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- [00:00]
Duncan Trussell
Welcome to the dtfh, friends. Today we have a special episode for you. Oz Perlman is here with us. You've probably heard of Oz Perlman. He's the most famous mentalist alive. He has blown people's minds everywhere. Somehow he guessed Rogan's pin number. He just. I don't know. I don't know why he does it. And when he agreed to be on my podcast, I was a little nervous. Not because I don't believe in telepathy or I was afraid of, like, some kind of spiritual potency, but because I was more worried that there's no way he was going to be able to read my mind. And boy, was I wrong. So get ready. You will watch this humble podcaster's brain get splattered all over the studio walls. He really blew my mind. And what's even better is you can hang out with him in his new book, read you'd mind by Oz Perlman. Oz Perlman gets the DTFH4 Golden Stars of coolness. He's a really cool, sweet person. I do hope you'll order his book. It's really good. Been reading it and I love it. But now, everybody, welcome to the dtfh. I, Oz Perlman. Oz, thank you so much for coming on this podcast.
- [01:22]
Oz Perlman
Duncan Trussell. Thank you. Part of the Family hour.
- [01:24]
Duncan Trussell
You are a famous mentalist. You have met presidents. You famously read Joe Rogan's mind. You got his pin number.
- [01:35]
Oz Perlman
Yes.
- [01:36]
Duncan Trussell
People are now accusing you of being in the Mossad.
- [01:40]
Oz Perlman
That's true. Welcome to the Internet, man. I've officially made it. Until you have haters, Duncan, you don't exist.
- [01:46]
Duncan Trussell
You don't exist. And you've got this wonderful book coming out, read you'd mind, which I'm very excited about.
- [01:52]
Oz Perlman
Thank you.
- [01:54]
Duncan Trussell
I love what you do.
- [01:56]
Oz Perlman
The energy from the moment I walked in has been through the roof. I've got to say, I love it.
- [02:00]
Duncan Trussell
Good. Well, how often do I get to be around a world renowned mentalist? It's a rare thing. It's a rare thing.
- [02:05]
Oz Perlman
There's not many of us.
- [02:06]
Duncan Trussell
There is not that many of you. And what I love about what you do when you're doing a demonstration is you clarify to people this is not supernatural. I'm a mentalist. And it occurred to me if I was telepathic, but I wanted to put on a show, right?
- [02:28]
Oz Perlman
I would say that I would do the same thing. So I've thought this exact same thing. Because I've spent an inordinate amount of my life thinking what it would look like if you could really read minds. And I'm trying to emulate it and simulate it for my audiences. So it's funny enough one of my favorite things to do in terms of reading is yes, I've had some self help motivational books in my past and I did a lot of sleuthing and due diligence for my own book. But I love escapism and sci fi. Ever since I was a kid, sci fi was my thing. And the books about like people that are telepathic. Yeah, there's. This is such a throwback. But there's a book called Galactic Milieu Trilogy which is an incredible book. There's one Jack, the bios, they're all out of print now. Julian May is the author. What a shout out. I hope Julian's around. Those books when I was a kid were just like. Because what happened in the books that people suddenly started becoming psychic but they were able to measure their psychic powers. It was very regimented, very like I don't like fantasy where everything's up in the sky. I like objective order, measurable phenomena.
- [03:28]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [03:29]
Oz Perlman
And that book just got me going on. I didn't realize that early in my days I'm like, how cool would it be to read someone's mind?
- [03:34]
Duncan Trussell
Amazing.
- [03:35]
Oz Perlman
And magic was a superpower of being able to fool someone's eyes. Mentalism is similar, it's built on magic. We still have the same architecture of deception, misdirection. But what mentalists learn how to do is to shed the props. I secretly wish I was a comedian. A stand up comedian. All of my friends and people I look up to. And I don't even watch mentalists ever. I watch comedy. I consume endless amounts of stand up. Timing, pauses, how to tell stories, everything about it. And I come from the world of stand up. Where when I lived in the village, we used to go to the cellar. I kid you not. Once, twice or three times a week before kids.
- [04:13]
Duncan Trussell
Wow.
- [04:13]
Oz Perlman
This is back in the day when there was no cover charge to drink minimum hit a hot chocolate. I used to drink. I quit drinking. But like it was just the best. And you'd see everyone.
- [04:22]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, yeah. You know.
- [04:24]
Oz Perlman
And that's the purest. You have the purest form of entertainment. It's you and a mic. And it could be an arena.
- [04:30]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [04:31]
Oz Perlman
Mine is very close. I might have a notepad and a marker or I can do my show zero propless. But it's the closest thing in terms of purity of effect. Right where it's just me. I'm the show, you're fully in the moment.
- [04:42]
Duncan Trussell
100% fully in the moment. You don't know what's gonna happen. Each person that you're priming or whatever the term for it is. It's different psychologies. But you have said in interviews, I find this to be so fascinating. If I can understand the way you think.
- [04:57]
Oz Perlman
Yep.
- [04:58]
Duncan Trussell
I can figure out what you're gonna say. You compared it to LLMs 100%.
- [05:02]
Oz Perlman
I think it's the same thing. An LLM, if you really get down to the brass tacks of everything in a computer is a zero or one.
- [05:08]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [05:09]
Oz Perlman
Is it. Is able to decipher what the next word is, what the next letter is. And so you're either figuring out a predictive algorithm of what somebody will do next.
- [05:17]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [05:17]
Oz Perlman
Based on what they did before and what they're doing now is consolidating all of human knowledge. And that's. I mean, where this is going to go.
- [05:24]
Duncan Trussell
We don't know.
- [05:25]
Oz Perlman
It's so freaked out. Every podcast is. I think everybody has 75% wrong about this. But the problem is that the 25% right. Are all just apocalyptic.
- [05:33]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [05:34]
Oz Perlman
And having kids and I'm like, what are they gonna do? I'm out of a job in 10 years.
- [05:38]
Duncan Trussell
Well, yeah.
- [05:39]
Oz Perlman
Machines will read minds. What do we do?
- [05:42]
Duncan Trussell
What do we do? And, you know, it's. To me, I think one of the things that maybe freaks people out about what you do in the negative, aside from the superstitious stuff, is that we don't want to imagine that there's an automatic quality to humanness. I don't want to think, my God, am I just a machine? I don't know if you've ever heard of Gurdjieff. You ever heard of Gurdjieff the mystic? That was his premise, is that you sort of. He put it, you grow a soul. And so he said that human beings mostly are just automatic responses. And people feel challenged when they hear that. And one of the exercises you could do is the next time you buy something, just watch yourself. Look how automatic it is while you pull your credit card out. The way you do the thing, the way you say, thank you so much, and then ask yourself, how many other moments am I having in my life that are automatic? And when I've been listening to interviews with you, it makes me think that's what you're plugging into that kind of automatic quality.
- [06:43]
Oz Perlman
I think so. Well, you're slipping people into their status quo lane. So think of it as like, when we Sled down a hill, over and over, we go down that same path. Very few things in life other than, you know, very mystical experiences, psychedelic experiences, things that are potentially life or death moments shift you out of that autopilot and give you a different experience. You're not in default user mode. You're so used to being you that until we have a way to simulate somebody else, you're just you. You can't really fully empathize or live someone else's life. How cool would that be, right?
- [07:12]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [07:13]
Oz Perlman
But in my profession, I guide you in a certain way. I'm influencing you. And the part that you said is the negative could be seen as nefarious or invasive if you're getting information somebody doesn't want to give. So you have to sweeten that very much so by making it entertaining and fun. And as you do it, you drop little breadcrumbs along the way explaining how you're doing this. That way, the audience feels that they're coming along and understanding a little bit, but you always leave the next breadcrumb out of their reach so they don't catch up to you. And occasionally they think they're leading up to the cheese, but you have it hidden somewhere else. Because I use multiple methods at play. That's where the world of magic comes. Whenever you see an elephant and the big sheet gets put over, the elephant disappears. Spoiler alert. The elephant is not gone. It didn't disappear from the universe. It got moved somewhere where you don't see it or you looked at where it was before and not now.
- [08:08]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [08:08]
Oz Perlman
That is the art of misdirection and illusion. So we do the same thing within mentalism is reverse engineer the mind. I know what you think the solution is. In fact, I'm making you go in that direction, and then I'm going in a totally different path.
- [08:23]
Duncan Trussell
This is the other reason that this, I think, weirds people out is you're not using it for nefarious purposes. As far as I can tell, you're awesome.
- [08:33]
Oz Perlman
But corporate events, private parties, and big shows.
- [08:36]
Duncan Trussell
But, you know, if you've developed this skill, how many other people have developed this skill and don't talk about it. How many? How many people? I'm not saying Mossad, but if I was running any government, I would want a group of people like you out there in various places, all over the world, guiding people, trying to understand what was going on. I mean, you wouldn't be the ultimate spy. You would be the ultimate CIA agent. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by BetterHelp. You might not have known this. October 10th was World Mental Health Day. And, you know, a really difficult job. And I know this because my mom was one. Being a therapist, oh my God. You've got to not just listen to people, you have to do active listening. Some of my friends who are therapists, whoa. The fact that they're able to just all day long listen to people who are, many of them going through really difficult moments and not completely melt down is a miraculous thing. And for anybody out there who's experienced great therapy, you know, these people are miracle workers. Even if you don't believe in it, even if you don't think it, I've heard people say, if you don't believe it, it won't work. That is bullshit. Like the best therapy I had, I told the therapist up front, there's no way this is gonna work. And it worked. So it's a miraculous, beautiful thing. And there are so many great therapists out there and so many different styles of therapy out there. One of the things that's amazing about BetterHelp is that they do the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences and their 10 years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with the match, you can switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. This World Mental Health Day, we're celebrating the therapists who've helped millions of people take a step forward. If you're ready to find the right therapist for you, BetterHelp can help you start that journey. Our listeners get 10% off their first month@betterhelp.com Duncan that's better. H E L P.com Duncan this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Thank you, BetterHelp.
- [11:45]
Oz Perlman
I wonder if that's true. I think people that are very perceptive and intuitive, that's inherently what some of these agents are and that they learn it for a different role than what I'm doing. So it's really hyper specific. So you can't. People like to generalize my skills. And that's a big part of what I said in the, the first part of the book. The first page of the book says, I can't read minds. I'm not supernatural, I'm not a psychic. I really have to establish that because just like you said, I've had people at the Highest levels, literally CEOs of major companies that have had Their assistants call, get me on the phone and go, I'm doing a deal. I want to hide you in the room. Tell me what he's really thinking. Now, honestly, there's part of me that says, well, how much money are we talking? But you have to live with yourself at the end of that. And that goes down the wormhole of psychics, where most psychics I have seen, when they're in a room, I recognize their tricks. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm egomaniacal enough to say that all psychics are fake. I've heard of people have amazing experiences, and I haven't yet to experience one personally, that I couldn't find a explanation grounded in the five senses. Does that make sense?
- [12:46]
Duncan Trussell
Absolutely.
- [12:46]
Oz Perlman
And some of that doesn't mean that they don't get lucky. So it's very important to understand I get lucky in my show. But luck over and over and over isn't luck anymore. It's heightened intuition.
- [12:55]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [12:56]
Oz Perlman
So if you were to guess a number, one out of a hundred, and this is something I've done more than any trick I've ever done in my life, is tell somebody, think of a number one to 100, and I guess the number. I've done that so many thousands and thousands and thousands of times that I've done it at times where I don't know how I got it right. And so, and I'll guess a number and I'll guess it right, and then I'll say to the next person, before they knew it, you're also going to do 22. They're, how'd you know that? And I go, I don't know how I knew that. There's no. I don't have a credible explanation based on mentalism. It's just the exact same way that sometimes you go to a roulette wheel and again, even a broken clock is right twice a day. You will get lucky, but you will know that that luck's about to happen. Is there a parallel universe where in that universe you got it wrong? It doesn't work every time. But people remember more of the hits, they forget the misses.
- [13:43]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [13:43]
Oz Perlman
And that's what psychics really live on.
- [13:45]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [13:45]
Oz Perlman
Is that they go, I'm sensing a person. And it's. Maybe it's a M or a J. And they go, oh, it's a J. The name starts with a J. Is that right? And now they're playing the odds. This person is of a age, you know, it's going to be James, John, or Jacob. And now you're guiding the person to the answer they want to give because they're there paying money to speak to someone who's passed. You're pulling at the heartstrings. So I've had CEOs call me like that, and I didn't accept the offer because it's a lie. I can't be in the room and just magically read your mind. I have a series of procedures I use to get to that.
- [14:17]
Duncan Trussell
But you seem to recognize that some aspect of what you're doing is beyond your own awareness. Like there is few and far between.
- [14:25]
Oz Perlman
That's not. I want to make sure and explain that that is not how I do most of my things. I've just had those experiences which I then try to reverse engineer. How did I know that? And I liken it much more to instinct and intuition, which. How do you know? How do you know right now? If you're in this room and somebody walks in and you feel the hair on your neck of danger, even if you haven't heard them and nothing's happened, how is that. What is that fight or flight that your body receives? That's not any trained sense, right? That's something that you develop. That's something soldiers live and die by that instinct of someone coming in and their body doesn't seem right, and you instantly jump on it because that person could be armed or have an explosive. I just recently spoke to a Navy SEAL who told me that was their training, is how to heighten that intuition, which isn't something that's. I don't know, the scientific explanation for it. Does that make sense?
- [15:17]
Duncan Trussell
Oh, sure.
- [15:17]
Oz Perlman
But you'd be silly to think that we don't have things that we do that aren't just see, sight, touch, feel, you know, there's more to it than that. To a degree, yeah.
- [15:27]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah. You know, I've heard some spiritual friends of mine have used the term super normal.
- [15:33]
Oz Perlman
Okay.
- [15:34]
Duncan Trussell
That, in other words, this area that we're talking about, it would seem supernatural, magical, but really it's the most normal of normal things. We live in a world that's being constantly filled with distraction, right? Constantly filled with all kinds of algorithmic hypnotic devices that are just trying to direct us in the way that you do. Not for the sake of entertainment, but to get us to buy a new phone, buy a new car.
- [16:02]
Oz Perlman
That's everywhere.
- [16:02]
Duncan Trussell
That's everywhere. So while all that's going on, you might lose track of that intuitive sense and start and sort of numb down. It sounds like you have sharpened yours, honed. Yours. And I wonder, when did it start? At what point did you have your first successful mentalist experiment?
- [16:25]
Oz Perlman
So I didn't like mentalism as a teenager, so I started doing magic tricks initially. And most mentalists, I kind of compare it to being a doctor. You gotta do all the science, pre med and then you become a doctor. And then if you want, you specialize in something, you become a cardiothoracic surgeon. A dermatologist. Right. A urologist. That's not for me. But anyhow, so you go down that path. Mentalist is a specialist within the world of doctors, let's call it that. Doctor's just a gp. Your general physician is more of a magician. You learn sleight of hand, you learn misdirection. And you typically got really good at one thing. For some people, that's card tricks, coin tricks, rope tricks, close up. Magic is what I loved. I did some stage magic, but I didn't have money for all those props. My folks didn't have money. My folks split up. I had to fend for myself at a very young age, which I think has had silver linings for my work ethic in life. But at the time, it sucked. I was all these other people who their parents are paying for their vacations in their car. I'm like, I don't have that. I wish I had that. But blessing in disguise. My kids don't have that. So I am hoping to teach them resilience in a different way. They've kind of lucked out. But what I noticed is I didn't like mentalism because it's kind of boring. Here's what I mean. There's no moves when you're a kid or when you're a teenager. You want that shiny toy? You want something to do. I like to practicing. I would always have a deck of cards in my hand. I'd learn to move and I would do it hundreds and thousands of times. And I like the tactile. Yeah, Mentalism is a game of your mind. It's almost like playing chess blindfolded. Most of what I'm doing is thinking. It's very cerebral.
- [17:56]
Duncan Trussell
Okay, okay, sure.
- [17:58]
Oz Perlman
So I'm thinking of paths and how things will play. It's kind of the same way you would think of jokes. I constantly am taking notes and voice memos of ideas. And my ideas typically start at the end of what I want you to remember because that's what I distilled. It took me a long time to figure out what is it that I do for a living, which I think a lot of people don't ask themselves, what do you do? And you go, well, I work for. No, no, no. What do you do? And so that's a question that until I know my, you know, in French, raison d', etre, I create memorable moments because for a while I thought I entertain people, but that's not exactly right. And I fool people. My job is to deceive, which is an unfortunate part. But if you know how it all works, it loses some of its fascination and luster.
- [18:42]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [18:42]
Oz Perlman
So it's built on secrecy. I am now exposing some secrets in the book, but not how I do the tricks. Those are useless to people. You think they're fun, but they're not. That's like saying Santa Claus isn't real. Of course Santa Claus isn't real.
- [18:54]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [18:55]
Oz Perlman
I want to teach you how Santa Claus delivers all those gifts. I want to teach you all of the stuff surrounding what I do that you can use in your life to be successful at what you want, whether it's personal, financial, relationship driven. Like, how can you use these skills of reading people and getting inside your own head more effectively? And so when you combine those two mentalism. For me, what started happening is I couldn't do bigger shows without bigger props. So it became a practical thing where it's like, I want to perform for more people and get more successful. And I kept doing more mentalism. And I found people were drawn to it in a different way. When you do a magic trick that I love magic, because people think I talk down on magic. I love a great magic trick. But there's a different way people approach magic. They see it as much more of a puzzle. For example, if you were to pick a card and you were to sign it, and it's one of my favorite tricks, and you put it back in the deck and you shuffle as much as you want. We put it down, and then I snap my fingers and it disappeared from the deck. And you go, how can that be? And then I say, look over there. I have a lemon. Take it out. I cut open the lemon, and your card is inside. Sign. It's mind blowing.
- [20:00]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [20:00]
Oz Perlman
But you are aware in your mind that there is somehow that I made this card vanish and I somehow got it in that lemon. And you didn't see that. Yeah, right. You know the steps, but you don't know how I got from step A to B to C. Yeah, it's a puzzle. It's very entertaining. It's very magical. But you know that I didn't Grow a lemon. That had a card in it with your name on it from before we started. It's not real, but it's amazing nonetheless.
- [20:23]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [20:24]
Oz Perlman
Mentalism doesn't have that feeling because there's no step A to B to C. Right. You somehow entered my mind, which we don't think is possible based on all we know. And you told me something that I don't know how I gave it to you. There was no reasonable way.
- [20:38]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [20:38]
Oz Perlman
And so that for people, creates an emotional response. And a lot of people say to me, I don't like magic, but I like what you do. And that's kind of a very high compliment.
- [20:47]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [20:48]
Oz Perlman
And so I kept doing more mentalism, but I was always scared because mentalism goes wrong more often.
- [20:53]
Duncan Trussell
I bet.
- [20:54]
Oz Perlman
And so when mentalism goes wrong, it goes very wrong versus the magic trick. I know when the card came out of the deck, I know it's gone. I know it's in the lemon. I know those two things happen some of the time when I'm doing mentalism. I don't know if it worked until it doesn't work. When I. God, you're thinking of the number six. And Joe's like, no. If I'm guessing Joe's pin code and if he goes no, and I go, this one. No, then you're screwed.
- [21:14]
Duncan Trussell
Oh, shit.
- [21:15]
Oz Perlman
Right? You don't have a real plan, baby. And especially if it's on a big stage, whether it's for a few people or millions of people.
- [21:22]
Duncan Trussell
I gotta ask, what's. Because everyone has seen you melt people's brains with this stuff. We all know that you can do it.
- [21:31]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [21:32]
Duncan Trussell
I want to know what's your biggest fuck up?
- [21:35]
Oz Perlman
Yeah, well, there's been a few. So I think that over time, what really cements a professional and somebody who's very experienced, and you get those 10,000 hours, those 20,000 hours, those reps, is I've learned how to have a complete, as you call it, massive fuck up. And you won't know that it happened. And so the way that happens is because think about it, you just decided that it's a mess up. How do you know it's a mess up? Well, the only way you know if it's a mess up is if you know what the ending is supposed to be. If you don't know what the ending is, then how would you know if I messed up? So it's setting the terms. It's like watching a movie where in the movie you always expect the good person to win. The good guy wins. And the plot thickens, and friends become enemies. Enemies become friends. But some of those movies that have screwed you up the most have no ending like a David lynch movie. You're like, what was that, Midnight Gospel? Like, there's shows where you don't necessarily see the ending happening. So part of the secret sauce over time, and this has taken decades to learn, I learn every time, is that I don't necessarily telegraph exactly where I'm going. I have a pick your own adventure where if something's going wrong, I take the spotlight off of what you think is happening and shift to this other thing that's gonna go right.
- [22:49]
Duncan Trussell
I gotcha.
- [22:50]
Oz Perlman
In my early days, I didn't know to do that, and I gave the audience the advantage. And now I said, well, you think this. I'm gonna guess this, and I'm gonna do it in this way. And this is the ending. And now when it doesn't go that way, it's like. But if you get it wrong sometimes and it's just a build to eventually getting it right, then it just builds more drama and you go, oh, he messed up. Oh, he messed up. Oh, no. Oh, my God. He got it right after all.
- [23:12]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [23:12]
Oz Perlman
And that was just me pulling something out of nowhere that back up to a backup.
- [23:16]
Duncan Trussell
Wow. Okay, that's great. You have safety parachutes all the time. You have saved a million safety parachutes.
- [23:21]
Oz Perlman
Cut this ripcord. Cut this one. And then I've got, like, a squirrel where I fly into.
- [23:27]
Duncan Trussell
Do you.
- [23:27]
Oz Perlman
But it still messes up. There's still things that go wrong, but it's got to take big swings.
- [23:31]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, you. Well, yeah, I mean, you've taken some huge swings. I mean, where you've gotten to. You didn't get there by playing risks. You had to take risks with Howard Stern. You had to take an insane risk with Rogan. Insane.
- [23:44]
Oz Perlman
Yeah. And that was. That was. Again, love. Joe had a great experience. That's the lion's den where Joe. Everybody knows it. And what creates the credibility is there's no way, and you know more than anybody, I've met him for a few hours, that Joe is going to pretend on someone's behalf. Joe is not going to debunk you in that moment on the spot if he senses that something doesn't pass the sniff test like, that you. How could that be?
- [24:11]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [24:11]
Oz Perlman
And then when you layer another thing that. Another thing. How could that. How could. Like, that's where you want to absolutely just melt someone's brain. And when they leave, they're just like, I'm hoping you just had an experience that's on the level of a shamanic Carlos Castanada. Like, what just happened there?
- [24:27]
Duncan Trussell
You go and see this. To take it to another level. And again, I just want to reiterate, like, I'm fascinated by what you do, but really, you were saying, what's my reason? What do I do? Wait. One thing about you that I've noticed in all your interviews, you have this. You seem to have this real love of life. You seem to be an exuberant, happy person. And so sort of what's coming out of the show that you're putting on is something more than that. You seem to be. You seem to be a really joyful person.
- [24:59]
Oz Perlman
I appreciate that. I mean, I try to spread positivity. Like, I think that's. People have told me before that what you're doing in this era of divisiveness, and it's just. I just want to create moments that, like I said, are memorable, fun things that you talk about and things that bring people together, that don't take people apart.
- [25:15]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [25:16]
Oz Perlman
And so.
- [25:30]
Duncan Trussell
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- [27:49]
Oz Perlman
I mean what can I say? Like I've won the lottery if this is, you know when people talk about simulations, like if this was a simulation, I won the whole thing. Like just being alive is just an obscene. What are the odds then being alive during this era and then just every benefit that I have being able bodied, like I don't know, I'm. I can't see how I would be anything but beyond joyful because I look at the glass as half full. Even if the glass was a tenth full. That good. There's water in the glass.
- [28:18]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, right.
- [28:18]
Oz Perlman
And so my default setting, and I don't know how to extrapolate this to others I've tried in the book is to look at how lucky you are to be grateful every day, to have that gratitude because you really people don't realize you could die tomorrow. I could die today and what would I think with my dying breath And I think it would just be how lucky I was to have ever been alive.
- [28:37]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [28:38]
Oz Perlman
And I think a lot of people come to it with this opposite mentality of what do I not have? And I haven't always had this, I've cultivated it. And a lot of people could say well you've got money, you got fame, you got this success. I didn't have all that. That over time.
- [28:51]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [28:51]
Oz Perlman
And I look back at the come up which most people will tell you who have achieved a success. Those hungry days were some of the most fun days. I know where you're sleeping on a futon and you don't know what's going to happen and you're just like going place to place and those are once you have the comfort and once you have a comfort zone that you're very in then things can be taken away. When you don't have the things, it's so exciting every time you get them. And material possessions at a certain point really lose a lot of their cachet.
- [29:20]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [29:21]
Oz Perlman
I think anyone that's rich, it's not to do with your money, it's can you afford anything you want. And that's more an internal barometer than an external barometer is if you can afford everything you want. For you maybe that's a roof over your head, food to feed your family. Xyz. But if you're lusting for private jets and yachts, then you'll never be happy. You'll always be comparing yourself to somebody younger, richer, stronger, better. Like there's always going to be somebody, er, than you, always. So you have to find what satisfies and fulfills you. And this is, this is a deeper existential question. I love it, but I think that's kind of the nature of what I try to put into my kids is appreciation and happiness with what you have, but also still having goals for what you want to achieve.
- [30:04]
Duncan Trussell
You have five kids.
- [30:06]
Oz Perlman
Five kids, wow. Shout out to my wife here. Duncan, don't. There's very people always like you. And you're saying, look, my wife birthed them, carried them, was pregnant for damn near 10 years. Nursing, you know, like, the sacrifices are few and far between on my. And if men had to repopulate this planet.
- [30:22]
Duncan Trussell
Trouble. We're done, done, done. All we have to do is come. It's not fair compared to what they go through to make life happen. But I'm sorry if you've been asked this before. I imagine you have. How often do you use mentalism in parenting?
- [30:41]
Oz Perlman
So I use a form of mentalism which is very interesting, which is the illusion of choice and the illusion of free will.
- [30:47]
Duncan Trussell
Oh, yeah, I guess we all do that.
- [30:49]
Oz Perlman
And misdirecting. So the number one thing that you can go wrong with a two or three year old is a power struggle. Because once you give them a yes or no question and say, you need to eat your vegetables. No, no. Now what you've done is create a dynamic where they have so much power.
- [31:03]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [31:03]
Oz Perlman
I have power over. You usually have power over me.
- [31:06]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [31:06]
Oz Perlman
So the misdirection is the same thing I do in my show where I don't let you know all your options. I only give you some of them and it seems like they're very big, but I limit you in a way you wouldn't understand.
- [31:16]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [31:17]
Oz Perlman
So with that, with, with, with a child like that, I, I will say to them, oh, you're so lucky. You get to pick. Do you get to have two carrots and one cucumber or one tomato and one pepper? You choose and I'll pick the color guess behind my hand. And so again, I'm out there performing tricks on the kids.
- [31:34]
Duncan Trussell
That's cool.
- [31:34]
Oz Perlman
And over time, they'll see through it because novelty is important.
- [31:37]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [31:37]
Oz Perlman
But that's how you trick their brain because now they go, oh, I get to choose. I'm so lucky. Yeah, I'm gonna Have, I'm gonna have the cucumber and one tomato. I go, all right, you get it? No, I'm not giving it to you. Especially when you do the. Play hard to get and say you can't have this or you don't want to give them something to eat. How many of us have said it's too spicy? All my kids like spicy food now because they don't buy it anymore. They've tasted spicy food, habanero stuff, and now my 7 year old become a spicy boy. And then my 9 year old too. Even my 5 year old daughter. I don't want to throw anyone under the bus. They can all eat spicy food now like a champ.
- [32:06]
Duncan Trussell
You know, I had them all eating broccoli for a while by saying that I was starting a broccoli museum and I just wanted them to see the broccoli that I was putting in a museum, but don't eat it. And like they would just happily devour broccoli.
- [32:22]
Oz Perlman
But this, because that's a false narrative. What people say when they talk to other kids and they go, oh, that's gross, that's gross. Then they just want to peer pressure, fit in with other kids. Inherently, not everything has to be this sweet or salty. Your taste buds are developed based on a lot of what other people tell you. Now, keep in mind, I've had one or two picky eaters out of the group and that's a very difficult thing to overcome. So you got to be sneaky with it. Sneak the vegetables elsewhere. There's ways to do it, but. And there's nature, nurture. This is a long conversation about how you see your kids and they're each their own person. There is nothing I did to put inside of you who you are. You are just you.
- [32:58]
Duncan Trussell
It's incredible.
- [32:58]
Oz Perlman
It's so fun.
- [32:59]
Duncan Trussell
It's incredible. And it's, you know, I. You know, I. This is why I do believe in reincarnation, because I.
- [33:05]
Oz Perlman
That would be incredible. I would love. You would love it.
- [33:07]
Duncan Trussell
Well, you know, this, this is interesting. And that's how I used to feel about it. It's interesting because people, when they're trying to write off Buddhism and especially the aspects of Buddhism where there's reincarnation, they're like, that's just your way to escape death. You're just afraid to die. And so you've invented another way to not die. And in Buddhism it's like, you don't want to keep coming back here. It's suffering. You've been doing this over and over and over. Sure, you're a mentalist right now, world renowned mentalist, but you don't know what the next go around's gonna be. You could be a squirrel. You could be a mildly telepathic squirrel. No one gives a shit about a telepathic squirrel. You wouldn't know.
- [33:47]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [33:47]
Duncan Trussell
But really, this is sort of where I wanna go with this. And forgive me, because I don't mean to seem sinister, but. No, no, you know, I'm sure you've heard the idea. As above, so below. Okay, okay. So as above, so below. In other words, small things. All things. So when I think about you, the mentalist, and when I think about you parenting and knowing all these things about psychology and knowing all these things about how to get your kids to eat vegetables, it's very hard for me to not believe in the Illuminati because I think to myself, if you can individually do these miracles, not literal miracles, but these incredible feats with people, then why wouldn't there be groups of people just like you?
- [34:39]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [34:39]
Duncan Trussell
Who didn't want to make people happy, didn't want to do stage shows, but wanted to exert some level of control by.
- [34:46]
Oz Perlman
So I can tell you exactly who they are. Who? Con men, con women. So I am an honest con person. So think about what I could use getting secret information for in nefarious ways.
- [34:58]
Duncan Trussell
So much.
- [34:58]
Oz Perlman
It would be for material gains. It would be down the path of psychics, down the path of. I mean, anybody who's kind of selling snake oil, in essence, what you're doing. I mean, I think that there's parallels between what I do and cult leaders.
- [35:09]
Duncan Trussell
Absolutely.
- [35:10]
Oz Perlman
Which is you can take people and just take this exact same path and show people things that are unexplainable to them.
- [35:16]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [35:16]
Oz Perlman
And then guide them towards a path of what you want them to do with that information.
- [35:20]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [35:20]
Oz Perlman
I've much more harnessed it for entertainment and now for hopefully positive, uplifting changes in people's lives, which is this book. Like the book. Read your mind. The reason I wrote this is I. There was no. It wasn't a material gain. It was not like, I've got to make money, I've got to sell a book. It was more of. I didn't believe in myself for years that I had a book to write in me. I just thought, is this really interesting? And I think there's an age you hit where I was over 40, where I started to believe a little more confidently that I've lived a life like I've had decades of experience where there's enough to go out there and not have bluster of again. At 25, who the hell am I? What do I know, right? You're just a kid.
- [35:55]
Duncan Trussell
Sure.
- [35:56]
Oz Perlman
Now, I've lived and done for a few decades and I've seen the proof is in the pudding where the things I'm doing actually work. And they're real skills that I've developed over years of iteration and learning that are teachable skills to others. Things that are like, for example, I think one of the number one things that holds people back is a fear of rejection and failure.
- [36:16]
Duncan Trussell
100%.
- [36:17]
Oz Perlman
It is holds you back internally from attempting to do the things you want. So if you have a goal in your mind, in many instances, maybe it's a physical goal. And it could be small. I want to lose 10 pounds. Or this year I want to. I want to get a raise. Or I just don't like my job. I'm sick of being an Uber driver. I have this other dream and I don't have enough money together. And it's easy for you, bud, because you're on TV and you're all like. All of those things are typically a problem of I'm not going to go for it because I'm too scared. What happens if I fail?
- [36:44]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [36:45]
Oz Perlman
And there's ways, just like a magician, where I stack the deck in my favor. You take, you get smart and you break down this problem. Because most people have a goal that's very vast and far and they don't make it smaller because all it is a series of steps to get there. I've done a series of steps to get to where I am. I didn't know what all the steps were as I was going, but I could typically see one or two or three in front of me. And if you can achieve those small wins along the way, you can rewire your brain to start seeing, oh, I can actually do that. And then build up the confidence that allows you to keep going when so many others quit. And that's really. Is what you see. Overachievers. Most of the best entrepreneurs in life are not people that succeeded. They just were very, very good at failing and not stopping.
- [37:32]
Duncan Trussell
That's so cool. Yeah. Persistent.
- [37:34]
Oz Perlman
Like Andrew Dyson, the guy, literally, Sir Andrew. I think it's Andrew Dyson, right? Created the Dyson vacuum.
- [37:40]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [37:40]
Oz Perlman
He had over 5000 prototypes. 5000 prototypes before he did that. Became a billionaire, I think like 8 to 10 times over and is knighted by the queen. This is somebody who just thick skin would not say no, believed in himself to a fault, many would think. And I think that's the kind of level of thick skin that you have to develop. Or if you can't, naturally, you trick yourself into it.
- [38:03]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [38:03]
Oz Perlman
I wasn't always super confident. Well, that's it. That's like the baby steps. It's. I also. I run marathons and ultramarathons, which. Ultramarathons, I think helps me. I know it helps me as a mentalist, because that same level of achieving goals when they are very hard and when you're down and out. And you can always talk tough when you're here and comfortable, like sitting on a couch. Yeah, I'll go run a marathon, Everyone says, but get out there at mile 22 and you're hurting, or get out there at mile 122 and I've been running for 24 hours.
- [38:31]
Duncan Trussell
Holy shit.
- [38:32]
Oz Perlman
And then you learn who you really are and that kind of thing. I like to suffer because the suffering allows me to get to a point in my psyche of, I don't want to do this. Everything in me wants to quit, but the fact that I'm convincing myself not to quit is what lets me know later how strong I am for other things.
- [38:53]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah. Okay. So this place you're taught, there's like a place, I've noticed, where you've pushed yourself well past where you thought your limit was.
- [39:05]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [39:06]
Duncan Trussell
You enter into this new zone, and then what you used to think was your limit seems easy, ridiculously easy. It's almost like gravity diminishes a little bit. You feel like. Not that you're not suffering still. Not that everything's easy, but do you know what I mean? It's like you've broken into this completely spacious new zone. It feels new every time. Anytime that I've had that experience, I think that's.
- [39:33]
Oz Perlman
I mean, that's like any workout. If you do weights, what do you do? You rip muscle.
- [39:38]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [39:38]
Oz Perlman
And it grows back stronger.
- [39:40]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [39:40]
Oz Perlman
That's all that's happening during every workout. Tearing the fibers mean that's why you get sore. That's why if you don't get sore, you almost feel like, what gains am I getting right?
- [39:47]
Duncan Trussell
You.
- [39:48]
Oz Perlman
Pardon me?
- [39:48]
Duncan Trussell
Do you. Have you ever. And I don't mean to keep veering it in this direction. It is just where my mind goes. Surely you've been approached by more than entrepreneurs. Surely you've been approached by intelligence agencies who've been like, hey, what are you doing? What's going on there?
- [40:06]
Oz Perlman
Surely I've been approached by several intelligence agencies to speak for them. Yeah. And it's not necessarily under the guise of law enforcement or what I would describe as like national security. It's more of hyper specific tasks that could we improve in our training.
- [40:25]
Duncan Trussell
Cool.
- [40:26]
Oz Perlman
And it tends to be people that are fans of my work who then think exactly like you do, which is, I'm seeing what you're doing. And I wonder if this could allow. Allow us to get any quantifiable advantage when we're doing something similar or when.
- [40:38]
Duncan Trussell
It'S being done to us. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, if I was training anybody, I would want at least for them to know the signs. Here's what it might look like. If you're in the presence of someone who is a con artist who is priming you, this is what you should be aware of.
- [40:56]
Oz Perlman
Well, the best con artists, the best ones by far, we can sense when someone is trying to sell us something.
- [41:02]
Duncan Trussell
What is that?
- [41:03]
Oz Perlman
Well, there's. There's a sense of this smarmy. Like, you go in and somebody's like, get this. Oh, this car is great for you. I didn't ask for that car. Like, it's pushy, right? The pushy salesman sometimes works, don't get me wrong. But it's never the top salesperson at an organization. The top salesperson at an organization is the person who makes you feel at ease, trusting, and like you want to give them your money.
- [41:24]
Duncan Trussell
They're your friend.
- [41:25]
Oz Perlman
This is a terrible example. Bernie Madoff was the most successful con man ever. Because Bernie Madoff would spend years telling you, no, no, no, until you were head over foot ready, you do anything to give him money. And then he gives you a short window and says, you know what? We just opened up. I'll give you two days. But honestly, I don't think it's right for you. And you go, let me get everything. Let me sell the house. Let me do everything. Because I've been waiting years for this moment. Patient, the long game. There are things that I can tell you like that Howard Stern moment. For those that don't know Howard Stern, this is. This is one of those moments that I will take with me to my deathbed of like, man, I can't believe that happened. Where Howard Stern had Valerie Harper on the show. You can look into this. Who was a big star from the 70s, like I love Lucy and the show Rhoda, and she was terminally ill, and they did the Houdini test. So Houdini and his wife Bess, before Houdini Used to debunk psychics. And they said, here's a test for psychics. I want you to ask somebody that's dead something that only we would know, that's never been written down, that's never been spoken aloud, that's never been nowadays communicated through electronics. Electronics could be tapped. So in this example, he told his wife, if I ever die, here's our word, like a safe word. Don't tell it to anyone, no matter what they say. Do nothing with it, ever. Keep it only in your mind. If that person is psychic, we both know it. And if there's an afterlife and they can communicate with me and I'm there talking to you, I will tell them the word. They will tell the word to you.
- [42:51]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [42:51]
Oz Perlman
And that's how we'll test. None of the other stuff. Just tell me the word.
- [42:54]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [42:55]
Oz Perlman
Control, Study, right? We don't really have any way to talk to the dead, so people have done that since it's a famous thing. And you're welcome to do it with, you know, your spouse or somebody you want and see what happens.
- [43:04]
Duncan Trussell
Right? Friends, the holidays sneak up so fast. Before you know it, Christmas is nipping at your heels, ripping into your Achilles tendons. Tendon. I don't know how many Achilles tendons there are, but it's not too early to get your shopping done and actually have fun with it. Uncommon Goods makes holiday shopping stress free and joyful with thousands of one of a kind gifts. You can't find any anywhere else. You must go to this website. There used to be this incredible. I think it was called, well, I won't give the name, but it was an awesome catalog that you would find on airplanes. And it had the coolest stuff. This is what Uncommon Goods reminds me of. But this stuff is so cool. You've got, you know, just like easy gifts for people if you want, but also, whoa, check out some of the unique gifts they have. Like really, really wild stuff. For example, a do it yourself mochi donut kit. I love stuff like this. A pressed garden of love serving bowl. Like weird awesome things. D do it yourself wooden amplifying phone speaker kit. These are the kinds of gifts I want. Like, weird stuff. Oh, you want an upcycle? Baby grand piano. Kalimba. They've got it. You want fart Bingo. They got it. How about you always wanted to make your own decorative Turkish table lamp. They've got it. These are cool gifts. These are the kind of gifts you give to people and they feel like you actually love them. It's not some gift Card bullshit. Also, they've just got super cool stuff, too. Not just weird stuff, which is what I like. If you want to get, like, just like, something a little less eccentric. They've got beautiful jewelry, great wedding gifts, housewarming gifts. Everything that you could need, especially if you're like me and you procrastinate getting people gifts. Also, when you shop at Uncommon Goods, you're supporting artists and small independent businesses. Many of their handcrafted products are made in small batches. So shop now before they sell out this holiday season. So shop early, have fun, and cross some names off your list today. To get 15% off your next gift, go to uncommongoods.com dunkin' that's uncommongoods.com Duncan For 15% off, don't miss out on this limited time offer. Uncommon Goods. We're all out of the ordinary.
- [46:15]
Oz Perlman
Howard Stern did the same thing with Valor, where they were both intrigued by Houdini, and they did it off air. And Howard would do a test for, like, I don't know, almost a decade, asking people, come on the show. Psychics, Guess the word. Guess the word. You're that good? Couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. So I took on the challenge, and I said, that's how I got on the show. I've been trying for years to get on the show. And this is bigger Pictures. When I create a goal, I'm relentless. Being on Rogan, that was six, seven years where it was in my mind of being on Rogan. Oh, yeah, relentless. And I'll take a step forward, a step or two back, step forward. But I am very much of the mindset of no equals, not yet. And that's a big chapter in the book, is how you rewire your brain the same way I rewire people's brains. So that your default setting is when I hear, no, let's say you have a goal that you want. It's not. No, it's not yet.
- [47:04]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [47:05]
Oz Perlman
And I liken it to a door that's locked. If we right now took that door, locked it, threw away the key, we're stuck, right? But what if instead we slammed that door really hard? The hinge went out of sight, and it was jammed. Well, now what we have to do is we have to find the right way to spin this way, turn this way, hit this, open it up, and we'll get just a crack open, Duncan. And then you and me will get our fingers in, and then we'll slowly crack it open. Then we'll get our arms in, then we'll get our shoulder in, then we'll rip that door open. That's a not yet. That's a not yet. And in so many instances in my life, like, when I quit working on Wall street, everyone around me thought I was crazy. But to me, it's like, this is not a no that I'm giving up my life. This is a not yet. I just got to build the career up.
- [47:43]
Duncan Trussell
That's so cool.
- [47:43]
Oz Perlman
So with Howard Stern, that was over three years of formulating. I realized the premise. I need to start thinking, how could I possibly pull this off? And even then. Even then, it was not 100. When I walked in the room, and my wife, who's both my biggest cheerleader slash my biggest cynic, is like, what are you gonna do if you screw this up? Like, I don't know. She's like, how sure are you that you're gonna get it right? 80, 90. She goes, it's not 90, 80, 90. She's like, that's not high enough. I'm like, well, listen, what are you gonna do?
- [48:12]
Duncan Trussell
What, are you researching him? Like, are you like.
- [48:14]
Oz Perlman
You wouldn't believe. There's so much that.
- [48:16]
Duncan Trussell
So you are, like, just studying.
- [48:18]
Oz Perlman
Well, that's not a typical example of, you know, tomorrow morning, I have a show here in Austin for about 500 people. I don't know anyone in the room. I know a couple, a CEO and the president. I might get one of them involved. But if I use them, the whole show, it seems fake.
- [48:29]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [48:30]
Oz Perlman
Right here, I'm at an inherent disadvantage, or call it an advantage, because I know you read your Wikipedia. No, I could know a lot. I could have processed everything you've ever put out via ChatGPT. Sure knows.
- [48:40]
Duncan Trussell
Who knows, who knows?
- [48:42]
Oz Perlman
So the challenge there is, if you're in a room with 500 people, you can make it very authentic and genuine by making it random.
- [48:47]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [48:48]
Oz Perlman
Right. You go ahead and envelope to anyone else, take this Frisbee, close your eyes, throw it somewhere, Catch. You throw it to someone else. Right. The stuff I do when I'm in rooms with football players that goes viral on espn, it's because you know inherently that these football players aren't faking it for me.
- [49:03]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [49:03]
Oz Perlman
Because, one, they're paid a lot of money.
- [49:06]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [49:06]
Oz Perlman
So what am I going to hold over their head for, you know, Aaron Rodgers or Joe Burrow to do my bidding?
- [49:13]
Duncan Trussell
There's always more benefit in tricking you.
- [49:15]
Oz Perlman
There is, in many instances, a much bigger benefit for them to get me. And in the room, there's A machismo that says, he's not getting me, he's not getting me. And when I stand up, they go, don't let him do it. Don't let him do it. He's like, I'll let him do it.
- [49:28]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [49:28]
Oz Perlman
And that's the fun, man.
- [49:31]
Duncan Trussell
Oh, you're just a tightrope walker friend. It's. You're comparing it to stand up, but it's far more dangerous. And I do, you know, there is, there are tricks, you know, with like, hecklers and stuff. Absolutely, there's tricks.
- [49:45]
Oz Perlman
But we have the same tricks with hecklers because we know inherently, you and I do that. What's a heckler want at their core? Attention.
- [49:51]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [49:51]
Oz Perlman
And so if you can figure out what kind of attention they want, what is the attention they're feeding for and how can you diffuse that and in the best instances, make the audience love you? It depends what kind of heckler it is. Do you want them to hate the heckler? You can always tell when somebody just went over just a little too much.
- [50:08]
Duncan Trussell
Almost always the case.
- [50:09]
Oz Perlman
And when you, when you pushed it and the audience is no longer on your side, they're on the heckler side. You've lost them, you're done. But you have to win them back. And that kind of is punching down versus punching up.
- [50:18]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [50:19]
Oz Perlman
And there's, there's like very fine lines and you, you, you go over the line. None of us are perfect. And then you get those moments of audience crowd work, which are gold.
- [50:29]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [50:29]
Oz Perlman
And we have now people that have literally made a career and changed the whole face of it. Like the Matt Rife model where he changed the game for many of you. Like, like the whole thing got flipped over on its head and now so many other people are doing it effectively. And obviously he's not the first to do crowd work by any stretch. I love what he does, but you just got to see where we don't need to burn material anymore. We can just do crowd work consistently. We can shape up and change our routine and ad lib and do current events, which you burn that material, but you're not burning your act. Mentalist. It's interesting because we don't have to burn our act. We're like vaudeville. I could do the same show for the next three decades minus AI and keeping up with.
- [51:06]
Duncan Trussell
Because as long as the crowd's different, the crowd's different.
- [51:09]
Oz Perlman
But also it's interesting, not as many people will see you at once. And the punchline doesn't work in the same way as a Joke. Does people actually want to see some of my tricks over? Because it's kind of like greatest hits, right? If I go see Tom Petty, he doesn't do Free Fall and I'm pissed. Right? You could rip, man. But you can't just go to see the Stones and have them do all greatest hits or all new songs from the new album. You're gonna be like, dude, where's Jumpin Jack Flash? Where's I can't get no. Like you need those songs in there or you leave mad.
- [51:41]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [51:41]
Oz Perlman
So people want to see certain things over, but they also want to see new things.
- [51:44]
Duncan Trussell
That's right.
- [51:44]
Oz Perlman
For me, tv, social media and like podcasts are where I can try to diversify and do fun new things versus my day to day act where it's for high paying crowds. They want the A. They're not looking for me to work out C minus in front of them.
- [52:00]
Duncan Trussell
Have you. This is insane to ask and I'm sorry, it probably is gonna seem like I completely misunderstand what you're doing. Have you tried to do any of this with an AI?
- [52:11]
Oz Perlman
So we should try that. I haven't yet, so that's a great idea. What I did do at a certain point was I was, I did a show for IBM MainStage T Mobile arena in Las Vegas and we did a fun bit. It's behind closed doors so I don't have it videoed. Where me and Deep Blue, which was the previous supercomputer, which by now is practically like less powerful than your phone.
- [52:30]
Duncan Trussell
I know. It's compared to freaky.
- [52:32]
Oz Perlman
Yeah. Meanwhile, your phone has more computing power than they had when they sent astronauts to the moon if that happened.
- [52:38]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [52:40]
Oz Perlman
And so when you see like just how Moore's law is advancing. I did a mind reading bit with a card trick to see who could guess a card quicker for more people. And I beat the computer. And so I was like on stage, I was like, yo, if it's Skynet tomorrow, I'm working for Team Human, baby. I'm keeping us in line. But to see what would happen now would be very fascinating.
- [52:59]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah. To see like how, how much of the tricks that you do with people. I think there would be a way to do it with AI.
- [53:07]
Oz Perlman
AI can't do.
- [53:08]
Duncan Trussell
So you would have to get it to get. You would have to, you'd have to get it to say something without.
- [53:14]
Oz Perlman
There's a level of jazz involved to my show that's, it's, it's just you're, you're so quickly taking Data points in such a fast.
- [53:24]
Duncan Trussell
I think I've been seeing you do that to some degree.
- [53:26]
Oz Perlman
Yeah.
- [53:26]
Duncan Trussell
You seem hyper aware of, like, my hand movements. I see you. Like, you're really taking it all in.
- [53:32]
Oz Perlman
You're what I'm performing. Yes. Because if I don't take it in, small gestures, small things can throw me off. Little words, little pauses before you. That means your brain is not fully focused. And again, what's funny is on Rogan, people talked about me talking fast. And when you see my show, you'll see there's different pacing at different points.
- [53:52]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [53:53]
Oz Perlman
And that's a tool. My voice is actually a tool where they go, oh, he's nervous. I'm not nervous. There was no nerves involved. I'm controlling the flow of the situation, the conversation. Because right now, if you're talking and I'm talking quick, I can go over something you're about to say. And if I control the flow of the conversation, then at a certain point in your mind, it's the same as if you were guiding someone along. And right when they're about to do something, you continue talking. You. Well, they just went out of that lane and they continued somewhere else.
- [54:20]
Duncan Trussell
Oh, that's so spooky. I'm your little puppet right now. Who's doing the podcast.
- [54:25]
Oz Perlman
You know what? Let's do. Let's do something fun. Let's, let's. Let's entice people. You stuck around the listener. So the challenge I give, and when.
- [54:31]
Duncan Trussell
I walked in, big assumption. They stuck around.
- [54:33]
Oz Perlman
I hope they did. So if they did, when I walked in, I said that you and I have something in common, which is our names are.
- [54:40]
Duncan Trussell
Oh, yeah.
- [54:40]
Oz Perlman
I don't want to call them unusual, but I mentioned it to you. I said that your name is one I don't hear often. Right. In fact, how many Duncans have you met in the last few months where you walked up and go, duncan, I'm Duncan.
- [54:51]
Duncan Trussell
Have not met.
- [54:52]
Oz Perlman
It doesn't happen frequently. Right. And mine, O's. It's an unusual name. It's Hebrew, Israeli based. Speaking of Mossad, not for the Mossad, but I'm getting that a lot after Rogan. But we have unusual names. And when I ask people to challenge, which is to think of someone from your past with a difficult name, I like to say it that way. Because if I were to just say to you, and I just say right now, Dugan, think of somebody. Most people default to someone quick, and someone quick is someone close in their life. And typically they'll go with A more common name if they're told to ask quickly. Because common names are more common, you know, more people with them. So inherently, when you did this and I see you and I saw you look over and you're like, hard name. And you're like, I got it. I think you came up with somebody. Okay. And I can see right now in your mind you're thinking, is this a good person? This might be too tough. You thought of somebody that. When was the last time. I want to know who popped in your head. When was the last time you spoken to this person?
- [55:52]
Duncan Trussell
Oh, I haven't talked to them. I haven't talked to them since the early 90s, early 90s.
- [55:58]
Oz Perlman
And yeah, I walk in the studio, we sit down, I mention your name, I mention my name right now, and I ask you to think of somebody that you haven't talked to. Literally somebody popped in your head that you haven't talked to in 30 plus years. Is that correct?
- [56:14]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, I'm anxious about this because I feel like you're like, ah, that's bullshit, that name.
- [56:19]
Oz Perlman
So let's take this right now. This is a problem with an insurmountable set of eyes. Are we in agreement? You have not. I want to be clear. You have not written this name down. You have not whispered it on camera. You're not nothing. You literally thought of it and it's in your head. Okay, let's see if we can do this. Let's see if we can pull this off and pull it somehow to your brain. D, U, N, C, A, N is six letters long. Your name, Duncan. Yeah, I used my fingers for those who are on a podcast and couldn't hear but couldn't see. I want you, without using your fingers, without doing anything of the sort, to count the number of letters in this person's name. Simply to yourself. Not out loud. Simply to yourself.
- [56:56]
Duncan Trussell
Okay, hold on.
- [56:58]
Oz Perlman
Not out loud.
- [57:07]
Duncan Trussell
Okay.
- [57:09]
Oz Perlman
You did the first name only, not the last name, Is that correct?
- [57:11]
Duncan Trussell
Just the first name.
- [57:12]
Oz Perlman
Okay, let's see what I think. I felt like you were double checking.
- [57:17]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [57:18]
Oz Perlman
Oh, you don't say that because they're not giving away. Nobody takes that long for a very short name. That's easy, right? So if it was inherently like a three or four letter name, you could have done it, but you would have gotten more indicators of deceit, which means you would have done it. And then there's usually a thing where when people fake that they're continuing, there's ways you can tell that they're faking the continuation of the count. And I didn't see that for you. I might be wrong, I might be right, but you never know. And then right now, what I'm saying, and I'm seeing that you're telling me, yes, your body's telling me I'm right, which means the name is a little bit longer. But then. You know the game Hangman?
- [57:50]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [57:51]
Oz Perlman
I don't know the age of your kids, but you ever play that game?
- [57:53]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, sure.
- [57:54]
Oz Perlman
You're at a restaurant, you make the dashes. Notice when the words are very long, you struggle to make the dashes. You kind of have to whisper in your ear. Yeah, Right. But when it's a short word, like the. It's like three letters. And if I think that the number of letters in this name. Try not to react, I think is even. I think that when you counted the first time you mistakenly counted odd, you went one too many letters, then you went back six letters. Isn't it?
- [58:20]
Duncan Trussell
That is awesome.
- [58:21]
Oz Perlman
Right? Yes. Six letters. And now in your mind, imagine a hangman with all the letters of this name sitting in front of you.
- [58:28]
Duncan Trussell
Okay.
- [58:30]
Oz Perlman
And that they are simply like Scrabble tiles right there in front of you.
- [58:33]
Duncan Trussell
Okay.
- [58:34]
Oz Perlman
You reach down, you let your fingers go back and forth over the letters. And you don't know. You feel like you want to grab one, but then you decide, no, maybe I don't want that one. And then you jump to another letter. Maybe then you go, no, and then you jump to another one. That, I don't know, feels right. Maybe it feels strange to you. Maybe. I don't know why, but you decide, I'm going with that letter in the end. Do you have a letter?
- [58:57]
Duncan Trussell
Yep.
- [59:01]
Oz Perlman
So when you ask someone to go into the word, they tend to do the middle letters. But then when they switch, they might go to the extremes. But then at the end, they don't end up on the extremes. You didn't end up on the first letter, did you?
- [59:12]
Duncan Trussell
Nope.
- [59:14]
Oz Perlman
I hate to say it, because normally people won't do, but I think you went with a vowel, didn't you?
- [59:20]
Duncan Trussell
I did not.
- [59:20]
Oz Perlman
Okay, so maybe there's a vowel. There has to be vowels in the letters. But again, this isn't an exact science. So I go back and forth. It's all straight lines. Two lines. A line. H. Are you thinking letter H? You are. I knew it. It's an H. Is this going to be on video or just audio?
- [59:39]
Duncan Trussell
Video.
- [59:40]
Oz Perlman
Video as well. Is that correct?
- [59:41]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah. That's crazy.
- [59:48]
Oz Perlman
There's the H. I want you to close your eyes. You can't see if you don't mind putting your hand on top of your eyes. So there's no way anybody could see. And that people will tell me sometimes that I have written this down after the fact. This is being written before he says a word, and I've shown it to the camera. And open your eyes, and I'm putting a marker down, and it's gonna be. You know, I want you to hold it before you turn over. So I can't do a thing with this.
- [60:16]
Duncan Trussell
Okay.
- [60:18]
Oz Perlman
The name doesn't start with the letter L, does it?
- [60:21]
Duncan Trussell
No.
- [60:21]
Oz Perlman
It doesn't start with an L. Nope. What is this person's first name?
- [60:28]
Duncan Trussell
Tushta.
- [60:30]
Oz Perlman
Tushta. Look what I wrote down.
- [60:34]
Duncan Trussell
That is amazing and impossible. That is impossible. I love what you do. It's so cool. There's just no way. I felt guilty when you said, think of a name that. That is just cool. And who has ever heard that name before? That name is. That's a Hare Krishna. I gave you the name of a Hare Krishna I met a long time ago. Who knows?
- [61:00]
Oz Perlman
Still doing well. Tushta is still doing very well.
- [61:03]
Duncan Trussell
Wow.
- [61:05]
Oz Perlman
For those only listening, that is Duncan's reaction to me writing Tushta, which. Very common name. Very common name.
- [61:15]
Duncan Trussell
Wow. I just. Wow. You are a very talented human being.
- [61:23]
Oz Perlman
I appreciate that.
- [61:25]
Duncan Trussell
And I. Where are we at in time? I don't want to. 52. Okay.
- [61:28]
Oz Perlman
We got some more time.
- [61:29]
Duncan Trussell
Okay. Wow.
- [61:30]
Oz Perlman
We gotta delve. We gotta get into some. Some deep things here.
- [61:33]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, sure, we can get into deep things, but just. Just think of how absolutely insane that is that you did that, you know? Cause I. I felt guilt, like, I don't want you to fail. I was not tricked.
- [61:43]
Oz Perlman
It would have gone even more viral if I would have gotten it wrong.
- [61:45]
Duncan Trussell
I don't care. I don't want to trick you. I wasn't trying to do some stupid thing. I was. I. But I was thinking, like, is. And the reason you saw me hesitating is because, like, I was having to go through my head, like, how do you spell that?
- [61:59]
Oz Perlman
Luckily, I thought you spelled first time. You thought it was seven. You recounted the second time.
- [62:03]
Duncan Trussell
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- [64:11]
Oz Perlman
I don't. It's definitely not telepathy. No, it's not. It's not. So magic is different because I will, I promise you there's no sleight of hand involved in what I did. So it's not sleight of hand magic, but it's based on magic. Which again involves if I have you pick a card, I'm using my hands to potentially force the card, Right. Or once the card is in and I don't know the information, finding out what the card is.
- [64:35]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [64:36]
Oz Perlman
So again, this is doing a card trick without the cards, which is a limited subset. So if there were a thousand different cards in a deck, it'd be amazing.
- [64:45]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [64:45]
Oz Perlman
But there's only 52. But what if I can make you think there were a thousand and then narrow them down to 52 and then 14 and then to 13 and then to 2 and then my odds get better. And once I figured out the H, which again, how do we know you did the H when you initially started the S and you did the T and you didn't do the vowels. And like once we got two of the letters, we started putting it all together and this became a game of Wheel of Fortune for me.
- [65:07]
Duncan Trussell
It really is disorienting. Like it's joyfully disorienting, but the effect of it is so like you're. Even though you're saying like, look, this isn't supernatural because I don't know the method your mind scramble it Creates a sort of. This is where, if you were a cult leader or a grift, this is where you could get in.
- [65:30]
Oz Perlman
Well, this is exactly where you get in. Right. Because if you've done something that of somebody kind of, I don't want to call insecure, but somebody who's seeking more in a certain way, and they're looking for a guru or someone to explain to them the meaning of life which all of us are seeking. And good luck finding it out. Maybe we'll find it out the day we die. But now you have the answers, and you have answers in an inexplainable way. Unexplainable. So if you have something unexplainable, well, maybe what other things are unexplainable, you've tapped into.
- [65:55]
Duncan Trussell
Right, right. Once you've done this, you can do you.
- [66:01]
Oz Perlman
Well, what if you do this with something that's not this, I don't want to call it meaningless. What if you tap into something much more important to them, which is a memory. Go to a memory that made you who you are today. What is a moment that shifted your entire trajectory. Who was there, what happened, smell what was going on. And then you start to describe this memory to a person. Oh, like, you know, I was. What if this whole journey came to this point at this moment and that happened to you? So I could explain to you where we're going next. Again, I wasn't trying to be a cult leader there, but you could see where this would go. Real quick.
- [66:29]
Duncan Trussell
You are my father.
- [66:32]
Oz Perlman
This is. Can I tell you a funny story?
- [66:34]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [66:34]
Oz Perlman
So when I was doing Joe, we talked about cult leaders. We went down the same path. Great minds. And I don't know where it is in the podcast because, you know, Joe does long ones. But, but one of my good friends, I don't want to say his name, shout out. He lives in Fort Lauderdale. One of my good friend's brothers from college, he had his 8 year old in the car that he picked up from, from summer camp and he played him the Joe Rogan and he'd already been listening to an hour and 20 minutes of it. And he's like, you know, he goes, your uncle Jeff's son or your uncle Jeff's best buddy from college, he was on Joe Rogan. He goes, it's a big piece. Whoa, can I see it? And he hit play. And he was right at this moment where we had been talking about cult leaders.
- [67:10]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [67:10]
Oz Perlman
And right when he hits play for his eight year old son, I go, there's always that moment, Joe, where the cult leader says he wants to screw everyone else's wives.
- [67:18]
Duncan Trussell
I was thinking that.
- [67:20]
Oz Perlman
And his 8 year old kid goes, dad, what does he mean by that? He's like, oh, pause, pause, pause. And I was like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I did that to you. I didn't remember that was in there. I thought it was mostly pg.
- [67:30]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah. No, you can't play rogue. And my.
- [67:33]
Oz Perlman
So funny.
- [67:33]
Duncan Trussell
Oh my God. Because my kid figured out a fucking pull up podcasts on Alexa.
- [67:37]
Oz Perlman
Yeah.
- [67:37]
Duncan Trussell
And you know, the other day he's like, I was listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast.
- [67:42]
Oz Perlman
I know Mr. Ball. Great guy.
- [67:44]
Duncan Trussell
No, but not great for a first grader.
- [67:46]
Oz Perlman
That's true. That's.
- [67:47]
Duncan Trussell
He's like, dad, do you know about tuberculosis? I'm like, don't listen to Mr. Ballin.
- [67:52]
Oz Perlman
But shout out to Mr. Ballin, man. Great dude, this.
- [67:54]
Duncan Trussell
So it. It seems like there is a way to benevolently exploit.
- [67:59]
Oz Perlman
I think you're seeing it. So this is, I would say, the, I want to say the most moral use of these skills.
- [68:05]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [68:06]
Oz Perlman
Because I think you could, I mean, I know you could use this to con people out of money. And that's inherently what most cons are at the end of the day, right?
- [68:15]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [68:15]
Oz Perlman
It's a play on emotions. It's a play on that feeling of typically, you know, what are the, what are the scams? The scams are always some sort of a way to get you to extract money from somebody. And in a lot of the instances, it's that belief, that belief of, oh, I've got something nobody's got. You know, financial scams, emotional scams. But that's, that's really truly not where I'm going with this and 100% not what the book is about.
- [68:38]
Duncan Trussell
No.
- [68:39]
Oz Perlman
You're like waiting for, like, how can I scam people?
- [68:41]
Duncan Trussell
This, this is such a great quote.
- [68:45]
Oz Perlman
On the COVID Who's a fellow Rogan alum, is a good friend of mine, David Goggins, who was so kind of gave me the ultimate quote for the book, which is. It's on the COVID It's learn to master the most powerful weapon your mind.
- [68:56]
Duncan Trussell
How did you get to be friends with Goggins?
- [68:59]
Oz Perlman
Me and David go back well over. Well over a decade, so we both do ultra marathons.
- [69:03]
Duncan Trussell
I know.
- [69:04]
Oz Perlman
And our first race we did together, I believe is Badwater, where I met him there. It's a race in Death Valley. It was in his book and Can't Hurt Me.
- [69:11]
Duncan Trussell
Oh, yeah.
- [69:11]
Oz Perlman
Which is honestly one of the most inspiring books you'll ever read. If you haven't picked that up. Oh, it's good. Now.
- [69:18]
Duncan Trussell
Get this book first. No offense.
- [69:21]
Oz Perlman
I'll give Goggins every shout out in the world because that book was like, it's no adrenaline. Shines your heart. And then I saw him recently in Las Vegas and he's just. He's at that mythical level where when people meet him, it's almost like. Like a deity. Like you've changed people's lives, you've saved people's lives. People that are like on the precipice where maybe they were of health or of suicide or of what. And Goggins brought them back. Yeah. It's just a power of message. I think it's a power of authenticity.
- [69:49]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [69:50]
Oz Perlman
Especially today, in today's day and age where so many people, for lack of a better term, fake it till you make it, but they just keep faking it. Like social media is the best way to just fake your Persona.
- [69:59]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [69:59]
Oz Perlman
And he's real. I can tell you from knowing David 15 years ago that it's not an act, it's not a put on. He's that guy behind the scenes as he is in front of the cameras. Behind the camera is he's not doing it for others.
- [70:12]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [70:13]
Oz Perlman
It's funny. Do you know what Strava is?
- [70:14]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, sure.
- [70:15]
Oz Perlman
So I don't. I don't have Strava on my watch. I've done it twice. When I've done records, they're called FKTs or like World records. I ran from the tip of Montauk, of Long Island, Montauk to Manhattan in 21 hours and change to try to be the fastest person ever crossed Long island on foot. Did you do it very close?
- [70:31]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [70:32]
Oz Perlman
And then it's. It's. It's a difficult record because one, I went to Times Square versus somebody else, went to Brooklyn versus different parts. So for my exact route, fastest ever. But like they're within five minutes of each other. We went to different locations in Manhattan and then I at that point ran around Central Park. It was a world record of more loops around Central park than anyone has ever done. Raised over $100,000 for charity. What part in the book it was like lemons into lemonades. I wasn't supposed to do this. It worked out perfect. I was on the front page of the New York Times globally for doing it.
- [70:59]
Duncan Trussell
Wow.
- [71:00]
Oz Perlman
So do good and good things happen is another good thing.
- [71:03]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [71:04]
Oz Perlman
And two page spread. I wasn't even. It wasn't even Done. It all came together in a week and a half. It was just this cockamamie idea I had. I just like did it. And so again, these are things where, like. How do I explain it? With Goggins, it was. It's. I don't. I had Strava just for those two. I don't have Strava because I don't run for other people to know. I run because I enjoy it. I enjoy where my mind goes. I enjoy strengthening my body, but also just unplugging. I need to unplug from electronics, from everything. I need my brain just going to zone of boredom where I create. And there's few and far betweener places that shake you out of your.
- [71:40]
Duncan Trussell
It's the greatest high.
- [71:41]
Oz Perlman
Status quo.
- [71:41]
Duncan Trussell
It's the greatest high. I haven't done it in a long time when I was running regularly. Oh my God. It's the best. I mean, it's pure. It's the purest drug. Your brain is dispensing something infinitely better than any drug available. It's just incredible. And then add drugs to it.
- [71:56]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [71:56]
Duncan Trussell
Do you ever go jogging on acid?
- [71:58]
Oz Perlman
I've never jogged on acid, but there's. You just. Have you done that? How was it?
- [72:05]
Duncan Trussell
You know, I have jogged on.
- [72:07]
Oz Perlman
Hikes and long walks are a different story.
- [72:09]
Duncan Trussell
I would not recommend jogging on mushrooms.
- [72:12]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [72:12]
Duncan Trussell
Jogging on low dose, by the way. You know what, Josh, we're in Texas. Cut this. I don't need.
- [72:20]
Oz Perlman
Can we get in trouble?
- [72:21]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, I don't need CPS coming to my house. Like, I forget I'm in. They're very strict about psychedelics here.
- [72:26]
Oz Perlman
Really.
- [72:27]
Duncan Trussell
But just remember to.
- [72:30]
Oz Perlman
We can delve into psychedelics deep. It's a little outside my squeaky clean image, but I have tremendous experience and it's a. Something I'm passionate about, you know.
- [72:37]
Duncan Trussell
How much time do you have? How much time do we have? Josh, how much time do you have? I should say to hang.
- [72:41]
Oz Perlman
I mean, I'm literally going for a run after. Let me check.
- [72:42]
Duncan Trussell
I just don't want to like. I don't want to take advantage of it.
- [72:45]
Oz Perlman
5:43. I mean, I would say I could definitely chat for like another 15, 20.
- [72:48]
Duncan Trussell
Okay, great. Yeah. You know, so just cut out the dumb run on psychedelics thing. And honestly, I'm trying to recall like running on lsd. I have done. I've run on weed. I've run on various psychedelics. But forget all that. Something I am curious about with you. And as I was listening to the interviews, I was wondering what is your experience with psychedelics, how far down the rabbit hole have you gone in that way?
- [73:16]
Oz Perlman
So I had really meaningful experiences as a late teenager. My first psychedelic experiences where I just saw that, honestly, it changes your way of viewing the world. There's no other way to put it. And I didn't know about Steve Jobs doing it. I didn't know anything else. It wasn't even mind expansion of party drugs. It was more of. I had somebody early in life in that era who kind of introduced me to the shaman approach. Carl's Castanada, all these books that were more of how to see the world in a different way that I found fascinating, which really has a lot of parallels to magic, because magic is getting inside people's heads in such a certain unique way that most of us don't really think about our minds. We just live our life right? And we get so used to living our life in a certain way that you get in a. I don't want to call it a rut, because that sounds negative. Life is a blessing. But you only see the world in a certain way because you've only lived in a certain way, right? And until somebody has a psychedelic experience where they suddenly become the observer, like, you get to see a different view of, like, wow, this is what the world is. It's so much more than what I'm just seeing through these senses in this moment every day. Most of what our brain does is filters things out, right? It doesn't actually consume content.
- [74:31]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [74:32]
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- [75:03]
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- [75:51]
Oz Perlman
Think about how much of a day you remember of the 16 to 18 hours you're awake. Close your eyes and how much can you actually formulate? So little, so little. There's just bullet points, extremes. And then if you really think more things come. It's like looking at the sky and letting your eyes acclimate. You see more and more stars the longer you think about it. But the first glance you only see three or four stars.
- [76:13]
Duncan Trussell
Sure.
- [76:14]
Oz Perlman
So psychedelics for me were a way to just see that the world is so much more. And it opened me up to just being aware of who you really are. And I think at a certain point maybe there was a, an awareness of you're gonna die one day and that life is fleeting. And most people do all everything they can to be in denial about their impending death. Whether it's in a day, a year, a decade or 100 years. And so if you can find whatever way there is to overcome that and they've shown studies over and over and over. I met somebody from Johns Hopkins who does things with terminally ill patients and the studies are just so clear cut versus all these drugs that are being pushed like antidepressants, anti anxiety where a meaningful psychedelic guided trip with, you know, intentions and things before and somebody to guide you through it. The percentage decrease in fear, depression, anxiety. For these people who absolutely know they have a year, two years, a month, two months to live, just gone because they realize there's more than this.
- [77:16]
Duncan Trussell
More than this.
- [77:16]
Oz Perlman
There's more than this. Whether that means an afterlife, whether it means anything. It just means that you are more in the universe is there. And that feeling of love that you get and that stuff that you get when you're in like a deep psychedelic trip that you can't see in day to day life quite as evenly as you can.
- [77:28]
Duncan Trussell
I think this is a psychedelic. I think what you did is like somehow mildly psychedelic because they talk about it in Buddhism. You know, it's this. My meditation teacher uses the term suddenly free from fixed mind, which is things can happen. Chogyam Tropa Rinpoche would say, usually people start meditating when they hear the bell to stop meditating.
- [77:53]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [77:54]
Duncan Trussell
You know what I mean? That's when you are there. And that totally pulled me into the moment in this or I should say threw me out of like my old moment or whatever. You know, it just is so novel and I could see, my God, what if you did this in conjunction with guiding someone on psychedelics?
- [78:18]
Oz Perlman
I have such a funny story. I've never.
- [78:20]
Duncan Trussell
I.
- [78:21]
Oz Perlman
This can throw people off. So I've been around people and you've got to get permission to do magic. And not really mentalism. Mentalism is still fun, but oddly icky, like in that environment, because it involves there's deception and I don't want to call it lying, but there's low level lying because I can't tell you how everything I'm doing works versus magic is more of. I don't want to call it juggling because it's not juggling. But we both know there's a way I'm doing this. I'm not going to tell you how, but we enjoy the craft of it, right? So the same way that somebody juggles five balls in. I would love to do that. I can't quite do. I can juggle three and four, but I can see the skill involved in that. And I don't know how you're doing it, but I know there's a way, right? So it's very similar. But magic is. Has surprise versus a lot of juggling. There's no surprise. A good magic trick surprises you at the peak moment. I'll tell you a great story. I was in Amsterdam when I was. I want to say I was at 20 years old. I'm not really into cannabis. It just doesn't do it for me anymore. Kind of, not for many, many years. But at the time I was definitely a bit of a light level pothead. And then I quit that shortly thereafter. But I didn't really like to do things that were illegal. I was very fearful. So I was in Amsterdam on a layover. And at that time that's like, you gotta go to a Bulldog cafe. I had two friends, like, you gotta go in there, you're gonna have the time of your life. And it's also the forbidden fruit. It was not legal in the States yet, right. So I go in there. I have about seven hours before I'm flying from Amsterdam to my next destination. And I go by myself. And my superpower at this time, which is something I still use, is magic. That Bridges all gaps. I have tricks I can do that are visual, where I don't need to speak your language. You could be speaking Japanese, Chinese, Greek. I can do something that catches your eye in a moment and that my body expression alone lets you. And we can connect on a human level. So I started doing magic for these people that were sitting at the Bulldog Cafe and all of us are smoking, very, very stoned at the time. One guy is on a mega dose of mushrooms. And I'm prepared for this, where I have a specific trick I do. It's a card trick. And it's a card trick where you have somebody pick a card and you have them hold the card at the tips of their fingers. And it's a card, a normal sized card, like a deck of cards. And I take and I spread the cards and I say, whatever you do, don't let go of the card in your hand. Hold it tight. You feel it, you see it. And I go watch and don't blink. And I take a spread of cards in my hand and I simply slowly wave them above his hand and back. Within one second, his card shrinks from the size it is in his hand to a quarter the size it shrinks. He's holding it, it shrunk. He looks at the car, he blinks over and over, he blinks like he, he, he does. He can't understand if what just happened is. And so it's as if he knows he's tripping, but it's as if the trip is like he started flying. Like something is just torn into the trip reality so deeply that he looks at the car, then he looks at me, then he looks at the car and he drops the cart and then he runs out of the Bulldog Cafe. Now these are all Americans because I was an American, I met other Americans and I was like, oh, he come back. Okay, he's coming back. And so we got a little worried. We didn't know what to do. Yeah, and this is way before cell phones to show my age. Maybe somebody had a Motorola flip. I don't know what they had. It's like this is, you know, 2002 or three. I felt terrible at a certain point, but it was so funny. And it's a story that I've wondered to this day if this guy ever saw me and connected the dots and goes, that guy. I've seen him on this thing and this thing that was always the mentalist. And that was the same guy that literally annihilated my brain in Amsterdam. And I always, in my Mind the fantasy is, he's safe, he's okay. Nothing bad happened to this.
- [81:58]
Duncan Trussell
He's in a mental asylum right now. There's a guy in a mental asylum who's, like, somehow saw Rogan's podcast. It's like, that is the witch I created.
- [82:06]
Oz Perlman
The schizophrenic break. Don't say it. That I really. That would. That would weigh on my conscience.
- [82:11]
Duncan Trussell
Sure, he's fine, but I, I. I do know if that happened to me, that I would be telling people about the wizard that I met in Amsterdam. I would be like, no, you don't understand it.
- [82:20]
Oz Perlman
I don't think he ever knew my name. I think. Did we introduce ourselves? I don't remember. I would have been a little bit gun shy just because of. It was legal there, but, you know, I can't remember. I think I did exchange names with them, but, man, I was not prepared for what hit me in Amsterdam.
- [82:34]
Duncan Trussell
Oz, this book, I cannot wait to read it. And I feel so lucky that you took the time to be on this show. And thank you for doing this for me. It really was like. I don't know. It's hard to explain how euphoric I still feel from having witnessed that firsthand. My worry was that it's gonna be my. You got Rogan's pin. You did the thing with Stern. Somehow my dumb name was gonna throw you off. And that. That didn't make me happy. So I am so happy this worked.
- [83:05]
Oz Perlman
Thank you. Thank you for having me. A tradition I have that I've done with my kids, that's something fun if you're on the road a lot is I send postcards everywhere I go, and it's very old school, but I love it. Cool. Because now we have shoeboxes and shoeboxes that are both heartwarming, but also a testament to what an absentee father I've been during certain years. It is what it is. But I always get them everywhere I go. I make a point of it. Picture this. Okay. I'm gonna have you imagine you kind of, like, play this out. That instead of, like, a little piece of paper, I give you a postcard.
- [83:34]
Duncan Trussell
Okay.
- [83:35]
Oz Perlman
Somewhere that you want to go, somewhere that you love to travel to. You. Like, it's very specific. And you write down exactly the date. I don't know, maybe it's today's date. And picture yourself in this place that you would love to go. See yourself there. And just so I get a level of specificity, because when I told you to think of a person, you did Tushta's first name. Just give me a category. Is this place that you're visualizing in your mind you can see at this very moment? Is it a city? Is what came to mind a country or other? Just city, country or other City.
- [84:07]
Duncan Trussell
City.
- [84:08]
Oz Perlman
Okay. Because sometimes when I say other people are thinking of a tropical island, but, you know, you're a deep thinker. You've referenced so many gurus, you've kind of set the tone of the location I think you would have thought of. And then inherently, you're sending the postcard, which lets me feel as if you've been there before. Am I right? You've been there before. See, I didn't guide you, but you could have done a place you'd never been. So, to end this podcast on the highest note possible, there is no conceivable way in your mind that I could know what place you just imagined yourself. You saw yourself writing this place down on this postcard, mailing it home. There is no way that I could know this.
- [84:49]
Duncan Trussell
In agreement. I mean, now, yeah, maybe now.
- [84:53]
Oz Perlman
But there's no universal realm that I could have seen or known or felt or touched or any of these five senses. So imagine that when you shake my hand, it's as if a pulse of energy could go through me and we could both go to this place together.
- [85:08]
Duncan Trussell
Okay?
- [85:08]
Oz Perlman
And right there, we shake hands. I'm going to lock hands with you, I think. The beads, the gurus, everything about this felt like it was India to me. And then you don't have to nod your head, but open your eyes and see yourself saying it right out of your mouth. And I'm gonna count to three. I'm gonna go, 1, 2, 3. And right after the word 3, I'm gonna say it right before you. 1, 2, 3. Varanasi.
- [85:35]
Duncan Trussell
That is so weird. That is so cool. That is so right.
- [85:41]
Oz Perlman
As the words came out of my mouth, you were pantomiming, thinking of yourself, saying them. Am I right? You were just. I was right ahead of you.
- [85:47]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah. Oh, my God. That's crazy. Crazy. Wow, man, you are so good. That is so, so mind blowing.
- [85:59]
Oz Perlman
Thank you.
- [86:03]
Duncan Trussell
Thank you. Thank you so much. I cannot wait to read your book. Everybody, please order. Read your mind. You have seen miracles today. Not real miracles, but to me, it seemed like a miracle.
- [86:15]
Oz Perlman
I brought Duncan back from the dead. He was literally at a pile on the floor. And I said, come back to me after Tushta. Come back to me.
- [86:20]
Duncan Trussell
My God.
- [86:21]
Oz Perlman
We're going to Varanasi together.
- [86:23]
Duncan Trussell
You did it. You're the best. Thank you very much.
- [86:26]
Oz Perlman
Pleasure, brother. Thanks for having me.
- [86:28]
Duncan Trussell
Thank you. What the. That is so cool. That was Oz Perlman, everybody. Do check out his book read you'd mind. It's great. And thank you all for listening to my podcast. I'll see you next week. Until then, goodbye.
- [86:46]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [87:16]
Duncan Trussell
Every now and then I rinse it out and I need tonight and I needed more. My kid was a bed and the smell never leaves. I don't know what what to do. I'm always in the dark. The sweat and dead short smells like a dark.
- [87:39]
Oz Perlman
Downy rinse fights stubborn odors in just one wash when impossible odors get stuck in.
- [87:47]
Duncan Trussell
What's that sound? That's the sound of Downy Unstoppable scent beads going into your washing machine and giving your clothes freshness that lasts all day long.
- [87:55]
Oz Perlman
There it is again.
- [87:56]
Duncan Trussell
It's like music to your ears. Or more like music to your nose. That freshness is eerie, irresistible. Let's get a Downy Unstoppables bottle shake. And now a sniff solo. Nice. With Downy Unstoppables, you just toss wash. Wow. For all day freshness.