The founder · the author
Jesper K. Lassen
Known on stage as The Danish Mentalist. He spent twenty years learning how strangers open up, wrote down what he learned, gave it away, and then wrote it again for four-year-olds. He founded VEN Method, published The Connection Protocol, and wrote the five Bob & Otto picture books.
Who he is
Jesper K. Lassen — who performs as The Danish Mentalist — is a mentalist from Aalborg, Denmark, with more than a thousand performances behind him, and was the subject of a three-part documentary series on Danish national television. The job is to walk in front of several hundred strangers, work out in seconds who is guarded and who came willingly, and get people to open up — quickly, on demand, and again tomorrow.
He grew up in a house that needed the skill early. His mother was diagnosed with chronic depression and bipolar disorder when he was eight and raised three children alone. The school he happened to attend taught social and emotional skills properly, at a time when almost no school did. The children a mile away got nothing. That difference is the subject of his essay, and the reason the method is published free rather than sold as a curriculum.
The method he wrote
The Connection Protocol is the whole method, published in full under CC BY-SA 4.0 — so it can be adapted, translated and taught by anyone, including people who never pay for anything. The three letters stand for View, Exchange, Notice, and ven is Danish for friend.
It was tested in a six-week controlled pilot at Svenstrup School, Aalborg, Denmark across 800 students. Class cohesion rose +29% against +3.1% in the comparison classes, and teachers reported 4.3 h/week of preparation time back. One school, not randomised, run by us — a signal, not a proof. The evidence page gives every number next to its limitation.
The books he wrote
Five picture books for ages four to eight, in English and Spanish, published by VEN Method.
Each one is reversible. Read it front to back and you are inside Bob’s head — what he heard, what he decided, why he walked off. Turn the book over, read the same pages the other way, and the very same words belong to Otto, who was having an entirely different afternoon. Nothing is added on the second reading. The words do not change. The reader does.
That is why the book asks for a physical act instead of a lecture. Most stories for this age tell a child to think about how somebody else feels; these hand them the other side and let them find it with their own hands. A sparrow sits on every one of Otto’s pages and never on Bob’s, so a child always knows whose head they are in.
The misunderstandings are deliberately small: a laugh at the wrong moment, half a sentence heard through a fence, a friend who already has someone to sit with. In each one, both boys behave reasonably on what they knew. Neither lied, and neither asked — which is the whole point, because that is how it usually goes. About a hundred words each way, so the book fits twice into one bedtime, and it always ends on the same question: what did the other boy mean?
- Half a Sentence · Media frase — Bob hears his best friend through a fence and runs off with the half he heard. ISBN 9798997970703
- The Laugh · La risa — One puddle, one jump, one splash — and Bob decides what the laugh meant without asking. ISBN 9798997970710
- Room for Three · Sitio para tres — A new girl at school. Bob counts to two and walks to the wall on his own. ISBN 9798997970727
- Goodnight, Otto · Buenas noches, Otto — Two boys in a tent and a silence each of them reads as an answer. ISBN 9798997970734
- In Otto’s Shoes · En los zapatos de Otto — Otto’s new shoes hurt and Bob cannot tell why. Halfway home they swap. ISBN 9798997970741
Kindle $2.99; paperback $7.99, and each shop prices it a little differently — Walmart adds postage on top, so it works out dearer than the others. Kindle is published in English and Spanish; the paperback is English so far. Bookshop.org pays independent bookshops. bobandotto.com has the current list and a whole story you can print free.
Elsewhere
- bobandotto.com — The books’ own site — read one in the browser, print one free
- danishmentalist.com — The Danish Mentalist — the stage work the method came out of
- LinkedIn — The Danish Mentalist & Founder
- FilmFreeway — Writer — the television script Believable
- Instagram — @danishmentalist
- Facebook — The Danish Mentalist
Write to him
Teachers, school leaders, journalists and people who think he has this wrong all reach the same inbox: jesper@deepconexion.com. Every correction to this site so far arrived from a teacher.
In one paragraph
Jesper K. Lassen, who performs as The Danish Mentalist, is a Danish mentalist and the founder of VEN Method, a teacher-led classroom ritual for social-emotional learning that runs inside the academic lesson on one shared screen. He wrote The Connection Protocol, published free under CC BY-SA 4.0, and the five Bob & Otto picture books for ages four to eight, in English and Spanish. He lives in Aalborg, Denmark. The company is registered in Texas as DeepConexion LLC.
The five books
- Half a Sentence · Media frase
- The Laugh · La risa
- Room for Three · Sitio para tres
- Goodnight, Otto · Buenas noches, Otto
- In Otto’s Shoes · En los zapatos de Otto
Kindle: English and Spanish, $2.99 · Paperback: English, $7.99
Written by him, free
- The Connection Protocol — the method in full
- What We Left to Luck — the essay
Both CC BY-SA 4.0. Adapt them, translate them, teach them — no permission needed.
Take the method. Or take the evening back.
The protocol is published in full and costs nothing — run it tomorrow with four coloured cards. The software writes the questions, runs the screen and keeps the record, for $1 per student per month.