[MUSIC PLAYING] MATT BRITTIN:
Well, hello to you, and welcome to this
"Talks at Google." And it's a first today--
it's actually Talks at Home. My name is Matt Brittin. I'm working from home-- although I'm not
sure this really counts as work, because
it's a delight for me to be hosting today
from London, and I'll be bringing you two British
accents in conversation. So a warm welcome to you all. We're live on YouTube, where you
can make a donation to the WHO COVID Relief Fund-- so please do donate-- and there's also a chance to
have your questions asked, so put your questions in the
YouTube chat for our guest. Our guest Derren Brown
is a best-selling author, broadcaster, unique
performer, and a psychological illusionist. He's been delighting and
baffling audiences here in the UK and around the
world for over 20 years. You might have seen him on TV
playing Russian roulette live or convincing middle managers
to commit armed robbery. He has stuck viewers
at home to their sofas, so watch out for your
backsides during this chat. He motivated a shy man to
land a packed passenger plane from 30,000 feet,
he persuaded a racist to change his ways,
and he created-- as you do-- a zombie apocalypse. "Sacrifice" is the most recent
of his Netflix specials. You may have seen them. That was on from last summer--
amazing shows on Netflix. He's often been onstage,
most recently playing Broadway with his
show "Secret," which ran until January of this year. He's the author of "Tricks
of the Mind," a 2007 book I remember reading well,
"Meet the People with Love," "Confessions of a Conjurer,"
and the 2016 "Sunday Times" bestseller "Happy," subtitled,
"Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine." Let's hope it is. Let's meet Derren Brown. DERREN BROWN: Hello! Watch out for your backsides. MATT BRITTIN: [LAUGHS] What
a way to start, Derren! And can I just say,
you look fantastic. DERREN BROWN: Thank you. MATT BRITTIN: You seem
to have a crayfish on your shoulder, which is
also an unusual way to start. DERREN BROWN: It is. I've got a modest taxidermy
collection, and some of them are behind me. That, yes, that is, indeed. Great-- well-identified
as a crayfish. A lot of people say
lobster, and they're wrong. MATT BRITTIN: Well, I was
going-- it's one or the other, wasn't it? And so you're in lockdown. DERREN BROWN: Yes, [INAUDIBLE]. MATT BRITTIN: With
your [INAUDIBLE].. DERREN BROWN: [INAUDIBLE] MATT BRITTIN: How is it? How is it for you? DERREN BROWN: I'm actually
secretly enjoying it. I I'm writing a lot. I'm writing a follow-up
book to the "Happy" book that you so
kindly mentioned, and sort of have new TV
projects that I don't have when we're going to film them
which are in the pipeline, and a new tour as well-- which got postponed. We were about to open
when all this happened. MATT BRITTIN: Yeah. DERREN BROWN: Well,
I'm keeping myself busy and tidying a lot of
[INAUDIBLE],, which is [INAUDIBLE]. MATT BRITTIN: Well, you've
said in interviews in the past that you were very good
at avoiding anything that might feel stressful. Is that, perhaps,
something you've drawn on during this period? DERREN BROWN: Yeah, I have-- which, actually, is a good
segue into the philosophy behind the book and the
philosophy of happiness within the book. I resonate a lot with the stoic
notion of happiness, which is what I've discovered
it, I realized it's [INAUDIBLE],, which is
what led to writing about it. And I quite like the
idea that happiness is-- it's very hard to
put your finger if you see it as a
thing, because then it's just a thing that maybe other
people have and you don't have, and a bit like a rainbow, which
is a good image for happiness. The closer you get, the further
and further it seems to recede. Whereas if you see it as
an avoidance of stress, as an avoidance of
unnecessary disturbance-- which is how it used
to be perceived. Stoicism was the
most popular school of philosophy for 500
years before Christianity exploded into the scene and
took over that whole question. And their model
was about achieving a sort of tranquility. So there you see it
almost as a negative, as an avoidance of something,
and it becomes an easier model to then get your head
around how you might, then, achieve that, which I'm
sure we'll speak about. MATT BRITTIN: So what drew you-- said you'd become
fascinated by stoicism. So what drew you into that? Because really, one of
the things that stood out in your book to me was you
talk about storytelling, and the magical
side of what you do is about making us join dots
in a way that tell a story that becomes an impossible story. So what drew you from
that world into thinking about philosophy and stoicism? What's the connection? DERREN BROWN: I began my
career as a hypnotist, and then a close-up magician
doing card tricks and that kind of thing, and then moved into
a purely psychological realm of magic, which we've
sustained the last 20 years. But what interested
me least about magic is that subtext it generally
has of, hey, look at me, aren't I clever? And what started to increase
me more, just as I grew up, was the realization that magic,
despite all its cheap and tacky associations where you're
basically just trying to impress people-- it's the
quickest fraudulent route to impressing people-- is actually quite an
interesting analogy for how we deal with the world. So we have this infinite
data source coming at us. There's an infinite
number of things that we could think
about or pay attention to that we choose not
to pay attention to. We edit and delete
and we make up a story about what's happening to
make sense of what's going on, and then we mistake
that for reality. We mistake that
story for reality. And, of course, magicians
are doing the same thing. They're feeding you a
certain amount of information and making you join up
the dots in a certain way. One of the most interesting
things about magic, the hand is quicker than the eye. Generally, all the
information you need to piece together a
trick in happening right in front of you, but
you've been nudged to find some things important
and other things not important. And this is the nature
of storytelling. And if you think
about it, a story, classically, is told in
a clearing by a fireside. And what that involves
is a whole lot of darkness, a
whole area that is emitted from this little
cozy clearing here. So all this information,
all this complexity, and all this conflicting,
difficult stuff is kept out. And what a narrative
does is reduce it into something
that's comfortable. But you're keeping
all that at bay. And I think particularly
in our current world-- not so much right now with
this lockdown, but just the general mood of
how things have been, and the very notion
of story, one story, and being in and out
of stories, and so on, becoming more part
of the mainstream, I think it's actually
quite important to realize it isn't just
about owning your story and owning your narrative. It's also about realizing
it is just a story, and, like with a
magician doing a trick, there's a whole bunch
of other stuff going on that we don't know about and we
haven't paid attention to it. And something to allow to that. MATT BRITTIN: So
storytelling, and, obviously, your expertise at pointing at
the dots you want us to join up in telling a story,
something you've really crafted over a
long period of time. But how did that lead you more
into this realm of thinking about the nature of happiness? What was it? What was it for you that
led you in that direction? DERREN BROWN: Because
one of the big lessons of the stoics, which is
an idea that we're still familiar with nowadays, but
it's lost some of its power, is that it isn't events in the
world that cause our problems. It's the stories we tell
ourselves about them. It's our response
to those events. And what that brings
with it is the importance of that particular
kind of storytelling-- the way we form a
narrative about what's happened, that we
infer cause and effect, that we're,
essentially, projecting onto a raw event, that's one
big lesson of the stoics. And another-- which ties in
with this idea of avoiding unnecessary disturbance
and preserving a sort of tranquility, which,
I think, fitted me just because I'm a bit introverted,
and I've always felt relatively tranquil inside-- is this other idea
that once you've got your head around the
whole, it's not the events; it's your judgment of those
events that is important. The second [INAUDIBLE]
stage where-- this is huge, I think-- is saying that there
are things in the world that you're in
control of, there are things that you're
not in control of, and if you try and control
things that you are not in control of, that's when
you're going to cause stress, and anxiety, and frustration,
because you can't control them. But the things you
are in control of are your thoughts
and your actions. So that's it. Everything else--
what other people do, and what they think of you,
and how things just go, and the rest of the
circumstances, and so on, you're not in control of. And if you separate
the two, the trick is to decide that everything
on the far side of that line is [INAUDIBLE],, everything
other than your thoughts and your actions. Everything else is fine. This was [INAUDIBLE]. If you decide those
things are fine, nothing bad happens, and you
avoid unnecessary disturbance. Now, it sounds a bit
complacent, particularly if we feel that there are
social injustices that need to be corrected, for example. Then it's like, well, that's
out there in the world. That's, perhaps, out of my
control, but it isn't fine. But then, you'd need just to
distinguish between those parts you're in control of and not. So it's a little like
playing a game of tennis. This is a good model, also,
for thinking about, I think, success in your own life. If you go into a game
of tennis determined to win the game, determined to
achieve a result that is not under your control, you're
going to make yourself anxious. You're probably not
going to play as well. As the other person
starts to win, you're going to feel like
you're failing, right? Whereas if you go in
deciding to play your very best, to do the
very best that you can, then there's no anxiety
if the other person starts to beat you. And likewise, in matters
of social injustice, you can commit yourself
to doing the very best you can to change
something, but that is different from trying
to achieve a result and then becoming bitter and
anxious when the result isn't being achieved,
because that result may come a generation later. So it can sound complacent
when you first say it, but it isn't-- not when you start
to break it down. But it's a very
helpful model, and I find it particularly in matters
of relationships and so on, the list of everyday
stressors, to go, hang on, is this something in my
control, or is it not? And if isn't, how would
it be fine, how would it be OK if that thing is the case? And then you let that thought
just drip into your soul, and then you could
decide how much or little you actually want to
involve yourself in it. But that, then, comes from you. Does that make sense? MATT BRITTIN: Yeah, it
makes a lot of sense. I can see the
intellectual part of it, but I can see the
practical bit of releasing that worry being harder to do. Is that a skill? Is that something you've found
that is work with practice? It's a bit like NLP and
CBT type of techniques, of recognizing
something and then giving yourself permission. But you have you found
learning that skill? DERREN BROWN: I
think it helps if you are naturally disposed to it. I think if you're driven by a
anxious impulse to fix things and to get involved and you
find it hard to let things go, on the one hand, it's going
to be more difficult, just from a constitutional
point of view, but also, it's a very
useful thing to learn, because it can just help pull
those things back a little bit. If we are naturally [INAUDIBLE]
more introverted anyway, and I'm very good at avoiding
challenges and such anyway-- but to my detriment,
because that also means you don't always grow; you don't
always explore in the world-- then it can come more naturally. But the key is practicing it,
and that realization that, oh, it is fine. If this person is annoying
me and bugging me, or this thing that they said,
or this thing that they did, it's always fine, actually,
that they did that, and it's always fine
that they think that. And it's just letting
that sit, and then you start to get used to it. You start to do that
thought process, and it starts to
become familiar. And also, of course,
like all these things, A, it isn't the answer
to everything. And I'm, obviously, making
it sound quite simple anyway. It isn't the answer
to everything, and it isn't always easy. And I don't think any
notions of happiness should be about something
that sounds like an easy fix, because happiness is-- you think of it as a noun, and
it misses all its complexity. It's a verb, really. It's a very active
process, or it's a byproduct of finding
meaning, for example, which is a different thing. I think if you approach
it too directly and make out that it's
easy, it falls apart. But I think a model
like that is certainly very helpful at reducing
unnecessary anxiety, which is just a different way
of seeing what happens [INAUDIBLE]. MATT BRITTIN: And
you said optimism can be a real problem for people. So tell us a bit more about
the danger of optimism. DERREN BROWN: Yeah,
well, I've just lived out in America during that
Broadway run, and I loved it. And I love being
around that kind of very optimistic
sense, that manner, that is a very American model. But there are problems with
it, and the problem with it-- however nice it
is to be around-- is that it lets you down
when things go badly. So if you imagine a graph, so
on the one axis, the x-axis, you've got your aims, the things
you want to achieve in life-- your goals. And on the y axis,
whichever it is-- the one along the bottom-- you've got stuff that life
is throwing back at you. Fortune-- things you
have no control over. Now, we used to have a real
respect for this, fortune. That was a real thing. The Greeks were very
big on fate, right? What we're told, and what the
spirit of optimism tells us, is that if we
believe in ourselves, that we can crank
the nature of life up to be in line with our
goals, if we set them clearly, and we believe in ourselves,
and blah, blah, blah-- as if this other force
doesn't really exist. The reality is that we live
an x equals y line, where our aims, on the one axis,
are meeting and matching the stuff that life is
throwing back at us. So that's actually
what we do live. And the key is to
make your peace with a sort of
undulating line along that x equals y diagonal, where
sometimes we will be on top, but sometimes, life
will be on top. So [INAUDIBLE]. MATT BRITTIN: On average, you
want to be following that line? DERREN BROWN: Well, you want
to shift your expectations sometimes. MATT BRITTIN: Right. DERREN BROWN: So that you've
made your peace with how things are inevitably going to turn. Because the trouble
[INAUDIBLE] of optimism is that when it does go
wrong-- and eventually, life calls us to hard places. This is just part
of being alive. And when it does that, we've
then got to add to that reality that everything has gone a
bit wrong our own failure, because we've somehow
let [INAUDIBLE] go. But my weird adventures
I've had, at some point, I was looking at the
world of faith healing. MATT BRITTIN: Yeah. DERREN BROWN: It was
evangelical figures that I think hijack honest
religious belief and so on for their own ends. But the model of
it is interesting-- that thing of, throw
your pills away, and if the illness
returns, it's because you didn't have enough faith. MATT BRITTIN: Yeah. DERREN BROWN: It's
the same model you see in that thing, "The
Secret," the law of attraction, that you send your wishes
out, and it will provide. And if it doesn't-- it actually says
this in the book-- you didn't have enough faith. You didn't believe enough. And it's the same with the whole
cult of long-term goal setting and so on. If it falls apart,
it's your own fault. And I just don't
think that serves us. I think a little bit
of short-term optimism can be helpful, but in terms of
looking at the way life moves, you have to balance it with a
kind of strategic pessimism, or a realization that life
doesn't fit in with your plans. It makes no sense that it would. MATT BRITTIN: So with your
British accent sitting here, and the work you did on faith
leaders in the documentary there is fascinating. But you also mentioned
having been on Broadway in an optimistic country. So how was that
culturally for you? Do you see a difference
in optimism in the US? And tell us a bit about
that experience you had of doing that the Broadway show. DERREN BROWN: It was
actually fantastic. The experience of doing West
End in London is very different. I wasn't expecting
the sort of reception. It was a very-- it
was a popular show, but it was also
there's a kind of a-- everybody is just great. They all work amazingly. They're lovely to be around. And there's a real aura
around just doing a Broadway show which there
isn't, really, here. You're just someone
doing a job, and no one sees it as anything different. So that was very-- it was very lovely. And as I said, I do
enjoy being around it. It's a nice sort of
cushion to fall upon. It's just I just
think, ultimately, if it isn't tempered with a sort
of just a basic understanding of how fortune will come
back at you at some point, and allowing for that,
that's not a negative thing. That should be a
positive thing, in a way. Because the fact that
life is difficult means that when you reach those
points, rather than feeling like, oh, I've
failed, and I'm alone, those are precisely the
points that join everybody up. That is the precise weight
of life showing itself. So that's the thing
that joins us all up. It's a little bit
like the isolation we're all in at the moment. That is you feel most
isolated, but it's the thing that joins you
up with everybody else. And the only way of
feeling that there's something kind of
sublime is to allow for that in your
understanding of what life-- that it isn't just
about setting your goals and believing in yourself. You can spend your
lifetime on the ladder and then realize you had
it against the wrong wall. MATT BRITTIN: Yes. Well, that's a worrying
thought, isn't it? But this point about all of us
having a very common experience at the moment and sort
of the common crisis that we all face, the
health crisis that we face, we've all had to do that
letting go, haven't we? Because these things are so big. We can't control them at all. All we can do is be at home
with our stuffed animals and our writing, or
our baking, or our, I need to do my hair cutting
soon-- the things that are keeping us all the same. You probably haven't been
doing so much of that. DERREN BROWN: [INAUDIBLE]. I've really let [INAUDIBLE] go. I've gone feral over
the last few months. MATT BRITTIN: So just go back
to the US, then, for a minute, because your show
was called "Secret." How on earth do you do it? And it's based around a
secret, so I couldn't really find out what it was. I know people who have. How do you conceive
a show like that and then convince
yourself that you can keep something secret
enough that the audience will want to come and come? DERREN BROWN: Well, yeah,
there's the power of story again. So the show is
full of surprises, and in the shows that I do--
and this one that, hopefully, I'll be doing in
February if things lift, or sometime around then-- is it's a surprise-based thing. So I say to the audience,
look, please keep the secret. And then, I found in 20 years
of doing these shows that people just are very happy to do that. I'm sure, indeed, you can
find spoilers and so on, but there's a sense of
enjoying being part of that. And then, that, again, is being
part of a narrative, isn't it? There's a fun sense of
involvement and coming together and being part of something. So I think it's just that. I don't think it's
any reflection on me. I think it's just a
lovely bit of groupishness that comes out in the same
way like the situation we're in now. We're seeing all
these lovely behaviors that come out from
people when they're facing a crisis together. I'm not comparing
my show to a crisis. [LAUGHS] MATT BRITTIN: No. No, well, it keeps giving
us an escapism, I hope. When you think about conceiving
these things-- and I say, you've spent 20
years really playing with story, and psychology,
and creating an illusion from that storytelling--
how do you conceive of a story that's going
to be interesting, and fresh, and befuddling, and dazzling
in the ways that you have done? How do you keep doing that? Where does
inspiration come from? And is there a process
that you follow? DERREN BROWN: Yeah, so I
have a few different things that my career consists
of at the moment. But the two big areas are
TV shows and stage shows. So sometime in my
30s, as I said, I got a bit sick of
this thing of magic just being about look at me. And the way I found to get
around that was to make the-- what, a way of finding
drama which is not there, and me going, look,
I can do anything. There's no drama in that. So the drama became real people
going through real situations. So I do these big "Truman
Show"-style experiments where people-- they don't realize they're
part of some big experiment. So that is very much
about storytelling. We tend to write the
shows with a sense of, perhaps, what the
ending is first. What are they going to
find their way towards? So the last show I did, which is
on Netflix, called "Sacrifice," is about, could you get
somebody to the point that they would lay down
their life for a stranger, and specifically-- and essentially racist, very
right-wing anti-immigration American guy to
lay down his life for a Mexican illegal immigrant. That was the thing-- so
getting somebody to that point and seeing if I could plant
these things along the way to get them to do that. So it's about a kind of
psychological manipulation, but it's also about a story. Stage shows are a
different thing. You root your ideas
in theatrical moments. What weird experiences
could a couple of thousand people who walked
in a room with me go through? And that's a fun thing. But it still comes down to,
I think, a sense of story where endings are important. A big difference between
life and narrative is that when you watch
a film or read a book, the ending makes sense,
normally, of everything that's come before. And in life, that doesn't-- the end of life, it
normally just feels absurd, scary, and meaningless. So there's the
one point where we should be able to find a
sense of all authorship, of closure and meaning. It's then, sadly, not the case. We tend to [INAUDIBLE]
the opposite, like [INAUDIBLE]
figures in our stories, but the decisions are
being made [INAUDIBLE] So on the [INAUDIBLE] narrative
that really exists now in our non-superstitious
times, is the narrative of the brave battles
being fought, which isn't a narrative
that serves the person that is going it at all,
because, again, you're just adding failure. That sort of positive spin
just adds an eventual failure. We're probably
getting a bit morbid. MATT BRITTIN:
[LAUGHS] Well, these are times to consider
these questions. We've got more time to do it. DERREN BROWN: Right. MATT BRITTIN: And I think
one of the things that's interesting about
your journey is the marrying of the theatrical
with this fascination-- it seems to me anyway-- with both
psychology and philosophy. So looking at your
book, you reflect quite a lot to Daniel
Kahneman and to psychology, but it's also endorsed
by Alain de Botton and AC Grayling-- so philosophers. It was actually also endorsed
by Stephen Fry, who you tried to assassinate, so [INAUDIBLE]. DERREN BROWN: I did. MATT BRITTIN: [INAUDIBLE]
influence there. How does that come about how? Does that interest
bridge those areas, and how come Stephen Fry
is still talking to you? DERREN BROWN: I know. [INAUDIBLE] Well,
the two used to be-- [INAUDIBLE] used
to go hand in hand. The old ideas of virtue
ethics, of philosophy that used to be back
with the Greeks, it really was about psychology. It was about how we might make
live, how we might flourish, what the good life is. And then, as I said,
Christianity came in, and then took all
those questions and gave it quite specific
answers on its own terms. And then, that kind of
level of exploration sort of [INAUDIBLE] for a
couple of thousand years. And during that time, what
was left of philosophy were drier, analytical
subjects that didn't really have anything to do with
what it was to live well, because theology was
giving us those answers. And now, we've drifted away from
a theological model of life. We're starting to join up
those two worlds again, of philosophy and psychology. And there's plenty of that,
and you see it in, well, cognitive-behavioral
therapy, which is a very popular form of
therapy, is based on stoicism. So you start to see it-- or rational-behavioral therapy,
I think it was called first-- based very much on the
tenets of stoicism. So it is starting to join up,
and stoicism is quite popular now. I think there's a
real resurgence. To me, a difference is
between the world of, say, positive psychology,
as it's called, which looks at what
makes people happy-- having a certain
number of friends, and living within a certain
distance of friends, and so on-- while I think any
philosophical explorations have to tally with those
findings, they tend to be a sort of horizontal
world view about what works across large numbers of people. What interests me is
always the inner life, and I think that's
what, sometimes, a philosophical rooting
is actually more helpful. It's more a vertical
model of how do I move, how do I move forward? MATT BRITTIN: Because you've got
a very unique career spanning and connecting these things, and
the theatrics, and the writing, and the TV, almost,
documentary-making approach. So when you think
about-- you mentioned climbing the top of the
ladder and seeing which wall you're on. Do you feel like you've climbed
the wall you wanted to climb? How does it look
to you from where you are now, the way you've
assembled this journey? And are you happy
that that's the wall you've come to [INAUDIBLE]? DERREN BROWN: I've never
been one for climbing. That is, I studied law,
and I didn't particularly want to be a lawyer, but I
was just starting to do magic, and gigging, and
so on afterwards. I just felt that my
life, at the moment, if you take a cross-section
of it in the present moment, are things in the right place,
and does it feel about right? And that's all I ever had. And then, as my career
took off, I still started to feel a bit like a
kid in a world of grown-ups, because other people were
talking about things that all sounded very
ambitious, and driven, and in 10-year plans, and
five-year plans, and so on. Never really chimed with me. And in a way, I'm lucky that,
perhaps, my own lack of drive is balanced by more
business-minded people. But there's a lot to be
said for that approach. I mean, Broadway, I
did not because there was a plan to take America. I just thought it
would be lovely to live in New York for a few
months, and I thought what an exciting thing to do. And I genuinely haven't
moved past that. So it's served me
well, and it also meant that I've
never had any drive to be beyond what I'm doing. And I think that
is often a drive, particularly with people who are
performers, as you might know. But the trouble with
those kind of drives is that they've never met. You never get to that point. You tend to creep up on
those points slowly anyway, and meanwhile, the people
you're comparing yourselves to and everything
just keeps moving further and further ahead. So I've always
found that helpful, that I'm not really like that. Somebody had a
model of the career, the ladder-climbing image
of a career-- which, again, is a very biblical model. It doesn't sound it, but
that climbing the ladder, the idea of the golden
place that we're all trying to get to. Because you study certain
subjects at school to go to college, study
this to get this job, to get this promotion-- like
it's all about something that's supposed to happen when? I don't know, some
point in your-- I don't know what that is. But the other model is
a frog on a lily pad. You spend some time on one
lily pad, and enjoy the sun, and you go to another
one for a bit, and it's a horizontal model,
but it's equally valid. I don't quite know where
I am in all of that. I think I naturally veer more
towards that, and it's fine. MATT BRITTIN: I mean, it sounds
like a rather modest sort of explanation of how you've
achieved things-- almost, it would be nice to
live in New York; I'll just do a Broadway show. But there must be
a drive, and there must be something that gives you
real satisfaction and a sense of happiness in what you do. So what makes you
feel really happy? When you are happy,
what is it [INAUDIBLE]?? DERREN BROWN: I think
another helpful way of looking at
happiness is to see it as a byproduct of meaning. And I think particularly
as you get older, there's something in the
second half of life where, if you're serving yourself
in the first half of life-- in the nicest way, but you're
trying to find out who you are and what your place
in the world is-- in the second half,
there should be, really, a natural move towards serving
something bigger than you. And that's how we-- and that's,
often, your kids, for example. And there should be
something like that, because if you're 60 and
ambitious, it sits a bit odd. So what was your question? I've completely forgotten
what you just said. MATT BRITTIN: I just--
what makes you happy? DERREN BROWN: What
makes me happy? Yeah, that's right, thank you. So what I find increasingly
now is that thing-- finding the thing
that's bigger than you, and throwing yourself
into that thing, right? That's how we find meaning. And the more I do that,
the happier I find I am. So writing a book at the moment. I do [INAUDIBLE]. I paint [INAUDIBLE]. I [INAUDIBLE] are involved
in their project-- again, delightful. So I find if I don't have that,
that tends to bring me down. So finding a thing
that's bigger than you. And I think a certain-- that sort of midlife thing
that people go through is generally about that. It's just relating
a little differently to what's in your life
and finding those things that are no longer about you. It's like you've
slain the dragon, but now, you've got to
rescue the princess, in mythical terms,
what's going on. We need to find our
princess to rescue. MATT BRITTIN: And you mentioned
the sort of second half, first half of life. I won't presume as to
which half you're in. I think I'll admit I'm probably
just into the second half. DERREN BROWN: 49,
but [INAUDIBLE].. And thank you, yes. MATT BRITTIN: OK, we're
a couple of years apart, but I'm just the other side. So any advice you'd
give the younger Derren? So the Derren who
is at university, trying to be a lawyer,
but really wanting to get into magic-- well, that kind of
time-- what would you tell that younger self? DERREN BROWN: Going back to that
Stoic model of things you can control and things you can't,
I think any sort of pursuit of success, whatever that
is, the only things you can control-- and therefore
this makes this a good model for understanding success-- is talent and energy. You can control your talent
and your energy to an extent, and those are the
things that you develop. So if you've got all the
talent, but you're not really getting it out there in the
world, and no one's seeing it, it's not going to go very far. And if you've got all the
self-promotional energy but no talent to back
it up, again, it's not going to ultimately
serve you that much. But those are two things
that you can focus on. The rest of it--
what people think, and whether you get the lucky
gig, and the phone call, and the rest of it-- is not under your control. It's not your job to try
and control those things, because you can't, and those
things will get in the way. So you have to let
those things go. And that means that
it becomes a journey, and a relationship to
something that you love, and all of those things. And I think that is the
only way of seeing it. Talent is what things look
like from the outside. The inside, experience
is just a process and a load of forgiving and
failures and false starts. And you have to not
confuse what something looks like on the outside
to what it is inside. So finding that-- MATT BRITTIN: Right, so
you'd say to younger Derren, think about talent and energy. You've got too much of one,
not enough of the other. What's your opinion? DERREN BROWN: You
just [INAUDIBLE] there's a secret to success. MATT BRITTIN: Right,
just those, OK. DERREN BROWN:
[INAUDIBLE] energy. The rest of it,
you could pick up. Don't worry about
the rest of it. Just focus on those things. But that tends to, then,
bring with it a sense of, this will be a journey. It will be an ongoing
relationship to something that, hopefully, I have. And I think that's important. MATT BRITTIN: Fantastic. I want to start taking some
questions from our audience, and the first one is
up here from Gemma. What advice would you give
about the current situation and the stories we tell
ourselves about that? Already, these questions
are better than mine, so it's a great question, Gemma. DERREN BROWN: Yeah, it
is a great question. Again, I think it
seems to be coming out in a lot is the altruistic
behavior that comes out of situations like
this, tend to produce. If you ignore some of the
news stories, we are driven-- these kind of situations do
bring out the best in people. As long as we're not fighting
for food and stuff like that; then, it's different. But in general, facing
these kind of crises, it brings out the best. So I think, again,
just reducing panic. You don't need to pay
attention to the news. You could just-- we can
turn all that stuff off. We'll focus on the
important stuff. And realizing that we're
all sharing in something, and it's very rare in live
that that's really played out-- how the things that isolate
us are exactly the things that join us up, as I said. That's really being played
out now in a very literal way, and I think it's worth
paying attention to that. Normally, our feelings of fear
or loneliness, or whatever, we just think that's us-- some
sort of real mismatched part of ourselves. The reality is, everyone
feels like that, [INAUDIBLE] most of the time. So I think leaning
into that, seeing how we're joined up for
this, is a very helpful way, and paying attention to all
the weirdly good stuff that's coming out of it. MATT BRITTIN: You
quoted a couple of times the modern story of
William Irving and his thought about if there was
nobody else in the world, and you could do
anything you wanted to, what would you do when
no one else is watching? I wonder whether the
situation is a bit like that. I've observed myself,
like how I dress for my business calls, what
am I spending my time doing, am I bothered about how my
hair looks, or whatever. You think there's
something in that? Obviously very sensitive, yes. DERREN BROWN: No, it's true. It's an interesting
thought exercise. If everybody disappeared and
it was just you, all the things you just wouldn't bother doing. You wouldn't bother
how you looked. You'd want to live in, probably,
a small, cozy, warm place than a big, fashionable--
everything starts to change. We realize how much we're
doing to impress others without realizing
that was really so much of our motivation. So yes, and I think that does
not come out in these times-- where are our priorities,
and how much-- this whole thing about
working remotely like this. MATT BRITTIN: How can
we get used to it? Let's have a look
at another question. So Dirk is asking, how important
is touch and physical presence to influencing people? How can you do it
in a remote world? That's an interesting
one as well. DERREN BROWN: It is a
good question, yeah. It reminds me of-- it certainly can be used. It gets used a lot in those
influential technologies like hypnosis, NLP,
and so on, where you can attach a feeling to-- as an emotion to--
a physical trigger. So typically, you induce
a feeling of confidence, or a feeling of
something, and then you touch somebody
on the shoulder. And you do that
a few times, they start to associate the
touch with that feeling. And I do this a lot in my
own shows, and I use sounds. It's a bit like listen to
a song when you broke up with somebody, then, five years
later, you hear the song again. It just takes you back. It's also important
in the medical world. It's something that
gets a bit lost. I mean, certainly, in
our country, in the UK, you normally have five or six
minutes with your doctor-- this is with the
National Health Service. And if that doctor
tells you, take it easy, relax, and try not
to get stressed, you're probably going to feel
a bit ignored when you go away. Whereas if you go see an
alternative practitioner, who, in terms of their medicine,
is pedaling nothing of value, but the fact you're
spending an hour, and being, probably, touched,
and being listened to, and going through
some kind of ritual, it completely changes the
effectiveness of something. And things tend to be
a lot more effective because your relationship
is very different. So yeah, but tell us about
the specific question. Yeah, obviously, it's rather
difficult to do remotely, but it can also be very creepy. Like a lot of those
NLP-type things, you achieve rapport
with somebody by mirroring their body language
and blinking at the same rate. I mean what they're born out of
is observing those things when they happen naturally. And sure enough, when
people are in close rapport, they do tend to blink and
breathe at the same rate, and they do tend to mirror
each other's language. But something is lost by saying,
and if you do those things, then people will feel
very comfortable with you. I read an interview
with one of the top guys in the world that does
that kind of stuff, and the interviewer was saying,
couldn't tell what it was. There was something
really creepy, and then I realized
that's what he was doing. And the whole of the rest
of the interview with him, saying, how weird. He's just copying
everything that I'm doing. So it's very, very
easy to fool yourself. I'm not always a big fan
of this kind of trick. MATT BRITTIN: So if you were
trying to do your show entirely remotely, do you change your
efficacy of manipulating or influencing people would
be reduced by 50%, or 80%? The touch-- DERREN BROWN: If I were trying
to do the same type of thing, but through a medium that was
completely different, yeah, I wouldn't expect
it to work at all. I'd completely
start from scratch. It would be interesting, really
interesting to do it, but yeah. MATT BRITTIN: OK,
great, thank you. Let's take another question. So Rachel saying, can you tell
us a story about something from your taxidermy collection? Excellent, I was
going to end on that. So let's have--
what have you got that you could tell us about? DERREN BROWN: Good
gracious, god. They're all ethically sourced. I should say this, because
some people really don't like the idea of taxidermy. So nothing has been hunted. They're all people's pets and
things that have died in zoos. MATT BRITTIN: Where
did it come from? What started you? Did somebody give you
something, and oh, I'm going to [INAUDIBLE]? DERREN BROWN: Yeah, I knew
somebody who collected them, and then he had a mistress
who also collected them. So I had these two quite
eccentric characters when I was younger
that started me off. And now, they're
just a great barrier against any unwanted
sexual attention. MATT BRITTIN: [LAUGHS] DERREN BROWN: Yeah, I placed
a fox out in the bins-- there are some trash cans
outside the house-- once where I knew the neighbors
would be coming into park, just so I could watch from a window. So I'd tipped a trash can
up and have it stood there, and then go watch
from the window to see how long they
would pause in the car and wait for the fox to move-- which would take a long time. And it did. [LAUGHS] It took them 20 minutes
[INAUDIBLE] from getting out. MATT BRITTIN: OK. DERREN BROWN: Yeah, not
a lot of funny stories associated with taxidermy. Apart from I've been
blow-drying them. I suppose that's kind
of strange, isn't it? I realized they've been
gathering dust over the years, and dust attracts moths. The moths destroy them. So I've been going
around with a hair dryer during this lockdown period,
coiffuring dead animals, [INAUDIBLE]. MATT BRITTIN: Yeah, but
we've all got cleaner houses than we once had. So there you go, Rachel. There's a couple of
stories about taxidermy-- an interesting use
in life as well. DERREN BROWN: [INAUDIBLE]
pass them off as your own. MATT BRITTIN: Let's try and
take a couple more questions before we close. So here's Peter saying, so many
self-help books and business books are written
by the winners. What worked for them
may not work for others, and they could just
have been lucky. How do we identify
universal factors? Another really good
question, thank you. DERREN BROWN: That's a
really, really good question. It's really worth talking
about for a second. So again, this is
part of the problem of the optimistic model. What we hear again and again
is believe in yourself, ignore the haters, pay no
attention to the naysayers, and just commit to
this vision you have. And the stories we
read again, and again, and again are people that have
done that and have won out. And they're amazing stories. That's also a perfect recipe
for catastrophic failure. Blindness to feedback, but
you don't read the stories where the business failed. They're not [INAUDIBLE]. And it [INAUDIBLE]. So [INAUDIBLE] real
problem, because it's a real thing that's in the air,
but all it's doing is saying, blame yourself. Blame yourself if
things don't go right. So yeah, so much of it is luck. So much of it is luck. It's the other force
that's just at work as we move along the x equals y line. And I've yet to read a
biography that says that-- autobiography, rather, that
says, yeah, I got lucky, but along the way, here are
a few things that I learned. We form a narrative. When we need a narrative that
supports a sense that we're a hero, we want to be the
central hero of our story. And it's, how do
you not do that? I just wouldn't read
the books, or just take them with a pinch
of salt, and only take those things on board that
feel like they might help your own sense of authorship. But 50% of it, at least, is just
pure chance and happenstance, because that's the
nature of that dialogue. It's a 50/50. MATT BRITTIN: But it just
doesn't make such a good story, doesn't it? I mean, isn't that the reason? DERREN BROWN: [INAUDIBLE] MATT BRITTIN: So no one is
going to write a book say, look, I was basically lucky. There's nothing you
can learn from me. DERREN BROWN: Yeah, but
what you can learn from me-- because that doesn't sound a
very interesting point to end up-- but what you can learn
from me which is useful, life messy, and complex,
and active, and ambiguous. Life is full of ambiguity. And the more we get
obsessed with our truth, my truth versus your truth, my
story, [INAUDIBLE] my story, the more we forget that, that we
are just excluding a whole lot of complexity, like-- it just is. For everything that's true,
the other side is also true. What comes out, whether it's
left versus right or whatever, the truth is never
one side or the other. It's in the dialogue
between the two. It's when dialogue breaks
down that we have problems. So that's actually
what comes out of it. Somebody tells a certain story. It's great for them, but that
isn't how the world works. It's complex and messy. And I think just
slowly, that's something that needs to drip in. And then, we've got a much
greater chance of understanding things like happiness when
we don't try and reduce them to easy nouns. They're not. They're complex, active verbs. MATT BRITTIN: Great. Let's see if we've got time
for one more question, if you can stay with us. Is that OK? DERREN BROWN: Oh, of course. MATT BRITTIN: Filip, hi there. Do you see value in learning
more about psychology from books to achieve
personal happiness? Did practicing
mentalism help you get a better understanding
of how we think and reason? DERREN BROWN: Yeah, I think
that we're all different. We're all geared
differently, and somebody may benefit from a
model of happiness that's about total
emotional engagement. Stoicism is famously
the opposite of that, and that works for me. So yeah, I think if it
interests you, you read it, and you explore, and
you find out what works. I have a real bias in
terms of going back to the ancient sources
of these things, because they really
thought about [INAUDIBLE].. And all the literature
is really accessible. It's an easy read. Doesn't sound like it's going
to be, but it really is. And it's harder nowadays. Because there's such
a cult of self-help, it's difficult to
pull apart what's real and what's really backed up
by any kind of real research, from what is just
more stuff telling us to believe in ourselves. MATT BRITTIN: We mentioned
down on the bottom, I found his sort of life stuff,
which there's lots on YouTube, but also, he's written books
that are extremely accessible, and the wisdom of Plato,
and Aristotle, and Socrates is incredibly relevant today. DERREN BROWN: Yeah, absolutely. There's a wealth of stuff there
which is really, really worth learning. If not my own book,
"Happy," any sort of introductory book
on stoicism will just present this very
compelling model, which is just different
to what we're all told to buy into nowadays. And I think it
ultimately helps us. Even if you just take on
board a certain amount of it-- I just say, I don't
think any one thing is the answer to anything. It doesn't have a lot
to say about kindness. It doesn't have a lot to say
about community and so on. And also the value of that
anxiety-- that's another thing. Anxiety, at some
level, is important. If you don't get
anxious about something, how do you know
it needs changing? It's only when you know
your job isn't right or your relationship isn't
right that you change your job or change your relationship. So not fighting against
anxiety, and thinking again that you must have failed,
but letting it sit, letting it have a place,
is really important, because, again, life is
difficult and complex, and that's fine. MATT BRITTIN: Life is difficult
and complex, and that's fine. But also, more or
less everything is going to be absolutely fine. And that seems like
that is your philosophy. You seem very calm, and there's
no single answer about things, but you've certainly put some
of this stuff into practice. So everything's absolutely fine? DERREN BROWN: I think so. We'll form-- like Brexit,
we went through Brexit in this country,
and it's mayhem. But at the same time, we'll
form a story about it. If you didn't want it, you'll
form a story that says that. If you did want it, you'll
form a story that says that. And things will just--
we'll keep going, and we'll all form our
stories, and largely, things will just be fine, and
we'll get on with it. That's OK. It doesn't have
to be complacent. That can just be
a helpful route, a helpful starting
point to then work from. And the stoics, I should say,
they were movers and shakers. They were politicians. They were very active people. So it shouldn't be a
recipe for complacency. MATT BRITTIN: Thank you so much
for spending the time with us today and talking to us. I've thoroughly enjoyed
reading the book and anchoring myself to
some of the ancient ideas, as well as the way
you've interpreted them-- so entertaining. So a big thank you for
making time for us. DERREN BROWN: Oh,
this was so much fun. Thank you. Thank you very
much for having me, and I'll get back to
writing the next one now. Thank you [INAUDIBLE]. MATT BRITTIN: So we'll
think about focusing on talent, and energy,
and the stuff we can do. And I think that those ideas
about the stories we tell are super powerful. So thank you. Good luck with the writing,
with the hairdrying, and with the lockdown. And we look forward to
seeing you back onstage and back on our TV
screens very soon. DERREN BROWN: [INAUDIBLE] MATT BRITTIN: So
thank you very much. DERREN BROWN: All right. [INAUDIBLE] MATT BRITTIN: And thanks to
everybody for joining us. That was our first
virtual Talks at. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you, and goodbye. DERREN BROWN: Bye-bye. [MUSIC PLAYING]
