A talk about hypnosis and mind control with Martin S. Taylor, a well known British hypnotist (hypnotism.co.uk). Martin is known for his stage hypnosis act but also for educating people about hypnosis and removing the illusions and mystique surrounding it.
There are some people who make astounding claims that they can control and manipulate people using hypnosis; that they can get people to do things against their will and their ethics. Some of these people claim they can do this quickly, within minutes, and that they can teach you to do the same. There are clearly some impressive things you can do with hypnosis (as Martin will attest) — but there are also clearly many unethical and deceptive people in the NLP/hypnosis/influence space who exaggerate what you can do with it. In this talk, Martin and I try to separate fact from fiction — reality from bullshit.
Topics discussed include: How did Martin get into hypnosis? What’s going on in a stage hypnosis act? What psychological factors lead to people acting in unusual and extreme ways in those settings? Is there such a thing as a hypnotic “trance”? Is it a special state? Martin’s thoughts on hypnosis used for therapy and self-help. MK Ultra and other government programs related to mind control and brainwashing. The importance of being skeptical about grand claims about hypnosis and mind control.
Episode links:
- YouTube (includes video)
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts
Resources related to or mentioned in this talk:
- Martin’s hypnosis site
- Another interview of Martin
- Book I recommend on MK Ultra “The Search for the Manchurian Candidate”
- Episode of my podcast: a talk with magician Anthony Barnhart
- Episode of my podcast on NLP and hypnosis, and why deceptive, low-quality practitioners/trainers can impress people and get good reviews
- Allegations against hypnotherapist John Connelly of inappropriate behaviors with patients
TRANSCRIPT
(Transcripts are automatically generated and will contain errors!)
Hello and welcome to the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood. This is a podcast aimed at better understanding other people, and better understanding ourselves.
This is an episode about hypnosis and trying to separate the real from the fake. Since I was young I’ve had a lot of questions about hypnosis; what exactly is possible with it; what’s bullshit and what’s real. It’s actually pretty hard to get answers to these questions via online research, from what I’ve found, because there are so many people who peddle hypnosis and influence bullshit who speak in deceptive and exaggerated ways about what’s possible with hypnosis.
But in this episode I talk to someone who I think will help us separate fact from fiction. His name is Martin S. Taylor; he’s a stage hypnotist but also someone who approaches hypnosis with a lot of realism; he calls what he does “hypnotism without hypnosis” because, during his shows, he transparently explains the psychological factors behind how so-called hypnosis works, and still gets the results associated with stage hypnosis shows. When I was asking around for someone who’d be good to talk to about hypnosis and separate fact from fiction, his name came up a couple times from psychology researchers as someone who’d be good to talk to. Also perhaps interesting; if you know who Derren Brown is, Derren got the idea for his act from Martin. You can learn more about Martin Taylor at his site: https://www.hypnotism.co.uk/; you can watch some videos of his stage act there.
If you’ve been following my podcast, you know that I’ve been examining the many lies and exaggerations of someone named Chase Hughes, who promotes himself as an expert at influencing people. My investigation into Chase’s immense amount of bullshit was the reason I initially reached out to Martin a few months ago. To give you a sense of the kinds of things Chase Hughes peddles, I’ll read a little bit from his website (https://web.archive.org/web/20141012081856/http://www.chasehughes.com/covert-psychology.html ).
The CIA developed enhanced mind control methods as a matter of public record
The CIA programmers experiments ranging from programming sexual slaves to creating hypnotic assassins, even involving teenage girls
The methods they used were elementary at best
The Ellipsis Manual contains WORLD-FIRST information available no where else on planet Earth
A person CAN be hypnotized against their will
A person can and will perform extremely violent and anti-social acts under hypnosis, without their consent or knowledge and will disregard safety, morals and law
Using the Ellipsis Manual gives an operator complete access to the psychological compromise of almost any human being they encounter
The Ellipsis Manual teaches operators a world-first set of methods ranging from covert creation of multiple personality disorder to developing mental slavery scenarios, wherein a subject will disregard all beliefs
Farther down this page it reads:
A subject can be controlled for behavioral engineering within as little as three minutes.
A deliberately-induced multiple personality (dissociative personality) can be created in less than an hour.
Farther down it reads:
From the first day, you will be able to read the thoughts of people you interact with, and you will eventually learn to control them as well. This is most assuredly a life-changing experience that will continue to grow with you forever. The feeling that comes with knowing your words will work like covert instruments of psychological control is an incredible and powerful feeling.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the many amazing, astounding things Chase claims he can do and teach people to do. I have a previous episode examining Chase’s many lies and unethical behaviors, which helps make some sense of these kinds of claims.
And Chase is still promoting these ideas to some large audiences. Chase was recently on Joe Rogan, which to me represented one of many amazing low points for Rogan in terms of guest selection. Rogan clearly doesn’t care much about vetting his guests for obvious red flags and unethical behaviors.
Chase: “All I’m doing is get you to comply, comply, comply, comply. And that’s just the first, like 30 seconds. I’ve got you to comply with me 15 times. We haven’t even started the hypnosis thing yet. And so it’s just you’re, you’re not aware that you’re becoming compliant. You just think I’m going through some motions”
Rogan: “it’s just hijacking the mammal brain.”
Chase: “Yeah. So it’s compliance, compliance, compliance.”
…
Rogan: “And it’s not like just guessing. It’s like there’s real programs that they were involved in that were absolutely doing that kind of work.”
Chase: “hundred percent.”
Rogan: “Yeah. And that’s really crazy to think of.”
Chase: “ And I, and it’s, it gets deeper, like there, there are step-by-step programs they have for creating a Manchurian candidate.”
Joe Rogan: “Okay. Like what’s step one? How do you know when you can get a guy to be a Manchurian candidate? Can you do anybody or do you have to get a vulnerable guy? Do you have to get a guy with a family?”
Chase: “I don’t want to say everybody. I think some of this could be misused”
Chase also talks to Rogan about being able to create multiple personalities in people, which he has referenced on his site.
Chase: “And then another time they give somebody what they watch a gun being loaded, they split the personality and like do some kind of slide of hand to unload the firearm.
And then they’re told to like, pull this firearm out and go shoot this person in the face. And when the trigger is given to you, like a guy tapping his pencil or something and they do it.”
Rogan: “and this is just hypnosis that caused them, they’re not using any psychedelic drugs or psychotropic medicine or”
Chase: “It’s easier than you think for some people. Right. High authority on one end from of the person doing the program and high suggestibility on the other, then your skills don’t need to be that good. You don’t need to manufacture suggestibility. If you, if they say, here’s this guy, I need to split this guy and he’s not very suggestible, then your skills have to be high.
But if I have high suggestibility in the target, high authority in the person doing the programming, I have ultimate results.”
“I mean, I may be the number one guy in the country on the mind control stuff. I think I probably am.”
…
So that’s some of the stuff Martin and I will talk about; these kinds of over-the-top, amazing claims about hypnosis and what’s possible with it. Because there are just many people peddling these kinds of things. Chase is just one of many in the neuro-linguistic programming and hypnosis space who tries to promote such skills and trainings. Here’s one random example I found on a quick search: https://www.udemy.com/course/conversational-hypnosis-covert-secrets/?srsltid=AfmBOoqCrSvk7oH4ktYSGtJkf_V1pX8A6R4h1vseS6ZA8hiQ4eQ05pI5
A video course for $44.95 by someone named Scott Jensen titled “Hypnosis: Covert Hypnosis Mastery”. The description reads “The A-Z guide to use COVERT hypnosis to create hidden hypnotic trances with everyone you speak to in seconds.”
Here’s a course at a site coverthypnosis.co.uk/:
INTER-PERSONAL NEURAL SYNCHRONY = Covert Hypnosis, Conversational Hypnotism, Influence, Persuasion, Negotiation, Rapid Seduction & NLP Mind Control Secrets with Hypnotist Dr. Jonathan Royle & Behavioural Analyst Mr. Paul Gutteridge
Farther down it reads:
Dr. Jonathan Royle – The British Bad Boy of Hypnosis, a name synonymous with hypnotic mastery. With decades of experience, Dr. Royle has unearthed the deepest secrets of the human mind. He is your guide to the mesmerizing world of covert influence.
Mr. Paul Gutteridge – An acclaimed Behavioural Analyst, Body Language Expert, and Consultant in Covert Persuasion & Influence Techniques. Paul’s expertise is drawn from his close association with top-notch intelligence agencies, equipping you with insider knowledge of persuasion.
Some of the things will be seen as clearly silly and over-the-top by most savvy people; not much different than ordering X-ray specs from the back of a comic book.
But, at the same time, clearly some impressive things are possible with hypnosis. That is obviously true. Even stage hypnosists can do impressive things, as we all have likely seen or heard about. Martin will talk about how he got impressive results his first time trying to hypnotize someone, to his own surprise. This can make it hard to discern fact from fiction. Which is where the questions come in: Some impressive things are possible so why not these other impressive things? What’s real and what’s bullshit? Where are the lines drawn? How do we know someone making big claims about hypnosis and their abilities is likely full of shit and who’s not? How do we know someone is being ethical or if they’re likely trying to exploit us? Those are the kinds of things I wanted to talk to Martin about.
** I’ll read from Martin’s site:
Martin S Taylor has revolutionised stage hypnosis with an astonishing new approach – hypnotism without hypnosis.
He has performed shows at universities and colleges for over twenty years and his new venture – lecturing to schools on the psychology of suggestion – is already massively popular, too.
…
A Hypnotist Who Doesn’t Use Hypnosis?
Let’s just say that again in case it didn’t sink in. Martin Taylor is a hypnotist, works as a hypnotist, has been a stage hypnotist for over fifteen years. Yet he doesn’t use hypnosis. So what’s going on?
Recently psychologists have dramatically revised their ideas about how hypnosis works, and the modern theory is that of social compliance. *** Broadly, this means that there is no altered state when you are hypnotised – no trance, no sleep, and nothing mysterious at all. Hypnosis simply works because the subjects believe it will.
On stage, it works through the hypnotist’s skill in combining three factors:
And then he goes on to talk about those three factors: Suggestion, peer pressure, and simple obedience.
He has many reviews for his act and for his educational lectures his site. One review from a teacher read that Martin quote “first explains his profession in astonishingly open terms, but having stripped away much of the false mystique, proceeds to elicit amazing reactions from his volunteers and send the audience into hysterics.”
Okay here’s the talk with Martin S. Taylor:
i Martin. Thanks for joining me.
Martin S. Taylor: Great pleasure to be here.
Zach Elwood: So I just wanna start with, uh, I wanna make sure you’re not going to, you know, try to hypnotize me or control me during this, uh, talk. That’s not a, a risk I should be worried about.
Martin S. Taylor: I don’t think so.
Zach Elwood: Okay.
Okay. Just wanna make sure. Alright. Uh, sorry. Okay. Maybe you could give a, a, a summary about how you wound up in the, in the hypnosis world, how you got interested in that and how you got to doing that.
Martin S. Taylor: Sure. Uh, you want the full story, the whole
Zach Elwood: maybe like a, maybe like a brief, the
Martin S. Taylor: edited version, you
Zach Elwood: know, few minute, the edited
Martin S. Taylor: version.
Okay. Uh, um, I started out, I worked as a magician. I got into magic when I was an undergrad and became moderately proficient at sleight of hand. When I did my post-grad degree. I moved to London and I was doing magic at parties. I got invited to a lot of parties to do magic and I found there was another guy, a guy called Colin.
Who was doing informal hypnosis on people, and we got invited as a, a kind of double act. I did the magic, he did the hypnosis and I watched what he learned and I thought it was interesting and cool. I wasn’t quite sure that I believed everything that he was doing. I wasn’t quite as credulous as he was, but it was fascinating.
Um, fast forward a couple of years, I was, I was chatting up a girl in her room, um, and I, so yes, I know about magic and I, I know about hypnosis and she said, what do you know about hypnosis? Oh, I’ve always wanted to be hypnotized. You, you’ve got hypnotize me. Come on. So you can’t really back down at that stage and say, well, look, I’ve, I’ve never actually done this before.
Uh, so I, I thought, well, I’ve gotta give this a go. And I got in my friend and flatmate Charles as a, as a kind of witness just in case anything went wrong. And I did all the stuff that I’d seen Colin do, and I got a little ambulance and swung it in front of her eyes for 20 minutes and told her she was getting very sleepy and her eyes closed and she appeared to be asleep.
And we thought, this is amazing. And we thought, can we give her suggestions? And, you know, standard stuff, your nose will itch. And she rubs her nose and you know, when you open your eyes, you’ll have forgotten your name. And she opened her eyes and she didn’t know who she was. And we had to hypnotize her again to get her to remember her name.
And we thought, this is amazing. So, um, the one, one instance at the end of it, we weren’t quite sure what we were doing and we hypnotized this, this girl, and we said, um, I, I said, I dunno, when you were, when you open your eyes, you’ll suddenly have this uncontrollable urge to, um, and I looked at Charles, and Charles looked at me, and we both looked at this attractive girl in front of us who we could apparently make her do anything she wanted to.
And we thought, no, no, no, no. This is going too far. The same thought had gone through both our minds, but, uh, but we decided we were gonna be ethical about it even then. But I spent the rest of that summer, I was so fascinated that I persuaded anyone I could persuade to sit still. And, uh, I, I got them to go through this induction procedure with the ambulance and very sleepy and 20 minutes, half an hour.
And there was some success. I found some people it worked on. When college resumed, um, some friends had organized a guest lecture. They were, uh, launching a big lecture society and there was, uh, a famous engineer, a guy called Eric Laith. Weight was due to give a lecture on gyroscopes, which everybody knew about was really popular, and they knew it would pull a huge crowd.
Um, but on the morning of the lecture, Laith Wade phone up, he said, I’m terribly sorry. I’ve got flu. I can’t do this talk. Um, my friend sort of panicked and said, well, what are we gonna do? We’ve got this huge audience coming up. This is our big lecture for the start of our lecture season. Martin, you are the entertain you are, you are the magician.
Get out there and do something hypnotism this thing you’ve been doing all summer. Oh, come on, get out and talk about hypnotism. So I thought, alright. So literally almost pushed out in front of a, a crowd of people and told, uh, that I would do electron hypnotism. So I. I sp I, I was used enough to performing in front of a crowd through the magic.
So I chatted about the history of hypnosis and some of the theory, and I thought, well, I can’t just leave it at that. These people want something spectacular. We’ve gotta give this a go. So I asked if there if there was anyone who wanted to volunteer. And an enormous rush about, about a third, the audience charged down the front.
So I went through this, again, 20 minute spiel about going into a trance, and it worked really well. There were loads and loads of them who were excellent subjects.
Chase Hughes: Hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: Um, the audience thought it was fantastic. I got invited back. It was written up in the college newspaper next day on banner, headline, lecture success.
Audience falls asleep. Uh, and uh, and I just got invited back and other schools got to hear about me, other colleges, and it, it eventually, when they made me redundant from my day job, I thought, well, let’s, let’s have a go. I can do this professionally.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: So that’s how I got into hypnosis.
Zach Elwood: So, uh, and maybe you could talk about how you, what is the hypnotism without hypnosis?
My understanding is that’s, you’re, you’re explaining it, uh, what it is even as you’re doing it and, and, uh, but it still works. But maybe you could talk about what Absolutely. What’s going on there.
Martin S. Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. That’s my take. Um, I got into this because, um, firstly, I, I, I had loved dealings with various skeptical magicians who, who were very, you know, they were skeptical about UFOs and alien abductions and water dowsing and spoon bending and hypnotism and hypnotism.
But, but I do that. That’s real. I know. And they said, no, it’s just people going along. It’s people are all right. That’s, let, let’s think about this. Let’s test this. And the thing that really swung it for me, I, um, I used to end my act. I still do, but I used to end my act by giving people a glass of water and telling them it would taste like whatever they wanted.
And people would take this thing and they’d drink it and they’d say, oh yes, it’s beer, it’s orange juice, it’s whiskey, it’s whatever. And I noticed after a while, something really odd, um, either they would all get drunk because they’re all drinking beer or whiskey or wine or whatever, or none of them would get drunk.
Now, both of these are entirely plausible responses. Either you think you’re drinking beer, so you get drunk, or part of you knows it’s only water, so you don’t, but it was odd that it worked the same on everybody. Not at the same, not not at different shows, but at any given show. Either everybody got drunk or nobody got drunk, even though I hadn’t said anything about drunkenness to them.
So I thought about this and realized there had to be something that was passing between them, some unspoken communication. So I decided to actually test this and I did a show where I’d hypnotized them, tell ’em they’d wake up and their water would be their favorite drink and they’re all drinking. And I realized as they were drinking that they’re, they’re drinks, but they were all gonna have to drive home.
And I thought, well, I can’t leave them like this. And you know, all driving home thinking they’re drunk. So as an aside, I said to the audience, and even though they think they’re drinking beer and whiskey, you watch because they’re only drinking water, none of them will get drunk and none of them did. Next show where they’re all students in the hall of residence.
They’re not driving anywhere. I tried it the other way. So if they’re all going down the line, drinking the beer and drinking the whiskey, and I say to the audience as an aside, not to the subjects, but I say to them, even though it’s only water they’re drinking, you’ll see them start to get drunk. And they did, they start to slur their words.
They’re staggering, they’re laughing at ridiculous things. And I discovered that I could influence what the effect of the, the, the drinks were having, even though I was giving the, the remarks as a, as an aside to the audience. This wasn’t even given to them under hypnosis, whatever that is. It was, it was just an aside.
So in the end, one day, I, I, I plucked up courage and I said, okay, we’re gonna do this absolutely straightforwardly. I will tell the audience in advance, I will tell the volunteers that there is no trance, that there is no sleep, there is no altered state, but it does just work through well understood psychological principles.
And it still worked every bit, but it, it, maybe it was only 90% as effective. Not a hundred percent. It was, you know, it, it, it was worked better if they thought there was a trance.
Zach Elwood: Right?
Martin S. Taylor: But. Basically 90% it was, it was just working. And that’s what I still do. I still now tell them the honest truth as I believe it, that there is no trance, there’s no need for the swinging watch or any of, any of that kind of rubbish because it is just suggestion, it is peer pressure, it is obedience to an authority figure.
And that’s what we can combine to produce the effects that, that we call hypnosis.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, I guess, uh, that’s always what’s been confusing to me and hard to get a handle on. Um, like the idea that people would seem to act in a different way and when questioned, like say they were questioned after a stage hypnosis, I mean, some of those people would say.
That they didn’t understand why they were doing those things. Yep. And it’s just kind of hard for me to wrap my head around that. ’cause I, I mean, me and probably other people, I’ve never been in a stage hypnosis situation, but I just imagine it’s really hard for me to imagine that I would do something like, go along with these things or do the things that they do on stage.
And maybe you could talk about like what are the, what do you see as the psychological factors that result in people. Doing the outlandish things and then not sure even being able to seem to understand why they did them.
Martin S. Taylor: Well, a lot of the people can understand. No, I mean, this is one of the things that I found is that hypnosis for want, if that’s the word we’re going to use, um, it affects people in different ways.
Uh, uh, the mechanism is different. The, the apparent result is the same. I make them, I tell them to do silly things, they do them, but the mechanism appears to be different in different people. With some people it is just suggestion. With some people it’s authority. It’s my authority over them. With some people it’s peer pressure.
All their friends are doing something. With some people it is very much suggestion and thi this was brought home to me. Um, again, I I what common way I’ll finish my act is I would tell people that they will hallucinate an elephant come walking into the room and they all panic and run away, and then they come back and I persuade them to come and stroke the elephant and feel its trunk.
And they all do all of this stuff after the show. Um. Somebody came up to me once and he said, look, that was really weird. I knew there wasn’t an elephant there. I couldn’t see one, I couldn’t feel it. But there was something in me that made me act as if there was, I knew somehow I had to pretend that I could see an elephant, even though I couldn’t.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: And his best friend next to him said, I, I dunno what you’re talking about. I would never have done that if I hadn’t seen an elephant. I would’ve just said, there’s no elephant there. I could see an elephant. That’s why I did that.
Zach Elwood: Oh, interesting. Okay.
Martin S. Taylor: So for different people, it’s, it is working in different ways.
And this is what I believe is some people, it is very much suggestion. Some people it’s peer pressure, some people it’s obedience. Uhhuh,
Zach Elwood: it’s a range. Yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: Yeah. I mean it
Zach Elwood: is it, oh, go ahead.
Martin S. Taylor: Hypnosis. It’s. Again, this is a word we use to describe a cocktail of different kinds of psychological effects. Right.
Most of which are, are very well understood. We don’t understand the degree to which they work.
Zach Elwood: Right. Right.
Martin S. Taylor: But we do understand how they work. People understand peer pressure, they want to do what their friends do. Mm-hmm.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: Um, and they don’t understand how strong it is when you get people on stage in a hypnosis setting.
Zach Elwood: Right. Yeah. I think that’s, you know, that’s what strikes me, you know, when I think about me going up to one of those things, you know, I can imagine, despite being skeptical of or or unsure of how I would be behave, I can imagine of not. The main thing being like, I don’t wanna rock the boat and I’m going, I’m gonna go along with this.
It’s like the path of least resistance or whatever, you know? ’cause it, it can be awkward to not go the flow. Absolutely. You know, that, that kind of thing. Uh,
Martin S. Taylor: I mean, in a, in any situation. Yeah. Even though at the start, people don’t, I’m not, I’m not trying to make it look as though I have any power over somebody.
People just do it because, you know, I’m, because I’m asking them to. I’m a nice guy. I’m mean all I look simple thing. I’m not gonna, this is, this is the kind of thing I would start at the beginning of my act. Raise one hand like that. Do that now. Yeah. I dunno whether people can see on the, oh yeah. You want me to do it?
Yeah. Yeah. Do it now.
Zach Elwood: Oh, okay.
Martin S. Taylor: Now a few other arm up like that. Now put your hands against your head and wiggle ’em. So you make like a bunny. Hey, you’re a bunny. Okay. That’s it now.
Zach Elwood: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: There we’re doing this, you know, you are doing this.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: Why are you doing this? Is this hypnosis? Is this just because I’m asking you because you know you want to help me because you’re a nice guy.
You are obliging,
Zach Elwood: right? Yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: You are just doing what I’m telling you to do.
Zach Elwood: It would be interesting to see, I, I’ve often thought it be interesting to see, and maybe you’ve seen this, where they ask people in some sort of formal way after a stage hypnosis, like, why did you do those things? And see all the different range of responses that, that would be really interesting to, to read all the different responses.
Yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: And pe Well, I tell you what people say. I don’t know. A lot of people say it was really weird.
Zach Elwood: Interesting.
Martin S. Taylor: I, I knew what I was doing. I couldn’t, I, I somehow didn’t want. To mess up the show in, in a really strong way. I didn’t want to, to disrupt the proceedings. I didn’t want to make a mess of things.
Zach Elwood: But then you have some people that will literally say they, or, or they, they really believe they saw an elephant or whatever the extreme kind of thing is. Is that, how rare do you feel that is, like that level of, you know, imagination or, or creating the, the scenario in their minds?
Martin S. Taylor: I don’t know because I don’t test it.
I mean, at the end of the show that that’s it. But I, I, I can tell you that I could probably continue to lead them. If I were to go up to ’em at the end, I would say, look, you didn’t actually see an elephant, did you? You, you were just doing what everybody else did because that was the nature of the, of, of the show.
And they would say, yeah, that’s right. I, I couldn’t see an elephant. Or I could say, isn’t it weird? You can almost actually physically see an elephant there. And they’d say, yes, that’s right. I, I, I, and I’m leading them along. People are taking the line of least resistance and doing what I tell them.
Zach Elwood: And I guess that’s, uh, maybe that segues into the, the question of, you know, some, some people really lean into the kind of establishing authority over people.
Like say, like, say a therapeutic hypnotist or some other, somebody else in the realm of like, I’m going to influence you in such and such a way I’m gonna like, influence you to stop smoking or whatever it may be. These kind of kind of people. Yeah. Also in the NLP kind of realm, self-help life coach kind of realm.
Um, do you think, I mean, how much, how much do you think it helps amp up the things to really establish this mystique of like, I have these amazing powers and look at what people have said about me and, you know, look at these amazing things I’ve said that I’ve accomplished. Do you think that really amps up the, the influence level?
It’s
Martin S. Taylor: crucial. Absolutely crucial. You know, as that’s, um, you have to have the publicity before the show. When you come on, when you do the show, when. I mean, I, I, I make a big thing of, of a, a full lecture explaining about how hypnosis really works. But every hypnotist has a little spiel at the beginning, just sort of reassuring people that it’s safe when you do that, you have to be dressed in a smart suit.
You have to have, um, a row of chairs on stage so that people know what’s happening. It’s, it has to be bigged up beforehand. If, if you do a show, um, and every hypnotist has been through this nightmare where you show up to do maybe a business function, and they, they meet you at the start and they say it’s a surprise.
They don’t know there’s a hypnotist coming, oh, no, please. And you know you are gonna die to death.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Is it true if it’s known or are you the person that inspired Darren Brown’s act? I’ve read that before. Do
Martin S. Taylor: you? That’s that’s absolutely true. Yes. That’s, uh, yeah. Darren came to, it was the first show I did as a profess.
And Darren was a student. He, um, he came up to me at the end and he said, this is fantastic. I, I now know what I I’m going to do for a living. I, I now know I’m going to be a professional entertainer and a, and a hypnotist.
Zach Elwood: Wow. Yeah. And I had, uh, I had interviewed the magician, Anthony Barnhart, for the podcast, and he had, uh, and we actually, we talked about some of the things you just mentioned about the, um, magicians, you know, using a sharp impression and, and wanting to create that mystique, which is, can be present for hypnosis too.
Uh, but one of the things he talked about was some criticisms he had of Darren Brown’s act in the sense that it was communicating, you know, fooling people into thinking he had these, that these amazing mentalist type tricks were possible. Uh, when he was really just mainly doing kind of standard magic or, you know, misdirection kind of things.
But I’m curious, I don’t know if you wanna talk about it, but do, would you care to talk about, do you have those kinds of criticisms or, or, or concerns at all? Considering like he’s basically kind of doing the opposite of what you’re doing, you’re doing a more transparent thing and he’s doing a very, like, I’m a mentalist with these amazing powers, kind of thing.
Martin S. Taylor: Well, he doesn’t do that very much. I mean, to say we are doing the opposite thing. I think that that’s going too far. We do do very similar things and he will often debunk where, I mean, he’s very strong about people who use it. Who use the people who say they have psychic powers and they use that directly to make money, uh, faith healers and, and tarot readers and things who will actually charge people for, for things like that, right.
Um, then he’s very much against that,
Zach Elwood: right?
Martin S. Taylor: Uh, he, he shreds a very careful line. I mean, he is a magician,
Zach Elwood: right? He presents it as entertainment at the end of the day.
Martin S. Taylor: He presents it as entertainment. He’s much more concerned with leaving people with interesting questions to think about rather than, uh. Uh, you know, rather than challenging.
How do you think I did this? There are a, a couple of times where I think he’s, he’s got it wrong where he is gone too far. Um,
Zach Elwood: it’s a fine, it’s a tough line to thread, I’m sure
Martin S. Taylor: it’s a very tough line.
Zach Elwood: You want to create the engagement and the mystique and the excitement and, and you don’t, but you don’t also don’t wanna do it on unethically.
So I’m sure there’s, there’s various things you can do in that path that will bother some people and not bother others. And yeah,
Martin S. Taylor: I mean, sometimes he is doing exactly what he says. He’s very skilled at, at reading body language.
Zach Elwood: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: Mm-hmm. Now you can’t, you know, say to somebody, I want you to think of any word in the dictionary, and then through body language you can tell them what it is.
I mean, that,
Zach Elwood: yeah, that’s very much
Martin S. Taylor: on, on the other hand, if you say to people, you know, which hand have I got a coin hidden in?
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: Now, to some extent that is possible. Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: No one’s gonna be a hundred percent at it, but you can be very good at it. And Darren is very good at it.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, I actually got, I got into this thing years ago where the trick where you could get people, you could hold people’s hands and get them to think of a hand, and I got pretty good at deducing based on like moving their hand around.
Well,
Martin S. Taylor: well called cold reading. Yeah,
Zach Elwood: yeah. Sorry, not cold
Martin S. Taylor: reading.
Zach Elwood: There’s a lot of, uh, oh, there’s, yeah, there’s a lot of interesting things in that area. And, you know, as a, as somebody who’s worked on poker tells, I believe, and getting all kinds of deductions from, uh, you know, behaviors. Um, so yeah. Let me, uh, I was gonna ask you, you know, I, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you initially was I was doing this investigation to Chase Hughes, who’s a self-proclaimed behavior and influence expert to who, to me, uh, is very clearly a, a con artist.
He’s made many clearly untrue and silly claims about being able to control people’s minds. He’s written about being able to hypnotize and gain complete control of people within a few minutes of meeting them. Being able to create basically man sharing candidates and just really wacky stuff like that.
So when I was investigating that stuff, it did, it got me thinking into, got me thinking again about hypnosis and what’s possible with it. Uh, ’cause I’ve always been interested in hypnosis. I actually got hypnosis at a young age when I was in my early twenties for, uh, therapeutic hypnosis. I didn’t think it did much, but that helps explain why I’ve always been interested in it.
But, uh, and then I once worked for a, uh, an NLP seminar guy Neurolinguistic program programming guy. He was big into the hypnosis as NLP people are. He once told me he had put me into a trance when I felt completely normal, and I had to respond, no, I don’t think I’m in a trance. And, uh, he claimed he could hypnotize people to solve major issues and problems in, in, in major ways.
These kinds of things. Uh,
Martin S. Taylor: well, it’s all, it’s a lot of, it’s down to words, isn’t it? What do you mean by hypnotized? What do you mean by inner trance?
Zach Elwood: Right. And I, that that’s, maybe that’s a good place to, to branch off because Yeah, because you’ve talked about the various factors that can add up to influencing people and, and, and yet you don’t see there, there, you don’t see it as some, some sort of like specific state like called.
Hypnosis or called a trance? No, there can, there, there’s just these various factors that can influence people. Is that,
Martin S. Taylor: is that how you
Zach Elwood: would see it?
Martin S. Taylor: The idea that you are either in a trance or you are not in a trance now, forget that. It’s, it’s, it’s, as I say, a cocktail, a complicated mixture of pretty much well understood principles.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Martin S. Taylor: And, and the idea that you put someone into a trance is, is pretty much abandoned now.
Zach Elwood: Well, that’s, and then when I see people talk about this, like I see some people who promote the hypnosis things for, you know, say therapeutic or NLP reasons. I feel like they’re just kind of muddying all these things together.
Like, they’ll be like, you know, the, the example is often given of like, you’re. You’re driving a car, you know, and, and, and, and you get into a trance. And I’m like, well, what does that really have to do with, you know, what you can do for me in hypnosis? Like if something unusual happened when I was driving a car, I’d, I quickly would pay attention to it and I wouldn’t be in a so-called trance anymore.
So what, how, you know, so I, I basically see a lot of bundling together of like, you know, these trance states are common. It’s like, what is this trance state you’re talking about? Like, these are all different scenarios. These are all different factors. Like what is this supposed trance state of where you have to do with what you’re doing?
You know? So I just, I see this kind of mudding the waters to kind of paint a picture of like. This trance state exists, and we’re gonna tap into this trance state to do something amazing, right?
Martin S. Taylor: Completely. Yeah.
Zach Elwood: So do you, would you, is that how you see those things
Martin S. Taylor: ab Absolutely. I that they say, uh, yeah.
When you’re driving a car and you, you’ve kind of find, you’ve forgotten the journey. Well, yeah. Then you are in a trance. You’re
Zach Elwood: engaged. It’s like,
Martin S. Taylor: that’s,
Zach Elwood: that’s all it means, right? Like, you’re, you, you,
Martin S. Taylor: but they wanna, they want, they wanna make it sound as though hypnosis is safe. They want to make it, uh, you know, on, on, on that side.
They’re saying, because you are in a trance every time you drive a car and a long journey, or if you get absorbed in a film, you are in a trance. And people think, oh, so it is safe. It’s a fairly everyday thing. It’s not a, a mysterious voodoo thing that I should be terrified of and, and sue you for afterwards when I feel sick tomorrow with a headache.
Zach Elwood: Right. Um, yeah, it seems, it seems like they’re establishing the safety, but it also seems like they’re kind of establishing like. The credibility of like, I may be able to put you into a trance because you’ve been in a trance in these other states and it’s fairly common. You know, it’s like, it’s kind of just like making it more possible or something, or more credible.
I don’t know. Um,
Martin S. Taylor: well, I dunno. And I, and I dunno if they know either. I think there’s a, on the part of hypnosis, I think there’s an awful lot of, I’ve done this incantation before it worked. I, I’m not going to change what I say. I always talk about being on a car journey and that always results in people doing silly things on stage.
I’m not gonna change it now in case this, this breaks down and stops it working. It’s, you know, that hypnotists are as susceptible to suggestions as everybody else. And, and if you don’t wanna break the mantra, if you wanna keep doing the, the same things that have always worked.
Zach Elwood: I’ll add in a note here. I wanna add in that I do understand why people can cast a wide net.
When speaking about hypnosis and so-called trances and such, there are similarities to these assorted experiences. I was recently talking to a hypnotherapist who cast a wide net in terms of referring to many things as hypnosis related that I wouldn’t have referred to as related to hypnosis, but I did understand her reasoning, and I don’t think that’s wrong of her to do.
She was just trying to make the point that there are many ways we can be influenced by other people without knowing it, and you could view many of those things as being related to hypnosis. This podcast is often about understanding others’ views and recognizing there are multiple ways to look at things.
So I’m very cognizant of wanting to understand what she and others are thinking when they do make those comparisons and use that language. I think she and others are doing good work and helping people. But I think also there can be more exploitative and deceptive ways that people use these various analogies and framings.
Some people are trying to sell their work to others in various ways to try to bring in hypnosis and trance concepts where those ideas may not be that relevant. So anyway, I just wanted to inject a little more nuance and empathy there for people who do have some rational reasons for speaking in those ways and casting a wide net in terms of seeing various other behaviors as having hypnosis related elements.
Okay. Back to the talk. So I’m curious, uh, one thing that’s real, been real unclear to me or hard to get a handle on is the therapeutic hypnosis and ’cause I have, you know, to, to, to give some credit. I do think some of those people are, are quite legitimate and, uh, it’s just kind of hard for me to say like.
Where, you know, what percentage are doing good and, and helpful things versus what are, who’s veering into more strange or, or irresponsible waters. ’cause I think that’s a range of a whole lot of that, that, that stuff from, from good and helpful to bad. But I’m curious, uh, if you have, uh, takes on that, that you care to share.
Martin S. Taylor: Share. Um, I, I have a friend who’s a a a does a lot of hypnotherapy work, and he says it’s important to realize that firstly, the, the thing is you are not using hypnosis for therapy. You are using hypnosis. You are, you are doing conventional therapy while people are relaxed and more receptive. Um, that’s, that’s a, a, a big and important distinction that he likes to make.
Zach Elwood: Mm
Martin S. Taylor: mm-hmm. Um, so it isn’t the hypnosis itself. I’m not hypnotizing you so that you will find that you have more self-confidence and you find that you, tobacco has lost its grip on you or whatever it is you want. It’s much more that when you are. Hypnotized, you are relaxed, you are, um, you are more suggestible.
Mm-hmm. What, however you wanna describe being hypnotized. Certainly. Um, right. Being, being more suggestible is a facet of it.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Even just from a basic level of like, when you’re more calm, when your mind is more calm Sure. Or more easily able to absorb ideas and you put up, you have less obstacles to him.
So, so even at a very basic level, it, it makes sense that you’re, you know, more, more suggestible or, or whatever. Yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: Well, as with all these things, people want, people want the thing to work and they want it to work even more if they’ve paid, if they’ve paid a, a lot of money to have it done.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Okay. So I wanted to ask you about, you know, ’cause I, I do think, yeah, what, what do you think of the un hypnotizable label?
You know, so I obviously from what you’ve established or what, what your view is, because they’re. You know, hypnotism so-called is, is just these various factors. I would imagine you’d say this un hypnotizable thing is like everyone to some extent or another is un hypnotizable, just depending on what factors are present at the time.
So, but I’m curious how you see that, and maybe I’m curious if you would view yourself as un hypnotizable because you’ve thought about it so much and, and these kinds of things.
Martin S. Taylor: Well, obviously I’m familiar with all the techniques I realize I’m being suggested to, but I am, I am a suggest i, I am suggestible, uh, the way absolutely everybody is.
Um, to say that someone is un hypnotizable. Well, again, we’re, we’re asking this question, what is hypnosis, right? Undefined. But a large part of hypnosis is suggestion. And you can say to anyone in the world, you know, the, the old thing with the lemon, imagine that I have a lemon here, really visualize the lemon and I slice into it with a knife and you see sour bitter lemon juice and I’m sucking into the le oh, oh gosh, lemon juice.
You and you feel yourself salivating and you are doing it now. And I’m doing it now. And most of the people watching that, watching this podcast are doing it now.
Zach Elwood: Right, right.
Martin S. Taylor: And that works on everybody. On the other hand, whether you can hypnotize somebody to the extent that they will see an elephant that they will
Zach Elwood: Right.
Quit smoking.
Martin S. Taylor: Well, yeah. Again, quit smoking. If you paid a lot of money, you don’t wanna say, well, I’ve, I, you know, I, I paid, that’s
Zach Elwood: true.
Martin S. Taylor: Yeah. I paid all this money to a hypnotist and I was just an idiot. It was a waste of time. He just sat there and
Zach Elwood: yeah, there’s, there, there can be various incentives that are not obvious.
Yeah. Which I think accounts for a lot of like the more irresponsible people of this type, getting good reviews and such, because a, we do influence people like, so somebody can. Can easily influence people to believe they’ve got something, you know, valuable even if they haven’t gotten something that valuable.
And then b, there is this incentive to get something out of it. So you might fool yourself and you don’t want to. Yeah. So just to say, I think there can be various of the effects present for some of the more bullshitty type of operators. Uh oh. So I wanted to ask you. Yeah, so this Chase Hughes guy I was examining Yeah.
Like he’s somebody who’s claimed to, uh, do all these amazing things, like being able to basically create a man candidate using his amazing, uh, you know, influence skills within a few minutes of meeting you just kind of absurd claims. Uh, but even these, let’s even just take the idea that, you know. Even after a few sessions, somebody might be able to like, get you to do things against your will.
These kinds of ideas. What, what is your take on that and what’s the, you know, what, what would most people who who know about hypnosis and psychology say about those kinds of claims?
Martin S. Taylor: My, my standard answer to this is you could use hypnosis. You, you can’t make people do things they don’t want to do. You can make people do things they don’t want to admit that they want to do.
Mm
Zach Elwood: mm-hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: So, um, you know, could you make somebody, um, could you make somebody try and assassinate Donald Trump? You know? Well, okay, normally assassination is a dangerous, a risky thing. Nobody’s going to want to, even Donald Trump, nobody’s gonna want to take the, think your political views. This might be very dangerous saying this, um, nobody’s actually going to want to take the life of a human being.
Um, on the other hand, they know deep down that if, if push comes to shove, they can say, well, I didn’t know what I was doing. The hypnotist, it was all down to, it was all down to suggestion. It was all I, I had no control and it wasn’t me. He’s the one you need to blame.
Zach Elwood: And, and some of those people, you know, who get in maybe into some weird situations like that who, who are especially susceptible, I mean, let’s, you know, I I, I, I think there are some people that, that seek out this kind of, you know, these kind of practitioners for various forms of help, uh, who are especially like mentally weak.
They’re just especially susceptible. So the people that might get into some weird situations like that, like, you know, alleging that a, a hypnotist, you know, got them to do something that they didn’t wanna do. They might just be people that are, you know, extremely. Um, have very, very weak boundaries and have, you know, it easily led Yeah, a slew, a slew of things that lead them to embrace some authority figure and kind of like give up their, their will in some sense.
Just, just say, I think there’s this range of, of people that are like veering from the more boundaries, having better boundaries to like extremely low boundaries or want really want some authority figure of any sort to, so yeah, I, I think it gets into these realms of, ’cause I, I, I’ve seen some of these people that go to these kind of NLP kind of things.
I was in that world for six months or so, and it struck me that some of these people just really, really want a leader of some sort. Who they really want somebody to tell them what to do. And so they’re, they’re the people that are more easily going to be like, oh, I will do these things. And I’ll feel, and maybe they even feel, I think they do often feel like I don’t.
I’m not in control. I’m just doing what this guy told me to do. Sure. I, you know, I I, and it kind of, it’s giving up their will in a sense. Is, is something that they kind of want in, in some sense?
Martin S. Taylor: Absolutely. Yeah. I, I, I mean, or just getting people to do things deep down that they would like to do. You know, they just want to cut loose.
They wanna abandon responsibility, they want to, um,
Chase Hughes: right.
Martin S. Taylor: If you want to get away from the political, uh, example that I used earlier, um, you know, in an X-rated show, you get somebody to get up on stage and take all their clothes off.
Chase Hughes: Right?
Martin S. Taylor: Now, that’s not something that someone, you know, if you say to somebody, stand on stage, take all your clothes off, they’re gonna say, well, no.
On the other hand, it may be something they would, deep down they are a closet exhibitionist. They’d love to do this and they’d love to get out and, and, and show off to everybody, but. They know that if they were to just stand on stage and take all their clothes off, everyone would say, well, you know, what a show off?
What a prt, what an idiot. Whereas if they can say, oh, it was the hypnotist. I didn’t know it was all I was under his control and, and they’re doing what they want to do deep down, but they have the excuse for it.
Zach Elwood: Right. Which is kind of like why people drink. Some people drink and do drugs ’cause it’s giving up, you know, giving an excuse to engage Sure.
And be like, oh, I was just kind of outta my mind at, at that time. But it was kind of fun or something.
Martin S. Taylor: Same thing.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and that, and I should throw in too, like I would, ’cause I was, uh, to be fully responsible here, I think, ’cause I was reading about this guy, John Connolly, who does rapid resolution therapy and he was accused of, you know, using hypnosis and translate states to abuse, you know, allegations that he was abusing, uh, sexually assaulting or, or, or abusing his patients when they were in translate states.
And you hear other stories like that. And, and I think, I think, you know, it’s not to. What we’re, what, what I’m saying here or what, maybe what you’re saying too is we’re not saying that, that, that that resolves uh, responsibility of somebody who took advantage of, of people. Because I do think there is, there’s definitely something about the authority, you know, authority.
Uh, patient kind of relationship that lead can lead to all sorts of real abuses. So I just wanted to say that that doesn’t det what we’re saying doesn’t detract from
Martin S. Taylor: No.
Zach Elwood: The idea that there’s all sorts of abuses, even if there’s not like a trance-like state that, you know, it’s, there’s still trust and authority and all of these kinds of things that can, that can be present.
Uh
Martin S. Taylor: oh. Yeah. I
Zach Elwood: mean, I’m not saying that about John Connelley ’cause I don’t know anything about that case. I just know about the allegations.
Martin S. Taylor: No, right. But I mean, of course it cuts both ways. You get a hypnotist who is exerting undue pressure on somebody and they, uh, you know, he says, you’ve got to do this.
If you want to be hypnotized, if you want to get over your feelings of inferiority or. Um, whatever it is he’s treating them for. And if you want to do this, then you have to trust me, so, so and so. Right. And he leads it into a, into a sexual situation. Right. And there are hypnotists who will do that, which is obviously, uh, immoral, but it can work the other way after the session if a hypnotist rather and wisely says to a subject, you know, um, that was great.
Okay, would you like to go out for a drink? And it leads to something sexual and afterwards she regrets it. Again, putting the, the standard sexual stereotypes here, that it’s the woman who’s seduced. Mm-hmm. But she’s s you know, she’s happy to go along with it, but later regrets it.
Mm-hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: Then she says, oh my God, why did I do that?
Whatever made me go with somebody who was as you know, was as domineering, as old, as ugly as him. I must have been hypnotized.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: Mm-hmm. And then he’s in trouble because she’s got the red egg excuse to come back and.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Yeah. There can be, yeah. Many, um, ways that can, that can play out. Um, let’s see.
I was gonna ask you, so yeah, the, do you know much about the, you know, ’cause what I often hear about people that embrace these kind of, you can do kind of manion candidate esque control scenarios of people. I often hear them reference MK Ultra and these kinds of things. And you know, that the, I don’t know how much you know about that, but my take on it, my rough take is like, I think.
People vastly overestimate what was done with MK Ultra. Like if you read the, the facts
Martin S. Taylor: of, can you, I dunno the facts of this.
Zach Elwood: Do, do you know the MK Ultra? It’s the, it was the, uh, kind of mind control, uh, brainwashing things that, um, the American government was doing back in the, you know, fifties, sixties post World War ii, where they were, uh, doing like, you know, giving LSD to people and, and trying to do brainwashing kind of experiments and these kinds of things and using psychedelics.
Uh, but anyway, a lot of people will reference those things, and I might insert some resources in here, but some people will reference those ideas to basically bolster the idea. The idea though, basically to me, to my mind, they’re taking those things outta context and exaggerating what was done with them.
Because from what I’ve, what I’ve read, they were mostly just complete failures and, and showed how little he could actually do with those things. Okay? But people, people will take those historical things and act as if there were. So many things possible with hypnosis or other kinds of mind control things.
But, uh, it sounds like maybe you don’t have a, a take on the mkl specifically, but
Martin S. Taylor: No, not on that specific one. I mean, I can tell you that Darren did a similar thing in, uh, in one of his television specials where he hypnotized somebody, uh, to theater, to, to go to the theater and assassinate, assassinate the, the lecturer.
There was a guy called Stephen Fry who was giving a lecture, and this guy was hypnotized that on a certain trigger when a, a woman in a polka dot dress or something stood up and left the theater, uh, from the seat next to him, he would stand up and shoot Stephen Fry. Um, and he did this. He shot the speaker on stage and it was carefully done.
Uh, Stephen Fry was in on it, and he had blood bags, and the, the thought thing was made to look as though he’d really been assassinated. Um, but of course it was a fake gun and, and it was done with theatrics. But one can always argue that deep down the guy knew this, you know, um,
Zach Elwood: right.
Martin S. Taylor: You, I, I’m, I’ve been hypnotized by Darren Brown.
I am in some sense, uh, I’m, I’m doing this because Show Brown, sorry to it. Yeah. Deep down, deep at a very deep level. Yeah. He knows this, he knows there’s something strange going on.
Chase Hughes: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Martin S. Taylor: Um, and even if it isn’t, I mean, even if it is a real gun, even if he does shoot Steven Fry, then he’s always got this.
Well, I, I, I mean, you know, it wasn’t me, these
Zach Elwood: guys. Yeah. I, I was just doing what they said, which gets into the whole like, uh, the shock, you know, the, the famous, what is it? The, is it the Milgram experience? No.
Joe Rogan: Experiment. Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Which, which there, there, there are criticisms or, or you know, people pointing out that, you know, those people knew they were in an experiment of some sort.
Right. Like, so. It gets into the realm of like, yeah, how much does it really tell us about o Obviously there’s people that go along with all sorts of horrible things in the real world, but the Milgram experiment specifically of, you know, those people in a similar way knew they were in some sort of experiment.
Like, did they really think that these people were putting these people in in danger? You know, these kinds of, these kinds of questions. Um, you know, I, I do think there’s something that the Milgram experi experiment and the other ones that were more replicated afterwards, I do think there’s something it tells us, but there’s also those questions of like, yeah, how much, yeah.
Do they suspect or really know, or, yeah,
Martin S. Taylor: they’ve tried to resolve it with other, other experiments. I mean, the sh giving electric shocks to a puppy and, and, and similar experiments, they’ve never really been quite satisfied. Satisfactory,
Zach Elwood: right. There’s still quite, yeah, there’s still questions and, and, and, uh, about yeah, what, what exactly it all at all means and how relevant or powerful it is and such.
A little note here. There is a lot to say about MK Ultra and government programs on mind control and influence. I might do an episode on that in the future. Some people who like to promote the amazing mind control things, they can allegedly teach people like Chase Hughes will point to these various ideas in the past and failed experiments in the past as a way to promote the idea that these amazing things are possible.
For example, chase Hughes will often reference random things people wrote in the past as potential concepts, just as ideas, and he’ll use those things as a way to promote his claims. But again, many of these things were just ideas. For example, on Joe Rogan Chase references the writings of George Easter Brooks, who was a bit involved in some MK ultra mind control types of things back then, but who also seemed to me, from what I read, to be a bit of a crackpot who had all sorts of.
Wacky ideas that he’d send to the government to try to get started on, and who also claimed all sorts of things were possible with hypnosis that didn’t seem to have any support. So just to say there are all sorts of ways one can filter back through all the weird and wacky people and episodes from the past in order to paint an illusory picture that there have been amazing mind control and brainwashing type things done when the truth, if you look at it objectively and skeptically and read the best resources, the the truth is often much more mundane and unimpressive not as exciting.
And there are big incentives by all sorts of people to drum up claims about such things. That’s why there are so many books on MK Ultra that make it sound like amazing things happened or could have happened. It’s similar to the many bad and silly and unrealistic books you can find on UFO sightings and UFO histories.
If you like a realistic account of MK Ultra, I’d recommend the search for the Manchurian candidate by John Marks. It’s known for being a fact-based account of what happened back then, and it’s known for separating mind control fact from fiction. Okay. Back to the talk. You know, I think, I think some people when it comes to, you know, the power to control people in some powerful way, I think, um, you know, with the, the Chase Hughes things I was examining, I think some people would, would reply like, well, you, you guys don’t know what’s really possible in these areas.
Maybe there’s like these secret, you know, military operators or, or, or, uh, amazing, you know, hyp hypnotists out there that can really control people really quickly. Uh, in, in a, in a, in a serious major way. But I’m, I’m curious, what would you say to those people though? Who have those, those doubts?
Martin S. Taylor: Well, you are right.
I mean, we don’t know. Maybe it is possible. It’s, uh, we, we have no idea. But let’s, let’s see some evidence, let’s, let’s, let’s see it written up. Let’s see. It researched, let’s see. Controlled experiments. Done. Done.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. That’s the thing that gets me when Yeah, that’s the, yeah, that’s the thing. I’ve responded.
It’s like big claims require big evidence. Yeah. Like, you can’t just say like, oh, maybe this guy knows how to do these things. Who says he has done these things? It’s like, well, uh, skepticism is warranted unless you have actually seen evidence that these things are possible. Right. So, um, yeah,
Martin S. Taylor: I mean, the, the problem is that people like Chase Hughes have got a very, uh, authoritative and confident manner, and they just say, oh, yes, there are people out there that doing this.
I can’t talk about this, but believe me, I’ve seen it. And there’s something about their manner and their confidence, as he says in his, I watched the, uh, the Joe Rogan podcast. Mm-hmm. And he, he says, you know, I, I’ve seen this, I’ve done this. And he just exudes confidence. And he talks about how, how it is so important when you are convincing people of things to be completely confident and to not have the, the slightest doubt in, in the way you portray these things, that, that mustn’t, that, that mustn’t come across.
You can’t, uh, you Yeah, you, you can’t hesitate, you can’t show any kind of doubt or reluctant. You have to say, no, I know this, I’ve seen this and provided that you have this or of gravitas that you can say, uh, yes. You know, well, you may doubt it. Uh, that’s your right. But, um, I, I have seen, I’ve seen it. I do know,
Zach Elwood: yeah.
The ability to confidently say things goes a really long way. I think people underestimate what a powerful thing that really is. You know, it’s such a cliche, really, like the idea that people. Can lie to us, but it, I, I think it really is a powerful thing. If somebody’s able to just tell you things that are lies and not have a problem with that and do it confidently, that goes a really long way.
I mean, that accounts for so many scams. Like, it’s just, it’s surprisingly easy to be taken in by confident people who say things confidently, you know? Uh, so, yeah. Is there anything else, Martin, uh, that you would wanna throw in here that, that we might think would be interesting to, on this, on this topic for people that we haven’t talked about?
Maybe there’s something that really, really wild, that stands out that, that was really noteworthy in your hypnotism career that was really unusual? Or, or, or that you think about a lot.
Martin S. Taylor: Plenty of really weird, silly things. Yes. Uh, I’ve, I’ve never had the stage of, of being with someone who wouldn’t wake up, uh, which I know some hypnotists have, because if you believe, well, if you believe you’re in a trance
Zach Elwood: Oh yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: Then, you know, oh. I’m out of this. I’m really happy. I’m, I’m asleep. I’m,
Zach Elwood: yeah. Which gets into the power of the, I I I wanted to mention the power of the placebo too, because that really relates to this too, right?
Martin S. Taylor: Well, certainly there’s the power of the placebo when you’re using hypnosis for, for medicine and when you’re using it to, to block pain, blocking pain is a very tricky one.
Um, again, Darren has done this in his show where he is getting, getting somebody to get into an ice bath and saying, you will feel no pain. And, and, and people have got into an ice bath and, you know, with Darren’s got the thermo cameras up there, so you can see his skin is really cold, uh, and, and using hypnosis to block pain.
Now, to what extent is pain psychological? To what extent is it physiological? Um, it, these are, they’re very deep, very complicated questions.
Zach Elwood: And I was thinking even, even just the fact that. You know, people will do, find themselves doing unusual things during hypnosis or things that surprise them. I mean, that, that seems directly related to the power of placebo.
I mean, like, because we think something is happening to us, it it in a way it is happening to us in some sense. Um, yeah. Would you agree with that? Yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: It’s all the same stuff. I mean, yeah, same
Zach Elwood: st same, same
Martin S. Taylor: psychological stuff, placebo suggestion, peer pressure, all of these things combined. There is no one thing which is hypnosis.
There’s nothing that you can say, ah, yes, you are hypnotized, you are not, they’re trying it. They’re getting, they’re doing brain scans on people to see whether there’s any physiological difference in the brain of someone who is hypnotized and someone who is not.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, this has been great.
It’s been very interesting. Is there, thank you. Anything? Thank you. I think we’re good. But if you, uh,
Martin S. Taylor: I
Zach Elwood: can, if you wanted to mention anything else, we, something, I
Martin S. Taylor: can’t do anything straight. No, I’m more, more than happy to answer any more questions. You do
Zach Elwood: you, do you wanna mention what you’re working on these days?
Do you, are you still doing the shows?
Martin S. Taylor: I am still doing well. I, as you as you know, but your viewers don’t. I broke my leg a few months ago, so, uh, um, that, that’s kind of put me down for some things a bit. But, um, I, I’m winding it down, to be honest. Uh, with the, with the COVID epidemic, uh, all my shares obviously stopped and I thought, well, you know, this is a good time to start winding down.
So, uh, uh, and, and to write my book.
Zach Elwood: Oh, book.
Martin S. Taylor: Yeah. I
Zach Elwood: was gonna ask you if you have any books. Yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: To keep an eye open for my book, which I keep saying I’ve, I’ve been trying to write for the past five years or so. I, very cool. I know I could write really well, and I know I dislike writing.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I can relate to that.
Yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: Uh, you know. I, I would love to have written a book. I wanna get all this down. I wanna write out all this stuff. Uh, so keep an eye open for it and, uh, who knows in, in 18 months or so, it may be out there on the shelves.
Zach Elwood: Well, sure. Yeah, maybe I can, maybe you can, you know, when you get out and do some promotion, maybe you can come on again.
We can talk about, talk about some more things. Yeah.
Martin S. Taylor: Well,
Zach Elwood: alright. Thanks a lot Martin. This has been great.
Martin S. Taylor: Not at all. It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you.
Zach Elwood: That was a talk with Martin Taylor. You can learn more about his hypnosis work at his site, hypnotism.co.uk and watch some videos of his stage act there.
I’ll include some resources related to this talk on my website, behavior podcast.com. You can find those in the entry for this episode on that site. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you’ll like some other episodes in the back catalog. I have a talk with Anthony Barnhart about magic and misdirection.
In that episode, we talk about Darren Brown. We talk about how magicians misdirect the attention of the audience and more, and you might just like perusing the back catalog of the people who read People podcast to see what you find. Okay, thanks for listening. Music by small Skies.