No doubt he isn’t the only guy with the skills either. Wonder how many people like him work for the government and media!

TBH not that many. Too much effort and resources needed in most cases.

Media regulators are very strict [even today] about what can be shown of “hypnosis” etc (in case someone is actually hypnotised whilst watching TV, where they could be alone and not have the backup that the people on stage have which stops them coming to any potential harm)… they have also banned a lot of the “subliminal” techniques to stop advertisers using them.

And contrary to urban folklore “mind manipulation” techniques are very rarely needed in modern European government work (perhaps used by the military and security forces in extreme situations) – much “spin” and media manipulation is merely clever interpretation or presentation of actual facts in the way most favourable to the government.

OTOH The stunts Derren brown does are commonplace in the world of conjuring/magic (not the real occult stuff, I mean paul daniels style..)
As a youth I wanted to be a magician and studied many of the techniques.

The larger stunts darren brown pulls are called “illusions” as they are more complicated and take more setting up compared to card tricks, pulling small ground animals from headgear etc (I recently thought that producing a live rat from a baseball cap would be a good trick, but the technique actually involves rather non-PC treatment of the animals which is why you don’t see much of this on telly today…)

Although he is clearly a good showman his “powers” do also come from him and his researchers choosing the right sort of people who will go along with it (and equally important, people who will not be inclined to chin him or any of the production team when they find out they had been duped)!

It would be far more difficult on people who are less trusting and more cynical (like myself), although the mind control may eventually work with “harder cases” (such as when used in a military context in prisoner interrogation) – the subject would need to be “broken” by various means such as sleep/food/sensory deprivation or the administration of drugs beforehand. Of course Mr Brown could not do this for an entertainment show, or he would be arrested!

So much of his work depends on “set and setting” and the appropriate choice of people, although he does use elements such as certain light frequencies (such as when he transported the bloke into the zombie video game). etc to induce certain states of mind.

Incidentally the techniques of what he does are actually fairly easy to research on the internet and elsewhere, although you would need a fairly good scientific brain and the willingness to read lots of long and complicated papers and reports.

Derrens skills are knowing how to use these techniques (without permanently fucking people up) – the use of them is not without danger.