"Mind reading" - how is this done?

If you find yourself seriously considering hypotheses like micromuscle reading or subliminal suggestion, then that's probably because the magician has managed to slip a false assumption past your defences!

The subliminal suggestion part isn't that implausible a priori, though. Suppose I first tell you to think of some tool, after which I tell you to think of some color.

Znal crbcyr jvyy svefg nafjre "unzzre", orpnhfr gung'f n cebgbglcvpny gbby, naq gura nafjre "erq", orpnhfr obgu jbeqf ner nffbpvngrq jvgu pbzzhavfz naq gur zragvba bs n unzzre cevzrf nffbpvngrq pbaprcgf.

While I'm not sure of how well that will work here, once back in junior high school I had happened to read that and a list of other priming questions from somewhere, and tried them out on my classmates. I didn't always get the expected answer, but I did get it more often than not.

My favorite was one that only works in Finnish - asking people to say "kuusi" for several times in a row, which is a word that means either the number six, or a spruce tree. Then I would ask them to name a vegetable, and often they would say "carrot" - which happens to have a similar shape as the popular way of drawing cartoon spruce trees.

I got an "uploader has not made this video available in your country" message for the first video, but your "explanations" for the other two aren't valid. The first is just a fancy way of accusing Derren Brown of using a stooge, which is given as not being a valid explanation, and once we entertain this possibility, the question becomes vacuous. It's like if someone asks you "Here's a chess position, how do you force checkmate?" and your answer is "I'd point a gun at my opponent's head and order him to move his queen out of the way". There's lateral thinking, and then there's just refusing to accept basic assumptions that are necessary for there to be a puzzle in the first place. Your explanation for the third video is similarly invalid. You have to assume that the video is an accurate account of the encounter, just as you have to assume, when watching a play, that any character that is declared dead by the another character is, in fact, dead. A puzzle where the "solution" consists of rejecting the assumption that the person telling the puzzle to you is accurately presenting the nature of the puzzle is not a puzzle.

"I have two coins in my pocket. The value of them add up to 35 cents, and neither of them is a quarter. What are they?" "I don't know." "A dime and a quarter." "But you said neither of them is a quarter." "Yeah, I lied."

I watched #3 again and I'm pretty convinced you're right. It is strange, seeing it totally differently once I have a theory to match.

I no longer have the book for reference to recall any of the exact techniques, but the author developed an original trick for an international magic competition involved not only misdirection techniques, but original math developed in collaboration with a statistician, and the manual precision to perfectly shuffle a deck repeatedly so that it retains its original order after four shuffles.

Well, there's this. Not an example of mentalism, but a card trick from earlier in his career. Everything in it is basically sleight of hand and misdirection, but there are so many different techniques in there, strung together with such precision, that it would be extremely difficult to replicate without a huge amount of training.

I don't know if this is the kind of thing Desrtopa was talking about.

Ok, I should not have written "clearly".

Yes, the ones where he gets people to do something weird on their own are tough ones. As you point out (and hypnotists would agree) , selection is very important here. But I think it is likely that the selection process does not only take place before the show, but also after the show. I mean that he probably tried this with 20 people and it only worked with one, who is the only one we see on TV (if you think this is too expensive, watch "The System" linked above).

But what does the selection process consists of? Derren can state that the subject has no record of crimes or violence. Could be a misdirection. Also he could use other methods to make them do something and convince them afterwards that it was because of all the links and hidden messages he placed on the way there. Look at the Advertising Agency Trick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQXe1CokWqQ). Do you think it is not possible that he used secret cameras in the room to observe what they came up with, then copied it somewhat and replaced his original prediction envelope with the new one? The scene is cut, could happen anything. One of the camera crew members (who is never in the view) could switch the envelope. Also, an assistant could go into the room right before Derren and the camera reenters to announce that the time is up and exchange it while they are distracted somehow. So many other ways to do it. Then film the journey afterwards and put it together. They won't be able to tell for sure that the posters were not there on their way to the show. Note that you only see the signs on their own and it looks like they were filmed on their actual cab ride. But you never see one of the advertisement guys together with one of the dominant pictures in the same picture. The only three links where you see the link and one of the guys in the same picture is the zoo, the "creature" on the truck that is parked in front of their cab when it stops and the angel wings. But the zoo and the "creature" are kind of obvious to predict and broadly interpretable. I would say they included as many potential signs as possible along their journey. But it is strange that they only show these three in the same shot with one of the guys. They just got lucky on the zoo one, as it is quite specific on what they came up with. The angel wings are even on the wrong side of the carried board and doesn't face them when they enter. Strange? Also the camera is speeded up right after they go through the door. Could be an easy cut (he used camera trick in other occasions) It looks like you see them inside the building through the revolving door. Just put a bald guy there, it will look exactly the same to the TV audience.

Or the shopping mall trick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcURS3tHhWo). Having a lot of stooges in the crowd putting their hands up would help a lot to make others also put their hands up. Then you only interview the non-stooges of course.

Back to the armed robbery case. I'm still not convinced, that the hidden messages he presents are the only explanation for why the guy did it. If it is the way as Derren says it is, I think he used many more messages and incentives than he exposes on the show. Maybe he also hypnotized him before he let him walk along that street and told him to do so, but the guy doesn't remember it for the moment he is asked on camera why he did it. With an easy subject, such things should be possible (again, selection). Memory is very susceptible to hypnosis (note that I use hypnosis in an all-natural sense). I just saw Derren telling false explanations on TV so many times, I don't believe it so easily. In Derren's case, it is extremely important to build up a reputation that his stuff really works, so people think it very unlikely that he would do the following tricks in another way than he says. Again, I think his best trick is to convince us that he does not use cheap/expensive/extremely complicated tricks.

Yes, but the emphasis is on the psychological showmanship. The shortest description of the trick would be "Derren painted a picture from the imagination of an audience member just by holding their wrists and asking them to think about it" but the trick is that the magic is already over when he forced the celebrity's name.

Birthday and names can come from ticket data.

Even easier... Prior to this, he had asked audience members to write down any questions they had on cards he handed out and seal them in envelopes, write their seat number on the envelope and put the envelopes in that bowl on the stage.

I'm presuming the cards asked for more data than just the question. They probably also asked for birthdates, and some additional information (like "Anything interesting that happened to you recently"). He just needed someone to go up there pretending to drop a card in that bowl, and to instead pick up a few cards and feed him the information through an earpiece concealed in the bandages.

Anyway the "Oracle act" is a classic mentalist trick with many variations. Google "Q and A routine". Derren Brown performs it with much more flair than most, but he's not doing something completely unknown here.

I'll note that the act is from a stage show that is filmed in its hour-long entirety, so its unlikely that these are just snippets of longer conversations. Also, he specifies beforehand that he doesn't use stooges or have any prior contact with his audience. I doubt he's lying about this.

People wipe out memories of their dreams quite frequently soon after waking up. It not something very mystical.

Post-hypnotic suggestion is also a pretty fancy word. If I tell you to wear a red shirt tomorrow and you indeed follow the suggestion and wear a red shirt you can call that post-hypnotic suggestion. I say something and you do something in the future.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthypnotic_amnesia

"memory wiping" might not be the best term for it, since the memory is still in there, just really hard to access, but it's definitely a real effect.

I've also personally used hypnosis to achieve the effects on friends of mine (who I'm certain weren't just pretending), as well as to many strangers on omegle (who could have been pretending, but based on what I know about hypnosis I doubt they were).