21 March

Often thieves understand human psychology better than anybody. Derren Brown, if you’ve never seen him, has produced some of the best television of the past 20 years, blending suggestion, hypnosis, magic and psychological research to show how little we really understand about how humans work. This wonderful short demonstration he does of pickpocketing highlights for me the silliness of the idea that consciousness is the foundation of who we are. It’s not, habits are that foundation.