talkmagic.co.uk

BBC4
8pm Tue 27th Dec 2011

From the Radio Times:

After the intellectual torpor of Christmas and Boxing Day, here’s a reviver, as the series that is as much a fixture of the festive telly season as Doctor Who takes a look at how our brains work. The man delivering the lively lectures is psychologist Professor Bruce Hood. Today, he builds a virtual brain using audience volunteers, plays some guessing games with the mind, and asks what brainwaves look like, how fast is a neuron and why does the brain create its own version of reality?

One of the programs has a magician.
Not sure who, or which program.

According to http://www.magicweek.co.uk it's the final one of three *(first one tonight):

Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2011
8pm on Thursday 29th December (1 hour) on BBC 4.

Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking? Have you ever seen a face in a piece of burnt toast, or given your car a name? Why do you feel pain when someone else is hurt? Why are people so obsessed with other people? In the last of this year's Christmas Lectures, Professor Bruce Hood investigates how our brains are built to read other people's minds. With a little help from a baby, a robot and a magician, Bruce uncovers what makes us truly human.

Also repeated at 2am the following day.

And readers of Naked Mentalism III will see that I wasn't talking nonsense! This stuff is real, not theory.

Good first program. I know its supposed to be for kids, but I found it very entertaining, and it kept my interest all the way.

So, in order to work out which hand has a coin/walnut in it.... you simply need an MRI scanner and look to see which (opposite) side of the brain is being triggered.
I wonder if I can get an portable MRI scanner and DVD instructions for that effect for £29.99 ?

The pulsing magnet to disorientate speech and hand movements. Hmmm I wonder if that is safer than a tazer ?

Not sure I would recommend kids taking a magnet to a TV screen though !

No matter how safe it is, I wouldn't trust anyone to mess with my brain like they did last night! Excellent show as usual.

Who the hell was that appalling magician?

She had gazzo cups and balls and was doing a version of the gazzo routine, but so very very very very badly. Bad vanishes, horrible loads. Just embarrassing. I thought someone had leant her the props and she was a researcher on the show who had been learning for a few hours, then I googled her and she claims to actually be a magician.



Love the lectures though. Very very very good.

I was hoping there'd be more about anthropomorphism and the illusion of control. Never mind.

I don't get off on criticising performances. Bound to say so.

She;s on Gazzo's cups and balls DVD as a complete beginner, he teaches her and in turn he teaches you. Looks like she went from the first lesson straight to the studio

Good set of lectures but I remember them stretching the entire christmas period in the afternoons.

Mancunian Lee wrote:She;s on Gazzo's cups and balls DVD as a complete beginner, he teaches her and in turn he teaches you. Looks like she went from the first lesson straight to the studio

Lol. Indeed it does!

She was pretty bad and totally unoriginal.

I started watching the last one but got bored. If the magician at the start of the show doing the change of the 5 pound note to a 10 pound note was the same one doing the cups and balls, her name is Billie and she's often seen busking magic on the streets of Bath. She usually does alright there.

She goes by the name of Billy Kidd. She was the girl who did the o2 advert a while back.

http://www.billykiddshow.com/home/Welcome.html

having watched her promo video, Its clear to see that the time constraints, the positioning, and the young audience did her no favours what so ever.

Aren't the Christmas Lectures performed live?

I think anyone would be a bit shaky on their first live TV performance. Personally I thought she did pretty well.

-Stacy