← MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
Storytime with MrBallen | Oz Pearlman
00:58:05
Joining me is a man you've probably seen all over the internet, the great Oz "The Mentalist" Pearlman. WATCH the full video here: https://youtu.be/Qx6A6rCZNKU?si=l7BaWymzcCv0kabi
Loading summary
Transcript198 lines
- [00:00]
Birch Lane Advertiser
Hey, neighbor. Celebrate the holidays with Birch Lane. Our timeless furniture and decor are delivered for free in days, not weeks. It's classic style for joyful living. Shop Birch Lane, a Wayfair specialty brand@birchlane.com. i've never felt like this before. It's like, you just get me. I feel like my true self with you. Does that sound crazy? And it doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous. Okay, that's it. I'm taking you home with me. I mean, you can't find shoes this good just anywhere. Find a shoe for every you from brands you love, like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and more at your DSW store or dsw dot com.
- [00:45]
Oz Perlman
Let me ask you a question, John. If I told you right now to walk up to any one of these books now, not physically, but mentally, and I want you to flip it open to any page, to look at that page, and to go back and forth and stop at any word. Can you see this happening in your. Close your eyes and in your mind's eye, envision that occurring. I want to show them at home because people will say later that I changed what I wrote somehow. All right, open your eyes. What was that word, dude?
- [01:12]
John
This is not staged. This is crazy. I'm blown away. All right, welcome back to story time with Mr. Ballin. This was such a hit on the last episode with Tom Segura that we decided we would do more. And today, today's guest. I gotta be honest. They're gonna blow your mind.
- [01:30]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Seriously.
- [01:31]
John
I went into this experience sort of skeptical. I mean, the things this person does are sort of impossible. I mean, he's just. He goes in front of these audiences, which include huge celebrities and professional sports teams, and effectively reads their minds. He certainly blows their minds. And he does it under so much pressure, and he's. He nails it every time. And so we asked him on the show. He's got some amazing stories, and he also truly just. He did. I have. I have something written on my hand right now that has to do with one of the tricks that he pulled on me. And it's just. I can't. I can't believe how this episode went. So really stick around. He's an amazing guy and just a master of his craft. He's going to blow your mind. So without further ado, let's get into today's episode.
- [02:33]
Oz Perlman
I'm Oz the Mentalist. I'm here on story time with Mr. Bolan. I already know what you're thinking. Stick around.
- [02:41]
John
All right. O's the mentalist Perlman. So you are the world's greatest mentalist. I mean, lately, I have seen you pop up all over the place. You were just on Joe Rogan and his reaction to. When he guesses his pissed off, pissed off Joe.
- [02:55]
Oz Perlman
You have not seen him that angry in a while. You know, he goes down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, and he was like, did you hack me? Did you. Have you literally gotten into my life? How did you get my pin code?
- [03:04]
John
I liked how you were like, hey, let's. Let's just be spontaneous. You're like, look, I'm trying to guess your ATM pin code. And you can just see it on Joe. He's like, okay, all right, let's see. And you guessed the first number. At some point you were like, just tell.
- [03:16]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Just tell me.
- [03:16]
John
Is it one? I think it was one.
- [03:17]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yep.
- [03:18]
John
And he's like, all right. But then as soon as you began doing it, you could just see his whole. His whole mentality, everything shifted. And you can just see as the audience. If this is staged, it's the. It's the best staging I've ever seen. Because his reaction was not pleasure. It was like, stop.
- [03:35]
Oz Perlman
How'd I do? Joe, is that your ATM pin code? Yeah.
- [03:41]
John
That's weird. I'm skeptical because I got that pin code in the mail.
- [03:49]
Oz Perlman
You know, people loved seeing it because with Joe, he is the ultimate debunker.
- [03:54]
John
Yeah.
- [03:54]
Oz Perlman
Are we in agreement, like, no one's going on Joe Rogan and telling Joe what to do.
- [03:57]
John
No.
- [03:58]
Oz Perlman
On the biggest platform in the world, that he is the boss and he didn't know was going to happen. And I think that's what captivated the public is if you would have been amazed, that's one thing. But he was angry and a little scared.
- [04:09]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
So.
- [04:09]
John
So tell me, like, what. What is a mentalist?
- [04:12]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [04:12]
John
Because I've. I've looked it up.
- [04:14]
Oz Perlman
Yeah.
- [04:14]
John
But that doesn't really accomplish the task here. I want to hear from you. And secondarily, how does one know they have the skill to be a mentalist?
- [04:23]
Oz Perlman
So a mentalist is a form of magic. Right. This is not in the world of psychics and supernatural. That's not what I pretend to do. I completely make sure that I go out of my way to ensure people understand. I'm not claiming to be a psychic. I. I'm not supernatural. Instead, I have a series of skills that I've developed, kind of like an arsenal, tools over decades of learning how people think. And it's grounded in magic. So everyone knows what a magician is. Right. You could go to an 8 year old. They've started to see magic tricks. And when we watch magic, we understand that we're being fooled with our eyes. Somehow this person knows how to do things quickly or to distract me so they do something somewhere else. Right. When you cut the woman in half, spoiler alert, guys. I'm not trying to ruin Christmas. There's no Santa Claus. You're not really cutting the woman in half. Somehow you're deceiving me with an illusion. That's the name of the word. That's really what it's called. So magic is all about misdirection and fooling the eyes. This is a specialized subset within magic where it's magic of the mind. Very different. I'm not fooling your eyes because there's no fast hands. There's almost no props. I can show up. I had a show last night in Toronto, came right here from the airport where I did a show. It was a small group, about 400 people, and I show up with nothing. I have a pad of paper and a marker which if I don't have with me, they can grab for me. The show isn't props, I'm the show. And so what I've learned to do is know how people think. And by knowing effectively how people think, I'll know what they think. And I'll present that in a very entertaining, fooling, and hopefully memorable manner. So mentalism is psychology, misdirection, deception, influence. It's all these different skills baked into one cake.
- [06:03]
John
And is this something that you always knew you possessed? Skills that ultimately crystallized and became you being the world's greatest mentalist?
- [06:11]
Oz Perlman
Right. Thank you.
- [06:12]
John
Did you have moments in your life before this became a thing where you're like, I have these innate skills that I could refine. But you knew you had them? Or is this something that people could be taught?
- [06:22]
Oz Perlman
Absolutely. People can be taught. So this is a learnable skill. But I call it. I would liken it to musical talent, which is innate in a sense. Which is you could probably learn to play the piano into a certain number of songs. Like my. My nine year old plays the piano. If I continued practicing every day for a year, I'd probably get better. But what if I practiced for a decade? Would I ever be good enough to play at Carnegie hall in New York City? I don't think I would. I think that it's not in me, that innate God given gift, whatever you want to call it, you can develop the skills, but when you get to a certain level There might be a ceiling. So that's the best way to describe it. I have a gift for it. And I've also been very, very persistent. And never underestimate the power of persistence because mentalism has a steep learning curve and most people don't have thick enough skin to get through the times when you suck. So magic can be practiced over and over and over in a mirror. And you can improve because it's move based. It's kind of like playing golf. If you practice your swing, hopefully by the millionth swing, you're going to be great. You might not be Rory McIlroy or Tiger woods with this. The only way that I can get better is by doing it for an audience. Do you see what I mean? You can't practice guessing what people are going to think without people. And the first few hundred times you do it, you're going to eat, pardon my French. You're going to eat shit. Like, you're not going to be good. There's very few mentalists that started good. And so what tends to happen is you perform, you suck, you go, oh, my God, that was painful. I don't want to do that again. I don't want to experience that suffering. So I did much more magic for years. And then I started dipping my toes in the water of mentalism and then doing a little more, and then doing a little more. And then I was on a show. If we, like, rewind my career, there was a moment where it was like a fork in the road where I was on America's Got Talent, changed my life, and I rebranded myself as. Instead of like, quote unquote, you know, oh's the magician. I became Oz the mentalist. That's how I literally monikered it. Because now I differentiated myself from others and decided I'm not doing magic anymore. That was like the crutch. I just started doing just mentalism.
- [08:22]
John
That's interesting. I think one of the things that I've noticed about you and your rise that's currently up into the right, you really are killing it right now is in a way, I feel like I can relate a little bit to the pressure that you put on yourself. And I'll give you some context. So I know that you're into distance running in addition to, like, serious distance running. This Dude's done like 153 miles.
- [08:45]
Oz Perlman
It's true.
- [08:45]
John
Regularly runs marathons on a whim. That is a. It is a physical feat, no doubt, but it is a mental feat more than anything else.
- [08:54]
Oz Perlman
Agreed. It's more mental than Physical. Anybody who tells me, oh, you know, I can't do this, I'm like that. You already set yourself up. I can't. You've already created an obstacle in your mind. It's the wrong viewpoint. And you're actually, your mind translates into your body. So you telling yourself that creates that. I think you know, the mind controls the body. I've seen people that are 20, 30 years older than me finish a race they that I didn't finish. Objectively, I'm fitter than they are, I'm younger than they are, I'm stronger than they are. Why did they finish when I didn't? Because my mind crumbled.
- [09:22]
John
Yeah.
- [09:23]
Oz Perlman
And you know it. I mean buds. How many people rang that bell?
- [09:26]
John
A lot.
- [09:26]
Oz Perlman
That were probably tough sobs, but they didn't have it mentally.
- [09:30]
John
It's true. And in fact the, the. You had said that when you first tried the Spartathlon, you did it twice, right?
- [09:36]
Oz Perlman
I did it twice.
- [09:36]
John
So the Spartathlon's 153 miles.
- [09:39]
Oz Perlman
153 miles, 36 hour cutoff. So it's very important. There's races that are longer. Right now there's a heyday of people running 200 mile races, all this crazy stuff, but this, you can't slow down and walk very much like in these other races. They're glorified hikes. No offense to all These people do 200-00, they do it for four or five days. Most of the people are. It's slow. This is running non stop for a day and a half. You start on a Saturday morning, I'm running till Sunday evening.
- [10:05]
John
That's insane. And so what people need to understand about running really long distances, I've done a couple marathons and that's marathon 26.2.
- [10:14]
Oz Perlman
Miles, which is very respectable. Don't you, don't you talk down on yourself.
- [10:18]
John
But when you hit about mile 20, people say that's sort of like the halfway point. Even though it's not 26.2. The halfway is 13.
- [10:25]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [10:25]
John
But at about 20 miles is when your body sort of reaches that point where it's like, okay, we've lost all the glucose stores. We're sort of burning on muscle at this point. It's like you're falling apart. And I remember when I ran a marathon and I hit mile 20, it was like I can barely move and I have six miles to go.
- [10:43]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [10:43]
John
So for anyone that's even thinking, oh, you know, 153 miles. Yeah, you just suck it up and go. That's not how that Works. This is like a mental test of magnitudes. You may not understand, but you had said the first time you did the Spartathlon, you did not finish.
- [10:59]
Oz Perlman
Didn't finish.
- [10:59]
John
And you knew as you're running along, you're like, I'm not gonna finish this. And you're writing the story in your head that you're like, how am I gonna spin this to the people that, you know, they expected me to finish and I didn't. Yes, but you went back and you ultimately did it again and you finished it. That's so highly unusual. One, that you went after it in the first place, but two, that you went back and did the race. I think that says a lot about not only your mental toughness, but why you have these innate skills. You've honed those skills to become the mentalist that you are, but you obviously have this ability to put yourself in these highly mentally stressful environments and perform not just well, but at your literal best, right? And so, like, dude, you go. You go in in front of an entire NFL football team. And these are also clips you got to check out if you haven't seen them. Like the Bengals, you go the whole.
- [11:50]
Oz Perlman
One of my favorites.
- [11:51]
John
And like, he'll tell the players, like the quarterback, Joe Burrow, and he's like, I'm going to write down who you're going to throw it to, and I'm.
- [11:58]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Not going to show you.
- [11:59]
John
You're going to do it. Throw it to anybody in the room. And then after you do it, I'm going to show you what I thought. And like, the clip, you see that he's written down a name, and sure enough, he turns, he throws the football, and everyone's like, oh, oh, he guessed it. He guessed it right. But then the next time you do it, you write down two names, and it's like, he's going to fake to this person and throw to this person, and you're holding it back. And sure enough, Joe, who clearly has no idea what you've written down, right? Fake throw room goes wild.
- [12:24]
Oz Perlman
Tanner fakes to Jamar, throws to Tanner.
- [12:35]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Do you wish you could share pictures with your long distance family without needing to send them constant text messages, you know, to share the important moments or all the goofy everyday stuff? Well, you can do that with aura frames. It keeps you connected even when you're miles apart, by sharing photos and videos effortlessly straight from your phone using the Aura app. I have an ORA frame right at home, and I actually gifted one to my mom. She lives pretty far away, so I Send her everything, big family moments and you know, the goofy everyday photos of my kids and my pets, all the that stuff. And so for a limited time, visit auraframes.com and get $45 off Aura's best selling Carver mat frames named number one by Wirecutter by using promo code Ballin at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code Ballin this exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year. So order now before it ends. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. When I started this podcast, I did not realize how big an impact financial decisions can have on a business. That's where Shopify makes all the difference. Their point of sale system unites in store and online operations across up to a thousand locations. It makes shopping simple and seamless for customers and efficient for your team. With powerful tools, personalized experiences and first party data, Shopify pos turns every shopper into a repeat customer. Get all the big stuff for your small business right with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com ballen go to shopify.com ballin shopify.com ballin.
- [14:11]
John
How do you put yourself in that position consistently and just stay calm enough to do those things when the outcome's binary? That's so stressful. How do you do it?
- [14:20]
Oz Perlman
So I think your mindset and this is where the ultra running and the mentalism go hand in hand. And I think each one has improved the other truly. There's physiological things involved which being able to be calm under pressure. That calmness directly creates the success in the situation, which is when you start panicking. Those chemicals that flood through your body can indicate to other people the same way that animals can smell fear, they can literally smell fear. I think we still have that hardwired in us. We are still animals in a sense where we don't trust our instincts, but we can feel it. Like right now, if somebody walks in the room, even if you don't know that they're there, you have situational awareness where you can sense somebody walked in. How is that right? It's not sonar. There's something in you that I don't know how we explain. That's a sense that can indicate danger, which I'm sure you've had. You can sense on high alert and something floods you because that fight or flight. So in those situations where it's do or die, not literally, but if that screws up in that room, there's no safety net. This football team didn't walk in and get set up and say, hey, guys, act excited for this random dude, Joe Burrow. The funny part about that clip was the day it dropped, the day before he signed the most lucrative contract in NFL history. $275 million with some obscene number that was guaranteed like 184 million. Fact check me. So the best comment, the comment that run up the most was, go, dude. He clearly paid this guy to do it. And my comment under to this guy was, bro, I wish I had enough money to pay Joe Burrow off to pretend to do this. And it got up like, like 10,000 times because it's so comical. It's like, how do you think the behind the scenes on that, by the way, is great? Because Joe is very shy. Just, he's a great guy, but I had no time with him. And when you go to these football teams, there's a series of people that are intermediaries. I'm not talking to the players. There's the PR team, the communications team. These are organizations. And they say to you, that person doesn't want to be involved. And so I say to them, you know, with all due respect, I'll see who wants to be involved. I say yes. But when I get in the room, my job is to convert no's into yeses. Where some of the people that thought they wanted nothing to do with me, I'm gonna win over. And the Joe Burrow thing, yes, there was an amazing trick. But getting somebody who, when they sat down in their mind, said, 100% no, I'm not getting involved. And then having them not only say yes to what I was going to do, buy in, but then have a monster reaction that's since been viewed hundreds of millions of times and helped change my life. That same thing, that set of skills on how to win people over, influence them, is applicable to everyone in every facet of your life. It works in business, if you're doing sales, it works in relationships. Whether it's people you know closely and you want to create deeper bonds, or whether it's people you want to win over, Whether it's like a romantic sense, friendship sense, it's how do you meet people and connect with them in a deeper way and get them not only to like you, build rapport, but both of those two things are to do what you want them to do, not in a nefarious way. But think about it. I'm a parent. I'm trying to win my kids over. I'm selling Them all the time, my ideas, which is, please do your homework right now even though you don't want to, because there's better things to do. How do you convince them in an effective manner? And that is a form of mentalism, which is knowing how people think and using it to your advantage. That's what I'm doing all the time. And those are the skills you can apply. Going back to what you said with Joe Burrow in all these situations, I have used the running to calm myself and to not think of the finish line, which is when you were at 20 miles and you're miserable. It sounds like six miles is so little. It's just six miles, man. You've done a 10k before. But in the moment, every step hurts. I'm miserable, I'm puking, I feel terrible. I want to be done now. I want to be on a couch eating ice cream now. What the hell was I thinking doing this race? I am not a superhuman. Like, literally. It's the same way that a friend of mine, David Goggins, will say, I don't want to be out there running in the rain, in the cold at 4:30am but the fact that I don't want to do it is why I'm doing it. Because that's where the real training hits. The moments where it becomes hard is where you learn who you really are. When I'm sitting here talking about running, it's easy. Oh, yeah, it's fun. I want to get to the moments where I'm in the deepest, darkest place and I'm asking myself, questioning, why am I doing this? Don't want to do it. And I still persevere. That's where you become stronger. It's where you tear the muscle and grow it back stronger. And those skills have allowed me, when I'm in those pressured moments. And the ultras are like something I stand on where I'm completely calm and I'm very aligned and I'm not going to panic. So the people around me see how calm I am and I can still keep them within my control.
- [18:59]
John
What you're doing is so stress packed, almost on purpose, right? You're going in front of this crowd that's like big professional athletes, like all these celebrities. Celebrities. And you're gonna like walk in and impress them and do something that's just unbelievable, right? Is there thrill out of the fact that you know going into that, that you're gonna be calm and people will see that not only will you perform, but for you, this is, this is what you do. Do you seek these moments out? Because that is empowering for you, man.
- [19:29]
Oz Perlman
If we got, like, into a therapy session of, like, Freudian. I keep taking big swings at things that I don't know if they're necessarily gonna work, but I think that the audience can sense the danger, the risk. That's what's exciting. And so you can feel the excitement through the camera. It's what captures you. Because I don't know, I can't explain it. The audience can know internally that this might have gone wrong and it didn't. And that's why you get the big reactions.
- [19:57]
John
So I've done a couple of live speaking engagements just telling stories to crowds. And I remember I told my production team as we were getting ready to put it together, like, how do you want it to go? How much production value do you want? And I said, I was like, I need the first time I do speaking engagements to be basically just me and a microphone. I want it to be a pure experience because I need to prove to myself that, like, I can. I can deliver something that's really engaging without any props, without anything.
- [20:25]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Just me.
- [20:26]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [20:27]
John
And it was like the sense of. I almost hated myself for doing this because you're setting yourself up, right? I'm going to walk out in front of thousands of people. Me in a microphone. I've never done this before, Right. It could go horribly wrong. But it's like I almost felt like the only way to do it was like, full send commitment, like, commitment to the bit.
- [20:46]
Oz Perlman
You have to.
- [20:47]
John
And I. And I'd go out on stage and with that sense of commitment, I was able to easily do these shows.
- [20:53]
Oz Perlman
Yeah.
- [20:53]
John
And I think for you, what I see in all these clips of you just, like, blowing people away. Honestly, more than the bit. It is this sense that you are completely committed. And even if it goes wrong, it's like, somehow he's gonna spin this, right? He's got full command of the room.
- [21:11]
Oz Perlman
People love when it goes wrong. So there's that level of, why are those traffic jams where you're like, why was there such a traffic jam? The rubbernecking, right? The human instinct that's in our DNA of liking to gossip and liking to see what's going on with them. Oh, look at that car. Holy crap. Right? Everyone does it. We're all slowed down. We're on the fricking BQE and what just happened? Why is, you know, like, i78 is jammed up. Cause one jerk was texting. Yeah. And we have to watch that. So that same approach is again, hardwired in our DNA. So in my show, I'm very keenly aware of moments where I can create stress, confusion or light, chaos. And I can make it so that you forget the things I want you to forget. And then I put the camera on the things I want you to remember. And I. During the moment where you're recounting what happened, I'm telling the story that you're going to remember in your mind. People don't realize that memory is malleable. So we think of as memory as the same thing as this camera shooting me right now that we could rewind playback. And it's immutable. It never changes. It's on camera. Right. It's not. People remember certain things and they are typically related to emotion. So I'll give you a great example. Eyewitness testimony, which you know more than anyone, is inherently unreliable. Because when people's cortisol levels, adrenaline, they're in a moment where they just saw the shit go down, their body floods with these emotions and all these things that they're not used to encountering. For most people, they're not into those situations that are high stress. And now suddenly a face, a color of hair, a height, all of that stuff that's captured in one or two seconds can be changed, especially if you're interrogated later and ask questions and the investigator uses leading language. Right. So when you saw this guy who was like 6 foot 2, 6 foot 3, I did. I see. Well, I kind of maybe. Right. You can start to change what they have. Right. Imagine you do a watercolor painting and it's not dry yet. I can start to change what you painted. I'm narrating the story that you will tell the next person about me. And I will get rid of the parts I don't want, just like an editor, clips, sections out, and I have it. So your memory only remembers the things I want you to tell or the story you tell. Because the story you tell about me is what continues. It's what makes me memorable. And anyone that ever walks into a room and is the most memorable person in the room will achieve their goals the most effectively. Just think about it in your head. When you've gone to a party or an event and you've met someone, there's always at an event when you go home and you're talking to your wife or you're talking like, man, did you meet that guy? Yeah, there's always a person who stands out. If it's a good party, otherwise it sucks for the evil. Everyone. Everyone's boring. But what made that person interesting now? I think in a lot of instances, it's the fact that the person who's very interesting isn't a big talker, but they're very interested, and they bring out the best in you. And you feel like, man, they were so interested in me. And they give good stories. They ask me questions I'd never been asked before. And that kind of elevates a certain level in you where you get excited to be around them. Some people have a natural charisma. And you analyze what is a natural charisma? What is it that they do when they walk in the room? They approach with confidence. They typically approach, not a direct thing. So another thing that is very important, body posture, body positioning, and how you walk up to somebody you don't know instantly puts you at ease or makes you feel ill at ease. And like, they're intruding your space. If somebody walks up to you too close, whoa, bro, you know, what are you doing? Chill out. If somebody approached you quickly and they're talking and they're not slowing down and you don't know when they're going to leave, then you start getting this feeling of, oh, God, am I stuck in this conversation for a while? Versus and I learned this doing restaurants when I was a kid. If I walk up to you at an angle and it looks like I'm one foot in, one foot out, and you're seeing one of my eyes, which is again, the way animals react instead of head on, which scares them, but at a sideways. And if I give you a time constraint, which is, oh, great to meet you, and for me, performing magic, people might not want me there. They don't know who I am. Especially at a restaurant where you're having dinner and you're like, who is this kid? And I was 14 and do I have to tip him? Oh, my God, do I have any cash on me? All of these things go through your mind. So I have to take away those layers of resistance. And I learned early on what I could do in those moments. That applies to everything in life. It's not just about the performance. It's life skills. And I think those life skills translate very effectively into habits for success no matter what you do.
- [25:37]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
The show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
- [25:39]
John
There are lots of people in my life that realistically I should be reaching.
- [25:43]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Out to more often, namely, you know, friends and family. But, you know, to be honest, life just happens. And, you know, time goes on and it gets harder and harder to do that outreach. It takes courage in some ways to.
- [25:54]
John
Do that outreach because you're opening up.
- [25:56]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
A part of your life that you've sort of moved on from in a way. And also it takes courage when maybe you're the friend that you wished other people were connecting with that you sort of lack that emotional connection with somebody else that maybe you're struggling and you don't really have an outlet. And so this holiday season, BetterHelp is encouraging people to not just have the courage to reach out to old friends and family, but also have the courage to reach out to other people because you need that connection that you need a check in that you need help. And with over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms, which means they are a great place to go if you're asking for help. BetterHelp therapists are fully licensed in the United States. They do the initial matching work for you so you can focus just on your therapy goals. This month. Don't wait to reach out. Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist yourself, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com mrballpod that's betterhelp.com mrballandpod we've all had our fair share of financial headaches. Overdraft fees, late payments, and that constant feeling like we're two steps behind. It's the kind of stress that sneaks up on you and just sticks around. That's why I like what Chime's doing. It actually helps you stay ahead instead of playing catch up. Chime understands that every dollar counts. That's why when you set up a direct deposit through Chime, you get access to fee free features like free overdraft coverage, getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit and more. Work on your financial goals through Chime today. Open an account in 2 minutes@chime.com ballen that's chime.com ballen Chime feels like progress. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank NA or Stride Bank NA members. FDIC Spot me Eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file. Fees apply at out of network ATMs. Bank ranking and number of ATMs. According to US News and World Report 2023 Chime checking account required it seems.
- [28:01]
John
Like you are, I mean to simplify extremely perceptive about other people. Like, you're picking up cues that maybe to you seem like they could be picked up by a lot of people. But your ability, at least the way you're describing it, to read people really, really quickly is astounding. And I'll say on a much smaller level, I actually did. When I was in the SEAL team, I did a lot of the speaking with locals. Basically, we'd be on target, and then at the end of whatever conflict we were in, there'd be an opportunity to speak to people that were in whatever village we were in in Afghanistan. And truthfully, you're basically talking to the men and you're trying to discern if they were just shooting at you or they weren't. And it's really hard to tell.
- [28:47]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [28:47]
John
And a lot of times, even with the interpreter, a conversation's not gonna get you there. No, you're really just trying to gauge how they view me.
- [28:56]
Oz Perlman
Intuition and instinct go a long way. Right. If you have a gut feeling, you have to trust it, then try to verify it. But if you get that gut feeling and you ignore it, like, you know that, like, tickling of, like, this doesn't feel right. I'm sure in your situation, that's life or death.
- [29:13]
John
Yeah. I mean, this was, like, relatively safe. You know, we're safe at this point. But a lot of times I would pick up very quickly if someone was just positioning themselves in a sort of adversarial way. Like, I'm sure I'm speaking to the guy who knows this stuff, but there's a way you stand if you're almost sort of seeking a level of conflict with the person you're with, Right. If you're deferential, you're sort of positioning yourself in such a way. But I'm coming into the room, I'm decked out in, like, special operations gear. We've just secured the target, and I'm talking to you. And if you're going to stand toe to toe with me and, like, look me square in the eyes, pretty much immediately I'm like, well, this is a combatant.
- [29:50]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [29:50]
John
You know, whereas other people, they're like. They're maybe they're scared or whatever, but it usually comes off very quickly. And then the conversation, to be honest, it wound up being, like, irrelevant. It's the first, like, three seconds that I'm with somebody. And so for you, I mean, I have no idea if that relates, but are you, like, reading people and that's basically your tell, or are you constantly evaluating people whether it's during a performance or not, like in your life.
- [30:14]
Oz Perlman
Yes.
- [30:14]
John
Are you constantly evaluating? Like, how does that. How does that work for you?
- [30:18]
Oz Perlman
So thankfully, the stakes are much lower for me. So I don't ever want to put myself on the category of a Navy SEAL defending our country. It's like, what I'm doing is entertaining people.
- [30:25]
John
Sure.
- [30:25]
Oz Perlman
And the skills don't generalize. So the next part is people just say, well, if you're this good, why aren't you just winning millions of dollars playing poker? Why aren't you, like, catching, you know, killers? So it's because, again, this is under the guise of entertainment and the skills don't generalize. Very clear cut, guessing. Let's. I'll give a great example. I'm gonna do this in a moment, but if I were to ask at the table and we're playing poker, just look at. Why don't you know the cards? Because I have a series of things that I do. Procedures to narrow the options down and figure out what you thought of that involve me being in charge.
- [30:59]
John
Interesting.
- [31:00]
Oz Perlman
Watch this. Let's just play a fun game. Okay? Picture now. A card trick, right? Now, if I had a deck of cards and I don't even have one, I could probably get one out of a bag. And you don't have a deck of cards. Right. You've never seen a deck of cards today, have you?
- [31:11]
John
No. No.
- [31:12]
Oz Perlman
So when I was a magician, we'd have to have a deck of cards right now. And I would do the old pick one card and you'd put it back and I'd find it, but I don't have a deck of cards. So let's just pantomime this, because mentalism is about thoughts. I give you an invisible deck. Okay? Got it? You mix them up, John, shuffle them up. Let's see the skills. Okay? And now you take those cards, and I want you to do this. I want you to spread them out in front of you. And it's. Spreading them out in front of you means you can see all 52, and you can make a conscious decision, which some people would say later. Well, he somehow influenced you. He used certain words, maybe use certain hand gestures. Something was already planted in your mind so that you would do my bidding. So I want to make this even more impossible. Take the cards and close them up again. Give one more shuffle just to be safe. I love it. And now you're going to spread them face down, which means you can't see them, all right? Which means that right now, if I told you to reach down and pick any card. There's no way that you could be influenced because you don't even know which one it is. Now I want you to slowly reach down and maybe go. To grab one and go, nah, doesn't feel right. Maybe jump to another one next to it, or this one and just grab one card at random. Now, before you turn over, you grab it out.
- [32:22]
John
Okay.
- [32:23]
Oz Perlman
And are we in agreement? It's absolutely impossible that I could know what you just picked because it's not real. It's an invisible card that you haven't even turned over yet. You don't even know what it is. Yeah, right.
- [32:32]
John
Yep.
- [32:33]
Oz Perlman
So you drop the rest of the cards away. Gone. And now something happens that's interesting. You turn the card over, you look at it. Okay, okay. Okay. Hold it up. And I want you to picture that card right there. Can you see it? Yep. Now watch. I didn't influence this in any way, did I? This is your own choice. 100%.
- [32:54]
John
100%.
- [32:55]
Oz Perlman
And I say to you, hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades. There's all the four suits. There's the high cards, the low cards, all of these different cards. And you had said earlier, blackjack, poker, look at that card. Imagine what it looks like. Imagine the jack, queen and king have more ink because they're very full. They've painted. Versus, for example, a two only has the two hearts, and they go all the way through. And you know what you did? You decided because poker on the back of the box. Ace of spades is the card in your hand, isn't it?
- [33:22]
John
Yeah. What the hell, dude? That's crazy. Yeah, it's the ace of.
- [33:29]
Oz Perlman
Ace of spades. Yeah. An invisible deck of cards didn't exist. So that.
- [33:33]
John
I know it seems. That's crazy.
- [33:35]
Oz Perlman
Thank you.
- [33:36]
John
I changed my mind, like, four times.
- [33:37]
Oz Perlman
I could tell you did. I saw that. The shifting and the changing. You're like, I might go with the different. You were thinking of a different spade, but you said, now I'm gonna go back. That has to do with.
- [33:45]
John
Dude, that's crazy. That's crazy. I was actively trying to, like, subvert you.
- [33:52]
Oz Perlman
That's great. I can't do that at a poker tail because I can't just tell the guy in front of me, look at your two cars before we get to the river. Look at me. Do this, do that. They're gonna be like, screw you, dude. I'm not doing any of this. Get out of my face. Put on the sunglasses. Rock and roll. So in my performance, I'm the Director, I get to call the shots.
- [34:07]
John
Wow.
- [34:08]
Oz Perlman
So it doesn't unfortunately work with everything. If it did, it'd be amazing. But to answer your question, I'm not living my life in like brrr mode of like, whoa, that guy. I always think of it as in the Bourne Identity.
- [34:18]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Oh yeah.
- [34:19]
Oz Perlman
When he loses his memory and he's in that diner and doesn't know who he is yet and he tells the guy next to him, why do I know that guy's 255 and get fight? Why do I know this? Why do I know that right now? I know the four license plates of the cars when I walked in. Why do I know all this stuff? And he's starting to dawn on him. He's like a secret spy agent badass. So I think it's likened to that where when I turn it on, I'm hyper focused on what I do and my mission at hand. And the analyzing people very quickly is very, very similar to what you did, except it's done for under the context of entertainment, which is when I'm in a crowd, I'm looking around to see who I think will be great for my next trick. When I'm performing this person right now. And if you ask me, why was he so good? People will come up to me at the end of the show and go, why didn't you pick me? And I go, no offense to you, I just, for whatever reason, and it's the intangible, it's the 30 years of training, you just weren't as good as them right now. I thought they would deliver the best reaction and they would mesh with what I wanted. Now in certain rooms, I can't pick the person. You're on TV with three hosts. You gotta use those three hosts. You make the best of a situation. But when I have people to choose from and if you see me at like a live show. Yeah, that's very exciting. And the fact that you like throw frisbees. We pick people randomly. If we're in like an arena, we shoot T shirts to like the eighth row. Who's got it? Stand up, please. And you're. How could, how could I know who'd catch the T shirt? How could I know who'd catch a frisbee? How could you know any of this stuff then? I work with those people. And that's what really makes it real. Because, yo, that's anyone. This is some drunk jerk who's like eight rows in, who's, you know, barely conscious. How in the world did you guess the name of his first crush.
- [35:52]
Birch Lane Advertiser
Hey neighbor. Celebrate the holidays with Birch Lane. Our timeless furniture and decor are delivered for free in days, not weeks. It's classic style for joyful living. Shop Birch Lane, a Wayfair specialty brand@birchlane.com.
- [36:07]
Mochi Health Advertiser
Hi, we're emoji Health, your long term weight loss solution. We'll connect you with a board certified provider to discuss your unique goals. Plus, eligible patients can access custom formulated GLP1 medications at an affordable fixed price delivered to their door monthly. Take our free eligibility quiz@joinmochie.com and use code AUDIO40 at checkout for $40 off your first month of membership. That's joinmoch I.com results may vary. Eligible GLP1 patients typically lose 1 to 2 pounds per week in their first six months with Mochi when combined with a healthy lifestyle.
- [36:38]
John
I just, I'm still sort of in shock that you just did. So I'm like thinking throughout, how are you doing this? I realized that there's more to it than like, you. Oh, here's how you. I was pretty good at. The reason I was the guy that did a lot of the questioning of the people on site is because I had decent perception. I was pretty good at figuring out who likely had more information and it would like lead to weapons caches and whatever. So it was just like basically I was successful enough that I kept doing it.
- [37:10]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
So I was pretty perceptive.
- [37:12]
Oz Perlman
But like, I think you still are.
- [37:13]
John
Well, thank you. But it's like to be able to break down beyond a gut feeling to like specifics is just where we talked about this thing that you do when you're making it out. You're very humble about it. Yeah, you can learn how to do it, whatever it is. But like, no, you can.
- [37:29]
Oz Perlman
I had to like, again, I wasn't, I wasn't spider man, you know, bitten by a spider and radioactive. And like, I changed. It's been trial and error. It's been iteration and the same thing that has allowed me to go run 153 miles that like you have children. We were talking about right when I walked in. We had a couple minutes. I came here from the airport talking about our kids. And you want to instill a work ethic in your kids. It's very interesting because being a parent I think is my most important job. And I'm assuming that's my immortality. It's like, who are they going to be? Because as soon as you have kids, you start to feel like I'm gonna die one day. And this is My future and their future. And it's like it really no greater joy in life. But how do I instill a work ethic in them? Because my kids aren't going to grow up the same as me. And I'm feeling, I don't know what your beginnings remind were very humble, where I had to work really hard and I was like age 16. I was supporting myself, which I don't wish upon my kids. They'll never know what that means. But I lived on my own and I had to pay for college and I had to find an apartment and like nobody paid for this stuff. So I had to figure life out early. Which at the time I felt kind of pissed because I'm like, all these other kids are going on vacation, they have a car, their parents. I don't have any of that. But now in hindsight that set me up for success in a huge way and it made it so I didn't have a safety net. So I had to become the safety net. And I think that there's a level of that toughness you have to either create in yourself if it's not. And a lot of people are going to have it because a lot of people listening to this are, you know, hustling and they might not have any of these things. Yeah. So I think that deciding on a goal and not giving up is so it's so much more important than almost natural talent, skill. Anything is persistence. And you saying like, oh, I can't do this. There shouldn't be that word in your vocabulary.
- [39:14]
John
The you actually, you said something going back to your Spartathlon experience that actually really struck a chord with me. And I'll give you a quick story that I think relates and I think that it plays into what you just said. So when you did not finish your Spartathlon race, you came back and you obviously did it and you successfully completed the Spartan.
- [39:33]
Oz Perlman
It ate me alive. Killed you? Kidding me? It killed me.
- [39:35]
John
But you said something to the effect of when I went into that second attempt, I was prepared to basically die in order to complete this race. So for me I've had exactly that experience one time and it changed my life afterwards when I was in SEAL training. Everyone thinks the hard part is at the beginning of training, the famous sort of like hell week, and you're running around on the beach and you're beat down and you're tired. That's bad. Not the hardest part. The hardest part comes about halfway through training. It's a six month long course. Halfway through you're in the underwater phase. And by this point, statistically, virtually everybody in your class is going to graduate. Despite the difficulty of this test. It's the moment you all are literally forced to have this moment. It's horrifying. There's this test called pull competency. They tell you it's just this, you just go in with your scuba tanks and the instructors are going to come down there. You're in the nine foot section of the pool and you're like crawling around and they're going to come down and just kind of screw with you. And you're going to follow procedures that you're taught to. Basically, after they finish tumbling you around and turning your air off, you go back on your knees and they're watching.
- [40:41]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
You the whole time.
- [40:42]
John
And you follow these steps. You reach back, you turn on your air, you check your J valve, you check your straps, make sure it's a three finger loop here. You check your weight belt. I can still do it now. But it's a procedure that no matter what happens to you underwater, you reset, you follow the procedure. But each problem that they give you, whether it's tying a knot in your hose or whatever it is, gets progressively harder to fix all fixable problems for 20 minutes. And so each time someone's come down on you, first of all, as they're attacking you, you have to go into the fetal position and just wait, you're not getting air. They're tumbling you around. So you're going about 60 seconds to 90 seconds with no air. And then you need to follow the procedure. So you can see you become more and more hypercapnic, right? You're not, you're not breathing. And it's this test of staying calm and following the procedures despite literally being on the precipice of passing out.
- [41:30]
Oz Perlman
Right.
- [41:30]
John
People call it simulated drowning this test. And you get four attempts at it. And so I wanted. And one of the things you got to do is you gotta stay calm. And so I went in and I'm doing the test, failed it miserably four times in a row. Wasn't even close. Was not even close. Like I actually was the guy that they had to put a, a pink piece of tape around my ankle. And it wasn't even to humiliate me. It's. I would get so panicked, I would push off the bottom of the pool and go to the surface. But we're breathing mixed gas, and if you do that, you can risk rupturing your lungs with air bubbles. You have to be kept, you have to go up at a certain speed. And so there's like, standby divers there to keep me from panicking and rocketing to the surface. And so I failed four times in a row. And as a result, I actually got rolled out of the class. I was in the class, I was with all my buddies, and they're like, look, look, we're going to give you one more shot. You're going to leave this class, go to the next class, and you can try again with that class. And so I go to the next class.
- [42:20]
Oz Perlman
So that sets you back six months.
- [42:21]
John
It actually was just a couple months. They let me start in the second phase, but so I go into the next class. And the thing is, is the students in this class, they've been through the hell week and everything, and they know I'm a rollback. And I sort of took on the role of, like, I'm going to be a mentor. Like, yeah, I obviously failed Pool competence. We're all going to take it here soon. But I really tried hard to be like a mentor. Like, here's what I experienced. I obviously failed it, but let me give you all the insights I can possibly give you. And everyone's looking at me like, oh, John's got it. Like, yeah, he failed, but he's gonna be fine. And so we get to test day, and I failed the first two attempts. Not out of panic, out of procedural problems. And so I fail on Friday, there's two more attempts left, and it's on that Monday. And if I don't pass them, not only will it humiliate me, but I'm dropped from SEAL training. Yeah, that weekend was horrible. Cause I'm thinking about this test on Monday morning. I got to the pool deck and I was so nervous all weekend, and I'm sitting on the pool deck. They make you sit with your back to the pool. And they made me go last that day. And I'm hearing the instructors, like, ripping kids hoses. You're like, air bubbling up off the pool. Kids are like, passing out, like, red line and medics running over. It's chaos. And you're just sitting there waiting for your turn. And then when it was my turn, I just had this mental shift occur where I was like, holy shit, I'm gonna fucking die in that pool before I fail this test.
- [43:36]
Oz Perlman
Yeah.
- [43:36]
John
And I got in the water and it was like, calm comes over me. And I begin this test. And it didn't matter how long I went without air. It didn't matter what the problem was. I had fully committed to this concept of I will literally die before I fail this test.
- [43:51]
Oz Perlman
Yeah.
- [43:51]
John
And I passed. And it was so easy. And it showed me that, like, there's a point where you can convince yourself that your mind can sort of override all the discomfort and you can basically do whatever you want. And you described when you went and did the Spartathlon the second time, that feeling of, I will die before I don't finish this race 100%. And sure enough, you did it. And so do you think that's something everybody can achieve? That level of, I will go full send no matter what? Because I think for you, clearly, you put yourself in pressure situations and you just go for it. Like, I feel like maybe that's something that we have that others don't. Or do you think that anyone can tap into that?
- [44:27]
Oz Perlman
That's such a tough question because it's so hard to speak for other people and where mental toughness comes from. And I think you build it up over time. I don't think you're born with it at all. It's those failures that reinforce later. Had you gotten it on the first try, where would you be today? Isn't that a funny question to ask yourself? Would you still be this person? So when I came back the second time, I had this guy who I saw at Mile, like, I don't remember what mile it was, probably was. I finished. I DNF'd at 78, but it was this bald dude. I think he was, like, from Eastern Europe. And he's wearing this thing and we're in the middle of the night and I'm a wreck. I'm a wreck, bro. Like, just been puking maybe a hundred times, and now I'm writing my DNF speech, which in the parlance of ultramarathoning is did not finish. They don't write a time next to your name. They write dnf, which is so embarrassing and just kills you. And so I've already written my speech, what I'm going to tell my wife. When I went to Greece and spent all this money and my friends who were like, dude, how'd you do on that race? And you gotta, like, you gotta eat it and tell everyone. Well, you know, you gotta have that story of, like, I'm gonna learn from this experience and I'm gonna come back stronger, like all that, that I, you know. No, you should have finished. And so I see this guy and I'm already talking all this stuff like, oh, man, I don't have it today. I don't. We're at an aid station together, middle of the night. We haven't slept all night. And this guy looks at me, doesn't really understand English. And his eyes. He's these crazy eyes where they're open. I'll never forget. He looked at me and he goes. He goes, if you cannot run, you walk. If you cannot walk, you crawl. But you never. You never stop. Like, he. Like. Like a psycho. Like a zombie apocalypse. And in the moment, I couldn't digest it, right? I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't take that and bottle it up and shoot it into my vein. But slowly, after I left, I couldn't. It haunted me.
- [46:04]
John
Yeah.
- [46:04]
Oz Perlman
Because this guy, like, that's. That. What he had in his eyes is what I need to have the next year. And so that, like, slowly worked into my DNA. And when I got there, I was you. On that attempt, when I started, there was no doubt. There was. It was. There's no doubt. I am finishing this thing no matter what. And when the voice enters my head that says, you aren't finishing. What are you talking about? You don't exist. Gone. We go right back to the mindset. I'm hardened steel, titanium. Where I'm finishing no matter what, if that means I'm walking the next 24 hours puking with a splint on my leg, I'm finishing this race because now this is life or death.
- [46:44]
John
That's incredible. Yeah. It's funny, I rarely meet people that have had a comparable experience to what I described with Pool comp. But it's so clear, like, for you, this is like a defining moment. And so if people understand that in their own lives, that if you had to. If you had to. If your thing is, oh, man, I really want to start a business, oh, man, I really want to run a Spartaphlon or be a seal or whatever it is, whatever someone's goal is, however big or small, if the stakes were as big as they could possibly be.
- [47:12]
Oz Perlman
You could do it, right?
- [47:14]
John
Or you could die trying. That's the level of commitment that some people need to understand goes into success. It's a compounding effect, right? As soon as I became a seal, it showed me that I now have the capacity to set big goals and achieve them. Not be someone who claims to want to do things, but then write the DNF story of why I never actually did it, right?
- [47:33]
Oz Perlman
And that knowledge that. That exact way you said, the knowledge that you did, it now changes the way your mind is wired, because now you go, oh, my God, what else could I do? And now if I set my mind to it, you start to believe in yourself in a certain way and that becomes self fulfilling. So I think for whatever people do, again, if it's inspirational messaging, my book is designed to be motivational, but it's designed to be action oriented. Like I want to teach people actually.
- [47:58]
John
Where's your. I'll hold it up while you're talking.
- [47:59]
Oz Perlman
How to take action. So like literally the words I used and I thought about this a lot was proven habits for success. Because a lot of people that think you're going to get this book is that I'm going to teach you magic tricks or mentalism tricks. And the real talk is you can find those elsewhere. So the book is not going to teach you tricks. I just, I need everyone to know because they're going to buy it and be like, dude, where do you teach me what Joe Burrow, how the hell does he throw the ball? I go, I'm not gonna teach you how I do the tricks. But knowing what somebody who might have control of your life, knowing when to approach your boss, what to say and how to get the raise that you've been working for for the last two years. What if you could do that and up your chances by 10, 20, 30, 40% of doing that and getting them to do what you want. That to me is worth a couple bucks. That's worth your time, which is even more valuable than the amount of money for the book to read it. And we got a lot of fun stories baked in there as well from my crazy life.
- [48:48]
John
This book really captures the essence of someone who has put themselves in highly stressful situations and persevered and they've lived a life of basically pretending that everything is a must succeed and how to basically harness your mind and in some ways learn how to read other people and influence other people. But this is a very powerful, I'm going to call it a self help book because to me this is like practically a bible of how to motivate and how to be the best version of yourself. So this is an amazing book. You got to check it out. Read your mind.
- [49:20]
Oz Perlman
Your fellow Navy SEAL David Goggins gave me a quote on the top which says, learn to master the most powerful weapon, your mind, which encapsulates what the entire book is all about, which is your mind controls your success, whatever success is defined for you, which for everyone is different. Maybe it's monetary, maybe it's romantic, maybe it's want to have kids. Maybe it's like I Just want to do something I'm not doing now. And how do you get from step A to B to C? And I know that sounds so silly, but in almost every instance, other people are involved in that journey. And my whole training has been how to win over people, how to know what they're thinking, how to influence them. Right. How to get rid of the fear of rejection and failure, which is a huge part of my book, which is mostly what holds people back. That is such a huge factor. And I learned that at a young age, doing, like, restaurant magic and all those little things. I learned how to iterate and improve. I want to give you decades of the mistakes I made, but I want to distill out of them what you can do to fast track your success.
- [50:17]
John
That's amazing.
- [50:18]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
This is awesome.
- [50:18]
Oz Perlman
Let me ask you a question, John. If I told you right now, okay, If I. The book is in your hand, and I were to ask you to flip to any page you wanted. Impulses, spontaneous. In my book, any page you wanted, and look at it, and then pick any word, and then I try to guess the word on the surface. That seems crazy, right? That seems amazing.
- [50:35]
John
Yeah.
- [50:36]
Oz Perlman
But I'm watching this like somebody at home, and I want to go to the skeptic. Not the normal person, but the outlier, the one out of 100 who goes, yo. But he. He wrote the book. I wrote the book. So what if I have a photographic memory? What if I know it's on every single page and if I could see what page you're on, I could see, right? That could have happened. That's. That's a plausible but very improbable solution. So what if instead of doing that, because this is my book, right? Can we just see this room? This is not. This is for, by the way, shout out to your team. Sick. The setup here is incredible. It is pretty good for this interview. Amazing. I've been in a lot of interviews, and this might take the cake.
- [51:14]
John
All right?
- [51:16]
Oz Perlman
Hundreds. Hundreds and hundreds of books. Probably thousands. So if I were to instead ask you to walk up to any one of these books, now, not physically, but mentally, if I would have said, walk up to any book in this room. Grab it. Walk up. And I want you to flip it open to any page, to look at that page, and to go back and forth. And my eyes are closed and stop at any word. Can you see this happening? Close your eyes, and in your mind's eye, envision that occurring. Did you just play it out?
- [51:45]
John
Yep.
- [51:45]
Oz Perlman
Okay. Open your eyes. Be honest. Right? These People trust you. They've seen you for years. This isn't staged. This isn't set up. There is no conceivable way I could know what you would have done. You didn't even know what you were going to do before I asked you to.
- [51:57]
John
Yeah, fair.
- [51:58]
Oz Perlman
When people flip, some people will find a specific page that has a meaning to them. Like maybe a kid's birthday, maybe it's January 24th, you go to 124 to be fun about it. Or some people just flip to a random page. Now watch. I watch to see the reaction. I don't think you got nostalgic personal references. The page you picked, it doesn't have a meaning to you, does it? No, I didn't think so. I didn't see it that way. I also see it as. When you just flip, you go, m. Stop. You were quick. You felt rushed, so you rushed. I could see it. You feel a little tense. So somebody would. And they would have gone longer in the book again, you don't have to tell me this. Do we have a marker? Do we have something we could write with?
- [52:38]
John
I have a pen.
- [52:40]
Oz Perlman
A pen. Okay, I'm going to close. Is that your patent?
- [52:43]
John
It is my pen.
- [52:44]
Oz Perlman
Okay, I'm gonna close my eyes. And I want you to do this close to your body and on the palm of your hand and make sure there's no way I could see this. And there's no camera behind you. Does it write? Does the pen write?
- [52:53]
John
Yep.
- [52:54]
Oz Perlman
Okay, I'm gonna close my eyes. On the palm of your hand with no camera, nothing behind you. Write as big as you can what page number you went to in the book. When you're done, blow on it, put it close to your chest. Nobody could have seen that. Correct?
- [53:07]
John
Correct.
- [53:08]
Oz Perlman
Okay. Can I open my eyes? Yep. My gut says, again, I'm fishing. Did I get a bite? Yes. I reel it in. I think you went with an earlier page, my gut says. Cause I was seeing what you would do. I think it was two digits. Now I ask myself, look at the smile, the laugh. I might as well said yes. So I keep going. It's so unlikely that you would have done the first 30 or 40 pages because it's too. You can't even flip the page. You open a book and you go, it's already off your thumb before I've even got a page 50. So now what feels like a. What feels like a number that's got, like, some text, but not. And I think that you would have done right. The backward hat, couple buttons. Open, showing some chest hair. He's more of an odd type of guy than an even. You're not a. By the book. I think you might have thought of the number, chuckled, and been, like, inappropriate. So you wouldn't have done 69, even though that's so funny. You did 67, didn't you? Can we see your hand? Is the number 67?
- [54:08]
John
Yeah. Dude, that's insane. What? Dude, how Any book, any page, but.
- [54:17]
Oz Perlman
Any word is near infinite. I don't want you to write anything. People are gonna say, he's got a trick hand, he's got a trick pen. This is your stuff. Don't write down a thing. Whatever word you saw in your mind in a book, not a real book, you imagine. Throw the pen away. I want you to count without using your fingers. Without using your fingers, okay? To count the number of letters to yourself, not out loud, in the word you selected, just to yourself. Count it to yourself. Don't say it out loud at the end. Some people, right when they get it, they say it. All right, no, maybe I have to double check. Hold on. Oh, don't even say that now. You gave so much away. The double check is always an indicator of a longer word. No one double checks the word. Open your eyes. No one double checks a word that's five letters or less. No, one. So now we know it's longer. Also, you probably would have done a longer word. Nobody does. And the he, she, if under this level of pressure. No way. We're balling, baby. I think he did a longer word. I think this place, it's got this ambiance of, like, gravity. And, you know, some of these books are probably hundreds of years old. Okay, think of the word you counted twice. Most people, when they count the second time, they realize they got it wrong, and they realize, oh, crap, I counted wrong the first time. And you did that. But they usually count longer and then shorter, and that's what you did. My gut says you were like, no. No, it's not. You thought it was nine, but it's actually eight letters, isn't it?
- [55:46]
John
Yeah.
- [55:47]
Oz Perlman
That's what happened in your mind. That's not even. And imagine that you write down the word. You're not going to write a fix. I want this to be all in your mind. You write down eight letters. Like hangman.
- [55:55]
John
Yep.
- [55:56]
Oz Perlman
You reach over and you just go back and forth, and you don't know why, but you stop on one letter and you circle that one letter. You circle one letter somewhere in the word. Did you do it in the word is how I cue you when I say that. Almost nobody does the first letter. The first letter will give away the rest of the word for a lot of people. And then also in makes it feel like it should be in between. You didn't do the first letter, did you? No. See, I was trying to guide you. And then a lot of people will avoid the vowels because we know there's vowels. You didn't do a vowel, did you? So again, we're going down that path. And now you jump back and forth. You're like, do I do this one? And my gut said you were about to do a letter and you jumped over the letter you're thinking of. No, I don't think. It's not in the word more than once. Is.
- [56:44]
John
Is.
- [56:45]
Oz Perlman
It is, right? It is. Because you jump between the two of them.
- [56:48]
John
Yeah.
- [56:48]
Oz Perlman
And what's weird is the first letter you were about to circle, but you didn't. You were gonna do a T, and you did it. You're thinking of an S, aren't you?
- [56:56]
John
Yes.
- [56:58]
Oz Perlman
Swear to them. There's no setup here. This is not stage.
- [57:01]
John
If you really literally.
- [57:02]
Oz Perlman
We have a book, a room with hundreds of books, thousands of books. You imagine in your mind picking one up, opening it up and going to any word. Close your eyes. Can you cover them with your hand, please? I want to show them at home because people will say later that I changed what I wrote somehow.
- [57:15]
John
All right.
- [57:16]
Oz Perlman
Is Ezra cover? Can we see this from any camera or no? Have we seen one? Open your eyes. What are you picturing in your mind? You flipped an invisible look to page 67. You saw hundreds of words. You stopped, one of them jumped out at you. What was that word?
- [57:35]
John
Chastise.
- [57:36]
Oz Perlman
Chastise.
- [57:37]
John
Hell, dude, that's such a random word. That's crazy. This is not staged. This is crazy. That's crazy. I picked that because that's the most bizarre word I could think of. That's crazy, man. I don't even know what to say. I'm, like, looking at other people. Look, I don't even know what to do. That is. I gotta be honest, I don't even know what to say. I'm shocked. I knew you probably would be able to do this, but this is not set up. But he walked in, and within two minutes, we were filming. This is. This is. I'm blown away.
- [58:18]
Oz Perlman
Create memorable moments that people take and the stories they tell. And you could chastise me, but you got a story that's gonna live in your brain for a while. That's My goal is I just put a splinter in your brain.
- [58:28]
John
Oh, my God.
- [58:29]
Oz Perlman
You're gonna try to pick out for years and be like, how the. How did he. How did he know? And I wasn't even gonna do page 67. I did that the last minute. I changed.
- [58:37]
John
That is so wild. Did what was like your first time doing this. Like your first big moment of big trick with a big audience, and you nailed it.
- [58:48]
Oz Perlman
So I think certain things in life can't be bought, but have to be earned. Same way when you were in SEALs training. There's no check you can write to get that right. So certain things in life you really have to earn. And so when I did that show America's Got Talent, I never expected to go as far as I did. I was truly. This isn't like, oh, this false humility. Every round I was in, I gave it my all, and I didn't think what I'm going to do next. It's just like when I hear wide receivers who at tight ends, when they say, what do you focus on when the ball gets thrown your way, Catching it? You do not think of what you're going to do after you catch the ball or you drop the ball. And so my mindset every single time was this. I'm going to just do everything I can in this round, kill it, and that's it. I never saw and then there was no and then, which I think is a powerful thing to do because as soon as you start thinking and then you start getting hung up and you drop the ball. So where do I go with this? Every round, at the end of it, it was. The highs and lows were insane. Cause the highs were like, I just made it through. The lows were like, oh, crap. I didn't plan what I'm gonna do next round, which might be in a week or two. It's gotta be better than this. So it was like these two mixed emotions. So when I got to the finale, the finale, this was like the heyday of the show in linear TV, which now people are like, TV? Where do I watch TV? Online. This is when, like 15 million people would tune in live. Radio City Musical live. That means I am on a stage. Radio City Music. There's 6,000 people in the audience. And this is airing to everyone live. Which means if you screw up, ain't no safety net. You don't get caught. You don't go to go. Cut, cut, cut. It's not going right. So if chastise isn't the word, if you didn't think of the letter S. If none of those things happened, I can't get out of it.
- [60:25]
John
Oh my God.
- [60:25]
Oz Perlman
So my finale.
- [60:26]
John
That's intense.
- [60:27]
Oz Perlman
That was one of those moments that was life changing.
- [60:29]
John
Yeah, I believe it. Yeah, I believe it. So you've accomplished so much and you clearly are somebody that is taking big swings like you've said. Do you have any sort of like bucket list life items that still are like, I really want to accomplish that at some point.
- [60:43]
Oz Perlman
It's funny you think that because I think I'm just starting. So like in my mind I'm so forward facing and it's something I tell myself on a regular basis to like live in the moment. Because it's always like, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? And that's a problem in life because when you do earn certain things or have like pinch me moments, I have pinch me moments where I'm like in the room with Steven Spielberg or LeBron and like you just have this moment of like, dude, just think back to you 20 years ago. If you can go in a time machine, meet yourself like Marty McFly, like you're not going to believe what you're going to do in 10 years or 20 years. But there's a lot of things. Having my own series, I'm so excited about that. That's been years and years and years in the making of having not just all these clips that you see, but a show that you get to see who I am, not just what I do.
- [61:29]
John
Right.
- [61:29]
Oz Perlman
So you get to get a feeling for like, what am I, who am I, what makes me tick. And hopefully the book too, which is for years something. I didn't feel confident to write a book. Cause I'm like, what story do I have to tell, man? Like I do these cool tricks. That's awesome. But I started to really see that. I think some of the things that I do in my life that are surrounding the mentalism are the actual hidden tricks and tips for success. This whole thing, mentalism is very fresh and new. It's been around for 100 plus years. But I think people are just getting this awareness of it. And it's because of the sports team. It's because of these things. But they're starting to see like, this isn't magic. This is really cool and different and it captivates people's imaginations and I'm trying to elevate the field not just for myself, but like the other people that do it. It's kind of like the Rising Tide lists all ships. It's good for my industry, it's good for us. And it makes what I do, like, cool and innovative. And I like the fact that I'm being tied to it. Where I want to be the name brand for this art. When you ask somebody in five years, who's your favorite mentalist? If you ask them that today, the question is, what's a mentalist in five years? If I've done my job right, the instant answer to that question. You mean, you mean like, oh, is the mentalist like the Google, the Kleenex that you create? The moniker and the brand because you've aligned yourself so closely with what this is that people associate you with it?
- [62:48]
John
Dude. On that note, where's your book? That's amazing. We gotta make sure that if you want more insights from the world's greatest mentalist, check out read. You'd mind. It's his new book by Oz Perlman. This is incredible. It has all those tips, tricks, secrets, mental hacks. You name it, you got to go check it out. Thank you so much for being on here. It's been John.
- [63:09]
Oz Perlman
Thanks, Dan. Thank you.
- [63:10]
John
Seriously, mind blown. This is. This is. I don't even know what this is. Chastise67 Crazy. Thank you, us.
- [63:16]
Oz Perlman
You got it.
- [63:31]
Mochi Health Advertiser
Hey, everybody, it's Babs. You know, one thing that makes the holiday season so magical is the traditions we share year after year. And that's why I'm so excited to tell you about Birch Lane. Their classic furniture and festive decor is carefully crafted to bring joy to every seasonal celebration. Plus, it's delivered fast and free, so you can start spreading the holiday cheer. Shop my hand picked Birch Lane collection and more classic styles@birchlane.com Avoiding your unfinished.
- [64:02]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte, paint, finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app. Download today.