC said, but she was so brilliantly unruffled by the whole thing, so couldn’t-care-less for any of the nonsense, that her unperturbed answers lit up the sham of the whole ritual’s absurdity. Since then I have found myself alongside her many times, normally when in Rufus’ company, but never said hello. On each occasion I pass by imagining she wouldn’t know me from Adam: then, when I leave, I wonder if she might have done, and whether I had seemed rude. Such are the conflicts of C-rate celebrity.
If you do not know Rufus Wainwright, he is a staggeringly talented singer/songwriter, with a style that is difficult to define, leaping from heartbreaking eulogies to a tragic self, to bawdy high camp, but in the main occupying a perennial, epic, tortured dream-space of self-apotheosis and virtuosic performance. His voice is as unusual as his music, and his articulation sometimes mellifluous to the point of incomprehensibility. For some this proves a stumbling block: equally, the songwriting is unyieldingly internal and coded, leaving me for one pretty clueless as to the meaning of some of the pieces. But this is part of the Rufus experience, and as a devotee of Bach’s equally solitary suites for lonely solo instruments, I revel in such ‘private’ music. Others, I know, just find him whiny and self-absorbed. To me this is like the criticism of Bach as sounding like a sewing machine: yes, all those things, and then some, if you must.
If you’re considering getting hold of an album, I’d recommend Want One as a good starting point, and be prepared for the songs, like anything of superlative quality, to yield their secrets over time. They are not all an easy listen to begin with.
We are returning to the Alexandra Theatre in six weeks or so, and looking forward to it hugely. The crew were one of the nicest we’ve met on tour. And the audiences just lovely. I shall look forward to more dreamy wanderings, having now missed for good my chance to tinker with the election candidates.
Brain shuts off in response to healer’s prayer
“When we fall under the spell of a charismatic figure, areas of the brain responsible for scepticism and vigilance become less active. That’s the finding of a study which looked at people’s response to prayers spoken by someone purportedly possessing divine healing powers.
To identify the brain processes underlying the influence of charismatic individuals, Uffe Schjødt of Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues turned to Pentecostal Christians, who believe that some people have divinely inspired powers of healing, wisdom and prophecy.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Schjødt and his colleagues scanned the brains of 20 Pentecostalists and 20 non-believers while playing them recorded prayers. The volunteers were told that six of the prayers were read by a non-Christian, six by an ordinary Christian and six by a healer. In fact, all were read by ordinary Christians.
Only in the devout volunteers did the brain activity monitored by the researchers change in response to the prayers. Parts of the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, which play key roles in vigilance and scepticism when judging the truth and importance of what people say, were deactivated when the subjects listened to a supposed healer. Activity diminished to a lesser extent when the speaker was supposedly a normal Christian (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsq023).
Schjødt says that this explains why certain individuals can gain influence over others, and concludes that their ability to do so depends heavily on preconceived notions of their authority and trustworthiness.
It’s not clear whether the results extend beyond religious leaders, but Schjødt speculates that brain regions may be deactivated in a similar way in response to doctors, parents and politicians.”
Read more at New Scientist
Dating By Blood Type In Japan
“People in most parts of the world do not think about their blood group much, unless they have an operation or an accident and need a transfusion. But in Japan, whether someone is A, B, O or AB is a topic of everyday conversation. There is a widespread belief that blood type determines personality, with implications for life, work and love.
It is Saturday night and a speed dating session is under way in a small building in the backstreets of Tokyo. Men and women are sitting nervously at tables hoping to find that special someone. The room is brightly painted in red and white, the staff upbeat and enthusiastic, but the conversations are rather stilted. The couples have just a few minutes to try to sound each other out before a bell rings and they have to move on to the next lonely single. It is a scene repeated in cities across the world but this speed dating session in Japan has a twist.
It is for women who want to meet men with blood group A or AB.”
Read more at The BBC
Species Avoids Extinction By Abstaining from Sex for 30 Million Years
“They haven’t had sex in some 30 million years, but some very small invertebrates named bdelloid rotifers should have gone extinct long ago. Cornell researchers have discovered the secret to their evolutionary longevity: they are microscopic escape artists.
“These animals have evolved a way to avoid parasites and pathogens by drying up and blowing away,” said Paul Sherman, Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior.
“These animals are essentially playing an evolutionary game of hide and seek,” said Sherman. “They can drift on the wind to colonize parasite-free habitat patches where they reproduce rapidly and depart again before their enemies catch up. This effectively enables them to evade biotic enemies without sex, using mechanisms that no other known animals can duplicate.”
After drying up, bdelloids come back to life when re-exposed to fresh water. The Cornell study is featured on the cover of the Jan. 29 issue of Science.
Bdelloid rotifers (pronounced DELL — oyd ROW-tiff-ers) are tiny, freshwater invertebrates that have long puzzled scientists because, as completely asexual animals, they should have been extinguished by parasites and pathogens long ago in evolutionary time. Instead, the bdelloids have proliferated into more than 450 species. Asexual animals like rotifers reproduce by cloning and this makes for a fixed gene pool.
Many scientists believe that the function of sex itself is to shuffle genes around. They theorize that the fresh genetic combinations that which sex provides allow sexual animals to fend off relentlessly evolving parasites and pathogens.
The discovery that bdelloids can desiccate and wisp away with the wind helps resolve the mystery of their ancient asexuality and success. “It also helps answer one of the deepest puzzles in evolutionary biology — why sex is nearly ubiquitous,” said Chris Wilson, a Cornell doctoral candidate in Sherman’s lab..”
Read more at Daily Galaxy
Energy drinks work as soon as they touch your tongue
“If you spit out an energy drink after taking a sip, it could still boost your strength. This pre-digestive effect is immediate and seems due to a newly discovered neural pathway that links taste buds to muscles.
Nicholas Gant at the University of Auckland in New Zealand previously showed that mouth-rinsing and then spitting out a carbohydrate solution immediately improved performance at sprinting and cycling – even though it takes at least 10 minutes for carbohydrates to be digested and utilised by muscles.
This time, Gant’s team had 16 participants tire out their biceps by flexing them for 11 minutes before rinsing their mouths with either a carbohydrate drink or a non-calorific, taste-matched one. One second after rinsing, the team applied transcranial magnetic stimulation to the participants’ scalps, which aided the detection of activity in the motor cortex, a brain area known to send signals to biceps.
The team found that the volunteers who swilled with carbohydrates were able to flex with more force immediately afterwards, and had a 30 per cent stronger neural response compared with those given placebo. Gant says it’s likely that taste receptors detect carbohydrates, resulting in a signal to fatigued muscles “that help is on the way” so they continue working hard.”
Read more at New Scientist
