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Pablo Torre
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
Stevie Baskin
Where is the person with the balls to just like flat out accuse this
Pablo Torre
guy of fraud right after this ad.
Stevie Baskin
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Amy Archer
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Stevie Baskin
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Amy Archer
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Stevie Baskin
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Pablo Torre
I do want to make clear that I am a guy who becomes obsessed with characters that confuse me, that I find on some level unsolvable. And when I unilaterally bring up the name O's Perlman, O's the Mentalist, there are two sort of reactions. One is who the is that? The other is we're about to have perhaps a five hour conversation about this guy and Stevie Baskin as the preeminent authority on o's the mentalist and the decoding of what makes him so irresistible. How would you explain O's to the first group that has no idea who he is, has never seen him, has no sense of why I would even care?
Stevie Baskin
Well, maybe. Maybe there's an argument to say that the most useful way to introduce him is that he's sort of someone who has mastered the art form of mentalism, which I think then would be immediately followed by the question of, well, what is mentalism?
Oz Pearlman
You go back in time and you look into the face directly of somebody that you have not thought of before today in years. You don't know why, what reason, or why, but you're seeing this person in your mind at this very moment. Open your eyes. You and him used to play basketball together, didn't you?
Pablo Torre
What the. Yes. What's his name?
Stevie Baskin
Pernell.
Oz Pearlman
Davis Pernell.
Stevie Baskin
What the.
Oz Pearlman
Are you kidding me,
Stevie Baskin
bro? This is, like, the craziest. Mentalism is the next level of magic, where a magician has trained and learned things like sleight of hand, has learned things like misdirection. The mentalist has learned all of those kind of subtleties, but branched them out of the world of sleight of hand and into the world of sleight of mind. If we think of a magician as someone who's gone through medical school, a mentalist is someone who is now a plastic surgeon.
Oz Pearlman
Tell us all, out of that whole deck.
Stevie Baskin
Don't move.
Oz Pearlman
What card you think of. Say it. Three of diamonds. Three of diamonds.
Pablo Torre
Well, hold on.
Oz Pearlman
Tell us. What'd you think of?
Stevie Baskin
I was a goldfish.
Oz Pearlman
A goldfish? Yes. Seriously?
Stevie Baskin
Yes.
Oz Pearlman
I got you. Look in your hands. Aaron.
Stevie Baskin
What if you would have picked a giraffe? Though.
Pablo Torre
A great mentalist and a great plastic surgeon share something in common, they are so skilled that they successfully deter the audience from lingering on a potentially explosive question. Is this real? And if you watch O's the Mentalist, as I have for hours, you will hear him disclose something important. That he does not have secret superpowers. In his popular TED Talk, Oze very explicitly says that he performs these viral revelations by simply noticing things. Noticing clues about a person's body language, their eyebrows, their pupil movement, these nonverbal cues. That, in short, is what mentalism is. And Oze, who used to work on Wall street at Merrill lynch, sells this as a learnable skill.
Oz Pearlman
I am billed as the world's greatest mind reader, but guess what? I can't read minds. What I can do is read people, and people ask a question all the time. Which is, were you born with this? And the answer is no, of course not. Absolutely not. I do not possess any supernatural powers. I am not a psychic. This is a learnable skill that I feel anyone could do. But I've applied for about roughly three decades at reverse engineering the human mind. If I know how you think, I know what you think. And I want to ask each and
Pablo Torre
so Oz the mentalist has become part mentalism evangelist and part Sherlock Holmes. This guy who barnstorms into rooms all across the country and all across sports especially, collecting millions upon millions of views and fans and dollars.
Stevie Baskin
The most honest thing to say would be that he is an absolutely incredible performer who has developed a unique kind of way of interacting with studios, whether that be a news broadcast studio or a sports broadcasting or the studio of a successful YouTube podcast or someone like Joe Rogan. He has deeply understood how those things work and he is prepared to manipulate those environments to create absolutely downright impossible effects that do have your mind pushing itself to start to consider, does this guy have something supernatural going on?
Oz Pearlman
If I told you right now to make up a random number, I'd say get out your calculator, I'd love that. And you add it up and you do a random number. You know, I'm screw calculator. I want it to be spontaneous. Would your wife know your ATM pin code? No.
Stevie Baskin
No, lie to me.
Oz Pearlman
Do not tell me your real ATM pin code.
Stevie Baskin
Okay.
Oz Pearlman
Obviously, unless you want to make up a fake four digit number off the top of your head. What feels to you utterly spontaneous when I say go, 1, 2, 3. Four digit code, random go.
Stevie Baskin
Okay, say it.
Oz Pearlman
20, 20, 20, 20. Okay. So you ask me, how do I do what I do? I'm going to write down 2020.
Stevie Baskin
Okay? For those that don't know the trick, he asks Joe to come up with a four digit number that is not his pin code, just kind of a random four digit number of what or what Joe would believe to be a random four digit number. Jo O's then proceeds to analyze the individual digits of 2020 and kind of do this on the fly. Psychological analysis, statistical analysis, non verbal cues analysis to reverse engineer that 2020. To get back to what Joe Rogan's pin code was.
Oz Pearlman
I'm showing this to you. Is there a camera behind me? I don't want to make sure. I'm not going to show it to you. It's not 2020. How'd I do? Joe, is that your ATM pin code?
Stevie Baskin
Yeah. That's weird. I'm skeptical because I've got that pin
Pablo Torre
code in the mail.
Stevie Baskin
You know, he's calling his bank, right? When I saw the comments, it was particularly one, I think the one that got me was just one saying, man, no one has debunked this guy, right? No one has put up a video explaining how he does it. And that bothered me. And then there just became like a little sort of V in the back of my head where I thought it was as if the universe itself was kind of cajoling me into saying, are you gonna. Are you gonna do it, Steve? Are you gonna make this video?
Pablo Torre
And so an amateur magician named Stevie Baskin did just that a few months ago, publishing a five hour analysis of the guy who calls himself the world's greatest mentalist on an otherwise empty YouTube channel. And I watched all five hours of that as well.
Stevie Baskin
I work in a law firm, so 9 o' clock every day I'm in a general practice law firm where we're doing everything from criminal law to family law to succession law. What I would say is I get to solve problems all day long. I get to think about different ways to solve a problem for someone in a very real world context. And that might seem wholly disconnected from watching someone like Oz Perlman and figuring out what he's doing, but I actually felt it was. It was kind of the same thing.
Pablo Torre
And if you want to know how high Oz has been flying here in the United States, just last month I also found myself watching this. Once again, we want to tell you
Amy Archer
what you're looking at.
Pablo Torre
If you're just joining us, this is
Amy Archer
footage from the White House Correspondents dinner when suddenly shots were fired and heard and people ducked for cover underneath the table. And when all this chaos began, the person who was closest to the President in that moment was the entertainer for the night, mentalist, Oz Pearlman, who you can see in this video talking with the President.
Pablo Torre
And I just got to say, I was in D.C. while that was happening. I wasn't going to the event, but I was there for some of the events before. And a lot of the people there, including reporters, like journalists, were like, how does this guy do it? You know, everyone was sort of like whispering about, is this guy a witch?
Stevie Baskin
I think the reason that owes Parmanen, why he gripped me in the way that he did. And then when I saw that he was deceiving other people to the extent that he was, it provoked something in me where I had to correct that situation because I want people to see the world clearly. It is a misconception to say that you can think in the back of your mind. Oh, yeah, sure. There's this skill where someone can spend 30 years reverse engineering the human mind and can now study someone's eyebrows and can study sort of how they stutter when they're speaking or how they hold their hands in front of their waistline and they're able to discern this information. If that is something that you genuinely believe, it is absolutely going to affect how you interpret the rest of the world. The exact same way is if you genuinely believe that on December 24, a man comes in in a sleigh with flying reindeer and is able to go all around the whole planet and go down everyone's chimney and put presents there for the morning. That if you, if you genuinely believe that happens, that doesn't exist as a kind of isolated belief in your mind because it has implications for a huge amount of other things that are going on in your world. Which is why that illusion can't sustain itself for very long before people start saying, hey, like, why aren't we all flying around in sleighs? Or like, oh, wait, how many houses is he supposed to visit in one evening, you know, beforehand? And then the ordered complexity of the rest of the world starts crashing in and then the illusion has to die. Yeah.
Pablo Torre
And I don't think there's a better comparison. If you're not familiar with Oz Perlman, then what we're about to do on this episode is basically debunk the modern day Santa Claus.
Stevie Baskin
Yeah. Yeah, 100%.
Pablo Torre
Something I feel obligated to tell you before we go any further here is that I love magic. I buy tickets to magic shows. I have friends who are magicians, including one who is the proprietor of a physical magic shop here in New York City. So I do not think that tricking people in this context at magic shows is wrong. I think it's fun, actually, like a mystery of storytelling and technique. And Oze is very skilled at both storytelling and technique. In fact, before we dissect how Oze's manipulation of the audience goes too far and actually breaks certain ethical codes, this according to three magicians that we spoke to. I want to show you one of Oz's basic and relatively non controversial tricks, which he did to the Falcons, all pro running back Bijan Robinson and the show's host, Kay Adams.
Oz Pearlman
Bijan.
Pablo Torre
Yep.
Oz Pearlman
You ready?
Stevie Baskin
I'm ready.
Oz Pearlman
Let's go.
Stevie Baskin
All right.
Oz Pearlman
I have a fun idea for you.
Stevie Baskin
Okay.
Oz Pearlman
Grab your phone out.
Pablo Torre
Oh, my gosh.
Amy Archer
Oh, gosh.
Oz Pearlman
He's like, quick, delete browser History. Bijan, go to hold, so I can't see it.
Stevie Baskin
Okay.
Oz Pearlman
Go to your contacts.
Stevie Baskin
All right.
Oz Pearlman
And tip it. You know, I want you. Okay, I want you to start scrolling through Bijan, and I want you to look over his shoulder. Do a little eavesdropping.
Amy Archer
Look for contact.
Oz Pearlman
No. Come on. You're gonna see.
Stevie Baskin
Is it okay?
Oz Pearlman
And tip it so I can't see it.
Amy Archer
Don't let him see.
Oz Pearlman
Tip your phone down.
Pablo Torre
Okay.
Oz Pearlman
And K, look. Is it scrolling?
Stevie Baskin
Yes.
Oz Pearlman
Bijan, I don't want you to look. So this is the key. I want you to be scrolling without looking. So you take it, and whenever you want, you're gonna stop, hold it, start scrolling. Just scroll, scroll, and then make sure. And you're gonna see K. There's gonna be a whole list of names.
Amy Archer
I mean, he's got short shorts on.
Oz Pearlman
I'm looking everywhere, trying not to look everywhere. I'm done.
Stevie Baskin
I'm done.
Oz Pearlman
That's it. Bring it close to your heart. Look where you landed. Look at the name at the top.
Stevie Baskin
Oh, shoot.
Pablo Torre
Oh, no. He got rid of it.
Stevie Baskin
Oh, no.
Oz Pearlman
We got it.
Stevie Baskin
We got it.
Oz Pearlman
We got it.
Stevie Baskin
We got it.
Pablo Torre
We got it.
Stevie Baskin
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got it. Okay.
Oz Pearlman
Okay. Do you see someone in there?
Stevie Baskin
Yes.
Oz Pearlman
Did you have any idea who you're gonna pick?
Stevie Baskin
No.
Oz Pearlman
Right. Is there any way in the world I could know something you didn't even know? No.
Amy Archer
Cause we were scrolling.
Pablo Torre
Yeah.
Stevie Baskin
Absolutely not.
Oz Pearlman
All right. Put your phone down.
Stevie Baskin
Okay.
Oz Pearlman
Okay. I'm gonna have you sit here. We're gonna kind of. I'm gonna tag team this. I'm gonna see who I can pick up things from first.
Stevie Baskin
Okay.
Oz Pearlman
Look at the body language, the tension. I think it's a guy. Is it a guy? It is a guy, but here's what's funny.
Stevie Baskin
Oh, shoot.
Oz Pearlman
You were confused. That didn't make sense. There's no context. Listen to me. That didn't make sense. Do you know why?
Amy Archer
Because it's not a famous person.
Oz Pearlman
Nope. Because if the name was Michael, she would have known it was a guy. She was confused. She didn't know if it was a guy or girl. It's a name that could go either way. Okay, this is funny. You just gave it away. You didn't realize. Chris. Is it Chris?
Stevie Baskin
Yes.
Oz Pearlman
Do you understand what just happened?
Stevie Baskin
No.
Pablo Torre
Because you can't get in heroes.
Oz Pearlman
Think of his last name. Cause I know a million dudes named Chris. Think of Chris, last name.
Stevie Baskin
Okay. I thought his last name.
Oz Pearlman
And you mix up the letters in this person's last name and you just stop and you grab out anyone you want. You just grab it out. You got one?
Stevie Baskin
Yeah.
Oz Pearlman
Did you grab one too?
Stevie Baskin
Yeah. A letter? Yeah.
Oz Pearlman
Yeah. All right. I don't think you did a vowel. You didn't do a vowel, did you?
Stevie Baskin
No.
Oz Pearlman
You thought, it's too easy, I'm not gonna do the vowel. And then I think you did different letters.
Pablo Torre
B.
Oz Pearlman
Are you thinking of a B?
Pablo Torre
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold up.
Stevie Baskin
I wasn't.
Oz Pearlman
That wasn't hers. I told you. You're thinking of different letters. Chris. Chris. Chris. I love when people watch these videos and say it's set up cuz you didn't know who you were going to pick. How could I know this?
Stevie Baskin
Hey, this is crazy.
Oz Pearlman
What's his name? Tell us.
Stevie Baskin
Chris Gilbert.
Oz Pearlman
Chris.
Stevie Baskin
No way. It was Chris Gilbert. Yo.
Pablo Torre
How did you do that? How did you actually. How did you do that?
Stevie Baskin
Like I want to know.
Oz Pearlman
That was.
Pablo Torre
That was awesome. What is O good at here? What is jumping out to you?
Stevie Baskin
This trick doesn't require any preparation. It's completely sleight of hand, which is closer to the typical wheelhouse of what a magician is good at. And then of course, all the psychology that comes in to doing a sleight of hand move with six different cameras on you and you know, a famous athlete that you're interacting with and holding all of that in your mind and still giving a great performance. So the move that we're seeing there, you know, is that he gets the phone out of their hand, which he does masterfully, you know, the excuse to, without even their sort of explicit consent to just kind of casually take the phone out of their hand and then to start showing it to the rest of the audience. Is it scrolling you all to think that it's really scrolling. So this isn't some sort of rigged setup, but right here you can see it for what it is. O is. He's looking. He's looking at the phone screen which allows him to read. I mean, it's sort of pretty undeniable I would hope.
Pablo Torre
Unless you pause the video there though. Unless you stop it to comb through. Like where are his eyeballs pointing? What's incredible is that you don't notice it at first blush. He's really good at, at misdirecting your eyeballs because he is secretly looking at the phone screen.
Stevie Baskin
It's phenomenal, as I say over and over again, ad nauseam in the five hour video. He's an incredible performer and a good magician and a good illusionist that even if you do kind of notice that, which has happened in previous ones where someone says, hey, what are you doing? You're looking at the screen. What happens next where he turns the phone down, that immediately, to your mind says, okay, well, whatever glance he did at the screen is completely irrelevant because now the phone is pointed down towards the floor and they're scrolling up and down. But when he puts it back in their hands and says, okay, now you do it, but I want you to do it without looking. And he points the phone down towards the ground, the sleight of hand move is that he's just going to press the power button on the phone, which is going to turn the screen off, meaning now that any kind of up and down scrolling that they do is not going to change the position of those contacts. So that that name that he reads at the top is just gonna stay
Pablo Torre
there and look, the screen is off. You can basically. We can now glance at it like, yeah, there's. The phone is off, the screen is dark.
Stevie Baskin
Oh, shoot.
Pablo Torre
Oh, no, he got rid of it.
Amy Archer
Oh, no, we got it.
Oz Pearlman
We got. We got it.
Stevie Baskin
We got it.
Pablo Torre
We got it.
Stevie Baskin
Yeah, yeah, we got it. Okay.
Oz Pearlman
Okay.
Pablo Torre
And then the other thing, of course, is that he is creating as to impart this notion of a skill. He is creating what would be the mentalist's logic of how he arrived at it?
Oz Pearlman
Because if the name was Michael, she would have known it was a guy. She was confused. She didn't know if it was a guy, guy or girl. It's a name that could go either way. This is funny. You just gave it away.
Pablo Torre
You didn't realize telling the story, that, of course, has nothing to do with the thing because he saw Chris Gilbert when he glanced at it and locked it on Chris Gilbert. And now he just needs a backstory for why it is Chris Gilbert was a thing K. Adams and Bijan Robinson had of course, arrived at, which is clever.
Stevie Baskin
It's so powerful. Like, you're guaranteed to fall for it. Because if you're there and you think, as you're scrolling on the phone, if you genuinely think that your finger is. Is affecting that contact, those list of contexts, you are guaranteed, like, you're done at that point. And then the rest of the trick is just gift of the gab.
Pablo Torre
How did you do that? How did you actually. How did you do that? Like, the thing about the magicians that I've been talking about that I've been polling, I. I know a couple of them here in New York City. Some of them are so protective of other magicians Right. Like, we shouldn't reveal tricks. That is, in fact, something that is so anathema to the premise of creating things that are special for an audience and magical for an audience. And the fascinating thing about Oze is that I would bring him up knowing that they had his prior position, and they say, that guy. There's something else going on here. And I have been spending so much time trying to understand, like, what is the argument not only for why Oze is not what he says he is, but why is it a problem? And the first trick that Oze has pulled off over and over and over again is the one you referenced with Joe Rogan. But I think the version that I want to spotlight here is the trick he did in this same genre on the View.
Oz Pearlman
But what if. If I asked you right now to think of your ATM pin code?
Pablo Torre
Oh, no.
Oz Pearlman
I love the tension in Sarah. She's like, we're on T. Don't say it. But if I guessed it, you know what people say? They say, he must have found that out. So if I ask someone instead to make up a random pin code. Well, how can I know? Because you didn't even know what you're gonna do. So imagine you lose your bank card. You call the bank. You made up a fake ATM pin code.
Amy Archer
Okay.
Oz Pearlman
Make it up right now. I couldn't have known it. Think of the first digit. You did it.
Amy Archer
Mm.
Oz Pearlman
Watch your mouth open. Watch when you go like this. Oh, it sounds like A W. It's A1, isn't it?
Amy Archer
The first one.
Oz Pearlman
The fake code. Yeah, it's a one. It starts with a one. Anna, here's the thing. If I guess her PIN code right now, would it be amazing?
Amy Archer
Yeah.
Stevie Baskin
Yeah.
Oz Pearlman
But here's the thing. Joy. Joy, look what it says on the front of my book. The last line. It says, the world's greatest mentalist. I'm not gonna do something amazing. I'm gonna do the most amazing thing you've ever seen. I'm gonna set the bar a different level. You asked me a question. What's his birthday? Are you ready? Whatever. Your ATM pin code, that fake one you made up, write it down on here. Make sure no one can see it. Hold it close to your heart. Close to your heart. No, no. Don't let them see. Don't let anyone see.
Stevie Baskin
Closer.
Amy Archer
I'm not letting anyone see.
Pablo Torre
For people who are just listening. Stevie, could you describe, like, what mechanically was happening there?
Stevie Baskin
He's talking about this idea of her giving him a random pin code by couching it in Terms of, hey, make up a random pin code, then it's going to be something that truly originates from her mind. And so then it's a genuine test of his mentalism abilities, his ability to study nonverbal cues. And you see that he weaves in this idea of her making this O shape, or worse shape, with her mouth, links that to the number one, and then says the first digit of this pin code that she has made up. But he's referring actually to a pin code that she's not making up in the moment. She's not generating these completely random four digits right there as the cameras are rolling. This is something that she has prepared beforehand before the show. And so when O says something like, hey, remember that pin code, the one that you made up?
Oz Pearlman
Whatever your ATM pin code, that fake one you made up, Write it down on here. Make sure no one can see it. Hold it close to your heart.
Stevie Baskin
If you really think about those words, those are clearly words that are designed to point you back to something that's happened in the past. But the human mind is so good at twisting interpretations to fit a preconceived narrative that if you look at this and you hear what he's saying, you're thinking, oh, okay, it makes total sense that she's just coming up with a random pin code right then and there. And so your brain is not poised in a good position to understand that when he says the one you made up, you're not poised to think that he's actually pointing her mind back to something that happened before the show. And this is what mentalists and magicians will call a kind of a dual reality effect, where he's using words that are gonna mean one thing to her, and it's gonna be interpreted completely differently by the audience who's watching the trick since the cameras have started rolling.
Amy Archer
You're making me a little nervous.
Oz Pearlman
In a good way. Hold it close to your body.
Amy Archer
I don't want the black.
Oz Pearlman
You challenged me. You said, I'm thinking of Ken. And then you asked me, what's his last. And then you asked me, what's his birthday? Like, how could I even know that? Watch this. Tell us, what is his birthday?
Stevie Baskin
December 25th.
Amy Archer
Oh, my God.
Oz Pearlman
1225. 1225.
Amy Archer
That's weird.
Oz Pearlman
And are you ready? Are you ready for this? Are you ready for this, Sarah?
Amy Archer
I'm done. I'm done.
Stevie Baskin
I'm telling you to make it the most amazing.
Oz Pearlman
Your real code, isn't it? What the.
Stevie Baskin
Again. Again? That's two times now. You can't take her if you win. No.
Amy Archer
Anyone knows my pin that
Stevie Baskin
you just
Amy Archer
said it on national tele. Why would you say it on national television?
Stevie Baskin
And do not announce my baby's name.
Pablo Torre
The idea that there was a backstage. The idea that there is language that does speak to the experience of the host, but not setting off the alarms of anyone who is in the audience or watching on a video. The dual reality thing, that's the thing that once you see that, suddenly things begin to click into place.
Stevie Baskin
I mean, that's where the money is for Os is in the dual reality. He exploits the fact that human minds are interpretation machines that we naturally seek to make sense of the world. I think he plays into the fact that generally speaking, there is a kind of unwritten rule book with magic tricks that you do the whole trick on camera. You know, that you can use sleight of hand, you can use misdirection, you can use whatever you want, but it has to be all on camera.
Pablo Torre
Right.
Stevie Baskin
So dual reality or pre show? Dual reality, where he's interacted with someone before the show is really where the money is here. Because it just puts people in such a weak position because it's so natural for them to assume that the whole trick is happening right then and there on the stage when the cameras are rolling.
Pablo Torre
Right.
Stevie Baskin
I think it's probably a little deeper and more complicated than even that. Where Oz will, in his pre show interactions with people, tell them that, hey, for the sake of the production value, for the sake of making sure that what happens on air goes smoothly, we're going to prepare an answer, like right here, right now. We don't want to fumble around. You know, this is show business, right? We got to make sure this is polished. And he can use that as a kind of meta deception that will lull them into a false sense of security. So it's just to do with greasing the wheels and making sure that the production runs smoothly.
Pablo Torre
And I think people probably on some level understand when they watch television, like, oh, certainly there are production meetings and all that. But with this, this part is not disclosed. You know, there is no disclaimer on any of this that says, and by the way, we happen to have a pre show meeting in which Ozamentalist got to effectively have extended conversations with the people that he would be tricking, seemingly for the first time out on camera, on set. And the way to hide it, of course, is to seemingly acknowledge it to the person that you were dealing with backstage. So it feels like to them you have now acknowledged it. But meanwhile the people at home are like not at all aware. But then what's so interesting and what's remarkably quiet relative to all of the viral noise is that Sarah Haynes, who was the host of the View, who was fooled in this way in that video, went on the Views Far Less Consumed behind the Table podcast and proceeded to say this.
Amy Archer
So the backstory that people don't know is we were asked to meet with him like 40 minutes prior to him being on the show.
Stevie Baskin
Yes.
Amy Archer
And by the way, in all of my years on any TV show, when a magician, an illusionist, a mentalist, whatever the people are, we've never had to pre meet with anyone.
Pablo Torre
Well, it's usually part of their shtick.
Stevie Baskin
It's like, I've never met you before. We've never seen each other.
Oz Pearlman
That's good.
Amy Archer
We've never, you know, said in this meeting, you know, kind of like we're gonna play like you came up with this. So it is funny that on the air you said, come up with a PIN and then just turn to me because I was the one that in a room he asked to do these math equations. He said, well, if we're not going to use your real pin, obviously. And then he repeated that a couple times. It's not like we're going to use your real pin, so we're coming up with like a fake pin. So he kept reassuring me that I'm trying to come up with. I think he used the word PIN because it's a four digit number. He needed a. There was a trick involved and he had to get me to a four digit number. So he kept saying, you know, well, again, this isn't your real pin. It's we're going to get to. But I had to. He made us get our phones, all of us, everyone that came in, he said, do you have your phone? Can you go get it?
Stevie Baskin
Yeah.
Amy Archer
So we had to type things into our phone. I don't know if that's where the trick is or what, but we're having. There's a point where he says, you have a number now, like subtract your real pin, but we're getting to your fake pin. We're gonna be creating this fake pin. And he kept reassuring me. And when, when we're on TV with these people, we have to play we're their subjects. And, you know, it's a trust thing. When we went out and he read the numbers, it was an impressive routine that he had been working on for 40 minutes or whatever. But the part that got me was my reaction. And I shouldn't be swearing on the air. Was not, oh, my gosh, you're such a good mentalist, or whatever it was. You reassured me three or four times in that room. We're not going to use your real PIN number. We're coming up with an imaginary one. I have never felt so violated on air. Someone meeting with you and saying over and over, like, play with me here and kind of like, I'll protect you.
Oz Pearlman
So what people didn't see is it
Stevie Baskin
was more than just the shock of it. It was deliberately countering something he had said earlier.
Pablo Torre
Yeah.
Stevie Baskin
And.
Amy Archer
And we're playing along, and I think
Pablo Torre
that that part of like, oh, wait, no, you. You had me in your sort of, like, tacit agreement of we're gonna make good television, and then you did something that abused the trust that I gave you. That feels like, oh, he has been tempting fate over and over again. Insofar as there are people who might feel like their privacy was actually invaded, as in the case of Joe Rogan and now clearly, Sarah Haynes.
Stevie Baskin
Yeah. So the iPhone calculator is, I think, largely what he probably used with Sarah in this case with this pin code. And I would say with a. With a fairly high degree of certainty that it is what he used with Joe Rogan as well to get the pin code. The way that it will work is, again, before the show, there's a few different scripts that I think he can use. But let's say that, you know, Oz has gone on Joe Rogan, he's guest Joe Rogan's PIN code, and so that's what he's going to become the most well known for. So that when he goes onto a podcast, he might say to people, hey, let's do a pin code reveal. Because that's what the people want to see. They want to see me do another pin code reveal. But I don't want to jeopardize your situation. I don't want to expose your pin code on air. Let's make up a fake pin code. But, hey, I'm a mentalist, and you're probably not going to be able to generate a fake pin code as well as you think you are. You're actually going to leave some clues into what your PIN code is. Even if you give me a fake number. Like, that's what I did with Joe Rogan. Right. He said 2020, and I was still able to figure it out. So if we just open up your calculator, you can do a series of random calculations. You know, put in, put In a random 4 digit number here, multiply it 3. Subtract this. A whole series of calculations at which one point he just needs to say, okay, now subtract your real pin code or add your real pin code or whatever it is. Do some kind of calculation in the calculator that incorporates your real pin code. There's magicians who have published books going over all of the tiny little exploits with the iPhone calculator app. All these funny little things where, hey, look, do you know that if you press like equals, equals twice, you'll get the most recent calculation command that you've asked the calculator to do? You know, you can do that from the answer screen or you can press clear and it says zero and it looks like everything's gone. But if you press this combination, it'll actually show you the last number that you entered. Or, hey, do you know that Apple has just added this feature here where you can actually go into your calculation history and see every single calculation that you've done? Right.
Pablo Torre
A lot of my producers pointed it out to me and I felt like a idiot. I was like, wait a minute, every number I've ever entered, it's just there. It's. It's actually logged in my app.
Stevie Baskin
Yeah, exactly. Who's paying attention to something like their iPhone calculator app?
Pablo Torre
Enough. I know there's a clock button now in the top left that they added that. You can now look at the history. I'm like, I had no idea.
Stevie Baskin
You have no idea.
Pablo Torre
There is technology that is on some level in what we just described, just built into your phone. This thing that we think we know inside and out intimately, and so, of course we are comfortable with it is also insidious. But then, you know, I think there might be some people out there who are like, okay, but Stevie Baskin, this is, this is Oz's number one antagonist. Like, of course he's going to have all these conspiracies about how this could have happened.
Stevie Baskin
Look, I think that maybe the reason the magicians that you referred to earlier say, you know, that guy when they're thinking of, of Oz, is that he does kind of betray what maybe you might call like an honest magician. He does betray a lot of those certain principles. Even the idea that we spoke about before, this idea of not using a camera edit to hide a move that you've done, a sleight of hand move that you've done, or using pre show, which is, if you think about it, a pre show, hiding things that you've done before the cameras start rolling is really just like another kind of camera edit, really. That sort of seems to magicians who cherish the art form of perception manipulation is not particularly impressive. And so in order for their art form to have a kind of respect and a sort of credibility, they don't want people who are going to come in and tarnish their art form by using cheap tricks. And I think that's, that's what's happened with Oz. He's certainly Icarus flying too close to the sun for sure.
Pablo Torre
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Oz Pearlman
Let me ask you a question. I say to you, pick any player in the NFL. 32 teams, 53 players, right? And you close your eyes, visualize his face. Can you see this player as if he's sitting in the bus with you right now?
Stevie Baskin
Yes.
Oz Pearlman
Okay, open your eyes. I think that you started with the player's position. Is that how you did it?
Stevie Baskin
Yes.
Pablo Torre
Knowing Will is probably skin color.
Oz Pearlman
I think his skin color. He laughed at that. Now you gave me a hint. That was good. I think he started with position. Then you went to team. Then you went to player. 32 teams. All right, I'm gonna give this a go. Think afc, think nfc.
Stevie Baskin
Okay.
Oz Pearlman
Look at that.
Stevie Baskin
I know. Oh, my God.
Pablo Torre
I got to say something. I'm so nervous right now.
Oz Pearlman
You know what? Best offense is a good defense. He went defense, right? Yo.
Stevie Baskin
No, I'm trying. I'm trying to say just st. You
Oz Pearlman
see what's on this table? Look down. Do you see everything on this table? Look down. Cards. We got drinks. We got everything. When I say the number four, what does that make you think of?
Stevie Baskin
Do I say it out loud?
Oz Pearlman
Yeah. Does four make you think of something? When I said the table right here, do you see it?
Stevie Baskin
Corner.
Oz Pearlman
You're thinking of a cornerback, aren't you?
Stevie Baskin
Do I answer?
Oz Pearlman
Yeah. No, it wasn't.
Pablo Torre
Cornerback.
Oz Pearlman
Corner. Cornerback. Did this person switch teams in the last year?
Stevie Baskin
I don't think so.
Oz Pearlman
Okay, I got. I gotta preface this because I think we have confusion here. Are you thinking the same person? You've got one person throughout. You just pick a new person.
Stevie Baskin
I'm thinking of the cat.
Oz Pearlman
You.
Pablo Torre
You get me on across.
Oz Pearlman
Over. I had. You think it's him? Him? He's not a cornerback. Not a corner. Played for the jets last year. Yes, Just switch. Did you not know that? Just switch to the Buccaneers. Bryce hall, isn't it?
Stevie Baskin
Breeze Hall. Yeah.
Oz Pearlman
Is that not right?
Stevie Baskin
He's on the jets still.
Oz Pearlman
He's on the jets still. I think he just traded in last day of the bucks or.
Pablo Torre
Look him up. The thing, of course, that sticks out when you watch this clip is that there is a bit of leakage from Will Compton. Could you explain what is being signaled here? That if you're not going through this with a magnifying glass, you might have missed.
Stevie Baskin
So what's. What's happened? To give you the full peek behind the curtain is that he's interacted with Will before the show.
Oz Pearlman
Okay, I gotta, I gotta preface this because I think we have confusion here. Are you thinking the same person? You've got one person throughout. You just pick a new person.
Stevie Baskin
I'm thinking of the cat.
Pablo Torre
You.
Amy Archer
You.
Oz Pearlman
Yeah, over the. I had. You think it's him. Him. He's not a cornerback, not a corner corner.
Stevie Baskin
He's using that pre show dual reality meta deception. And he has gotten Will to enter into a Google search the name of the player that he's thinking of. And he disguises rather than just saying, hey, I want you to pull up Google and type something in. He gives him the excuse of, hey, can you look up a stat about this guy? I want you to like, maybe look up some sort of stat about him. And then he Googles that stat. He thinks he's looking up a stat. But in actuality, Oze has a few different methods that we can talk about of getting him to use a fake Google page, something that looks like Google. It will send you to a genuine Google results page. But in that process, the information that you enter is going to be sent to Oz's phone. The beautiful irony that unfolds here is that the name that Will puts into this Google search, he misspells it. Oz guesses Bryce hall, because that's the name that Will has typed into the Google search. The problem is, is that Will was actually thinking of Breeze Hall. So exactly what happens is this. Oze loads up Will's phone, leads him to this sort of fake Google page, tells him to look up the stat, he types in Bryce hall by mistake, autocorrect coming in for the win. It then sends into a genuine Google results page for Bryce hall. And he says, oh, damn, I've got to actually search Breeze Hall. And backspaces his answer, puts in Breeze hall, does it again. However, the way that the app works is once you sent in that first kind of search query, it breaks free, right? That's the information that is harvested. And then it just sends you to a genuine Google result. And then the beauty of course, is that mentalism in terms of body language analysis and nonverbal cues, that's not real at all. And so Oze, of course then has to, you know, he starts with the answer, as we know, and he works backwards.
Oz Pearlman
Played for the jets last year.
Stevie Baskin
Yes, just switch.
Oz Pearlman
Did you not know that? Just switch to the Buccaneers.
Stevie Baskin
He's starting with Bryce hall because that's what Will typed into the fake Google search. He has no access at all to Bribies Hall. Bryce hall is actually a player, which leads now O's into a false sense of security that when he's guiding Will through this process, that he's doing something that's actually material. He's like, wait, am I, Am I on track here? Yeah. Okay, wait, is it like, was it the. What was the, the team. The Jets. The New York Jets. He played for the Jets. You know, what's going on here? O's is legitimately confused, but thank gracious to him, right? He says, Bryce hall, and they say, oh, yeah, that Breece Hall. I mean, my mind's blown.
Oz Pearlman
Even though he got the. He was.
Stevie Baskin
Were you being serious?
Oz Pearlman
You thought I was thinking of cornerback?
Stevie Baskin
I thought.
Oz Pearlman
Were you thinking another cornerback?
Stevie Baskin
I wasn't thinking corner. I was always thinking running back. But the fact that you landed on Bryce all Breeze hall, and I mistyped
Oz Pearlman
and put Bryce hall first in my
Stevie Baskin
search bar and then landed on Breeze
Oz Pearlman
hall and I told jp I was
Stevie Baskin
like, I switched my player. I don't think he's going to get it right.
Oz Pearlman
That is wild.
Pablo Torre
And they're gracious because they, they, they don't know what's happening yet. They're still like, piecing together like, wait a minute, how, how is this our fault? How did we fuck this up? Because clearly, you know, he knows what he's doing.
Stevie Baskin
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's. I mean, the power of the deception there is that Will is not thinking at all because he's totally bought into mentalism. So they're very gracious and they do say, oh, wow, okay. Yeah, you're only a couple of letters off. Yeah. Bruce hall, that's the one that you were, you were looking of. But then Will says it, right? He says, oh, and Bryce Hall. The fact that you even got Bryce hall, that was the name that I misspelled into the Google search. And in that moment, suddenly Oz knows exactly what's happened and I switched.
Oz Pearlman
Who was before? Don't know that one.
Stevie Baskin
Who was it before?
Oz Pearlman
Sweating in here.
Pablo Torre
The thing that you see when you go through the catalog is you have with like this fine tooth comb and you go through all of the instances, especially in sports, where guys on some level are just like, they're loose, right? The hosts are loose. And there is no more comfortable host in sports media ever, I would say, in the history of the medium than Charles Barkley. And so the setup here of just like, it's March Madness again. It's a pregame show. It's owes the mentalist. Ernie Johnson is swearing on his journalistic
Oz Pearlman
integrity, EJ on your journalistic integrity, you as a person, everything. Have you been in possession of this the entire time? Could anybody have gotten in, out, tampered, switched, or anything? Or have you had that? I hope Absolutely not.
Stevie Baskin
O's. Absolutely not.
Oz Pearlman
1,000.
Pablo Torre
And there's this envelope. Now there's this new prop that we haven't gone over yet. This envelope. And he asks Charles Barkley to do a familiar task, which is, please pick a player.
Oz Pearlman
Charles, if I had you pick a player. Okay, 64 teams started this, and I had you pick one right when I snapped my fingers. Now, be honest, because everyone says scripted stage on your life, you do not know which player you're about to say at this very moment, do you? I do not. Okay, but you gave me two.
Pablo Torre
Hold on, hold on.
Oz Pearlman
Yeah. Go back and forth.
Pablo Torre
Imagine you dribbling back, just Charles saying, you gave me two.
Stevie Baskin
I feel bad for O, man. I feel bad for O because he had this beautiful little word play of, you know, you're dribbling back and forth, back and forth. That's what he wanted to go into. You can see that that was designed to trigger in Charles mind, oh, this is the. The back and forth between those two players that we have landed on before the show that he has asked me to not choose one of these two players until we go on the show. Now, what's happening is when Charles says, you gave me two, that is not the case, that he thinks that Oze knows who those two are. Okay. What it means is that they've done something before the show where Oze has made it look like he's been given a random two players. So I have a deck of cards here on my desk. So an example of what that might look like. Could you say stop at a particular moment? Just any. Any, mom. Well, just say stop. Okay. And so if you were to look at that card here on the bottom. Yeah. Do you notice anything suspicious about what I just did?
Pablo Torre
I believe that where I hit stop, that wasn't where I stopped. That was like the bottom of the deck.
Stevie Baskin
Yeah. Okay. All right, good. It was. It was the bottom of the deck. Okay, cool. So let's. Let's do it a little bit more fairly then. Let's instead go this way. And I want you to say stop, and I want to make sure that I stop exactly where I've. Where you've said stop. Okay. All right. Have you got that card?
Pablo Torre
Yes.
Stevie Baskin
What do you notice about that card?
Pablo Torre
It is the same card that you showed me before. That was at the bottom of the deck.
Stevie Baskin
The point of that is that there are. There are ways for magicians to do things that look random, that look like they're a kind of free choice, that if you're not familiar, they're absolutely controlling what you're doing. Now, what he would have done with Charles, just to clear this out for everyone at instead of having a deck of cards with, you know, normal playing cards written on them, he has a deck of cards with NBA players on them. And then he says, okay, Charles, what we're going to do is we're going to. We're going to do a random sort of selection ahead of time. And if I was to say to you, Pablo, we're going to do this again, let's just say that if you land on the queen of clubs, that that is going to be LeBron James, okay? And so on. And so every, every card in the deck represents a particular player. And in order, because I'm a mentalist, I don't want you to choose someone because then I can, you know, I can look you up, I can. I can read your nonverbal cues, and I can figure that out. In order to make it more difficult for me, I'm going to make sure that you have a random choice. Okay? So here again, Pablo, I just want you to say, stop, Stop. Okay. And this time I'm not going to show you the card on the bottom. I'm going to show you the card where you stopped at. Okay, so have you got that card right there? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Right. And was that the queen of clubs that we said represented LeBron James?
Pablo Torre
It, in fact was. All right.
Stevie Baskin
Okay, great. So again, a sleight of hand move utilized here. Oz just has to do something like that with Charles before the show where he does that twice. Okay, so he does that, that trick twice, gives them two options, and rather than reveal it to them right then and there on the show and say, oh, was it the queen of clubs or Was it the seven? Or was it LeBron James or whoever? He just gives you those two tricks that we did and says, okay, Pablo, I just want you to remember those two. And then when we go on the show, I'm actually going to get you to choose one of those two. But I don't want you to choose now. I actually want. I want to be like a completely sort of free choice. And now, in your mind, if you are not alert to the fact that I've just used sleight of hand on you, what's your perception Your perception is that you've got two randomly chosen players in your mind and that you're now carrying those onto the show, which Oz does to manipulate the viewer. Because now what does this allow him to say? This allows him to drop another bomb, which is that right now, in this moment, you do not know who you are going to choose. And that is just the absolute genius way of disguising the fact it deletes the idea of a pre show.
Pablo Torre
Right?
Stevie Baskin
It completely deletes it. Because if you don't know who you're going to choose right then in that moment, well then there's no pre show thing, there's nothing planned. This is a genuine free choice that you're making in the moment. And so you can see the dual reality there. So he would have, he would have done two random choices with Charles that are not actually random, they're sleight of hand. So Oze knows who those two choices are, but Charles doesn't know that Oz knows who those two choices are.
Oz Pearlman
And when I snap my fingers right at this moment, you pick one of those players, you go back and forth.
Stevie Baskin
Wait, do I say it?
Oz Pearlman
Don't say it, just think it. Okay, watch me. You still don't know who you're gonna say, do you? No, don't say look at me. You just decided on one just this second. Is that right?
Stevie Baskin
Yes.
Oz Pearlman
64 teams, five starters down to this. Think of this player's jersey, his last name on the back. Look at me. Count the number of letters in his last name to yourself.
Stevie Baskin
Okay.
Oz Pearlman
It was quick, right? Yeah, I saw. You know what? Right now. So when people in the comments say no way, change your mind right now. Change your mind, other player. Change your mind right this second.
Stevie Baskin
Okay, Say it.
Oz Pearlman
Who did you just change to?
Stevie Baskin
Richardson, Michigan State.
Oz Pearlman
Yeah, in there. When you look, this was sealed two weeks ago. There's a photo. Can you look inside please? Is there a photo? Look inside before you do it. Grab. There's one photo. Take it out. Swear to God, you just change your mind, right? Live TV show. Michigan State would still be in the game.
Pablo Torre
One of the meta meta deceptions then seems to be that the revelation Charles has is real to Charles, but perhaps relatively limited if he has some suspicions around like, okay, but the very least there was his pre show thing. But because there's enough shock there, the audience is perceiving it as a biblical revelation. And so even there like the proportion of miracle is being confused. And so it is this incredible power to be like, look at the water being turned into Wine. Everyone agrees, including the person who was tasting it. It is in fact wine.
Stevie Baskin
Part of Oz's shtick is that he will get people to count the letters in someone's name. And that's really useful because he can lean to, oh, well, I'm observing your icercades. I know how many letters are in that name. Like, so he'll get them to count it silently in their mind. I just want you sit there silently and count the letters.
Oz Pearlman
Look at me. Count the number of letters in his last name to yourself.
Pablo Torre
Okay.
Oz Pearlman
It was quick, right? Yeah.
Stevie Baskin
And he'll say that I'm seeing how your pupils are going. And I'm so. Because I'm this Jason Bourne Sherlock Holmes character, I'm able to discern how many letters are in that name because of how your pupils, how your isocades kind of flicked across the empty space there. O's can now, now utilize something really interesting. If the two players that he has forced on Charles, let's say that one of them was Chris Paul and then
Pablo Torre
the other is Chase Richardson from Michigan State.
Stevie Baskin
If you, Pablo, right now were to choose either Chris Paul or Jace Richardson, and I say to you, all right, Pablo, count how many letters are in this guy's last name and let me know when you're done. Now he can actually do something where he can say that. Absolutely. He is relying on reading someone' body language of analyzing how long they take to give an answer. You know, and all the rest of it, however. Right. It's just to simply discern whether it's Chris Paul or James Richardson.
Pablo Torre
Right. And.
Stevie Baskin
But anyone can do that. That's not impressive. That's not going to take 30 years. We all understand Richardson's going to be a little bit of it, like.
Pablo Torre
But he's doing mentalism. But that's. But that's mentalism.
Stevie Baskin
And so that is actually what he uses with Charles.
Oz Pearlman
Change your mind right now. Change your mind, other player. Change your mind right this second.
Stevie Baskin
Okay. Say it.
Oz Pearlman
Who did you just change to?
Stevie Baskin
Richardson, Michigan State.
Oz Pearlman
Yeah. In there. When you look. This was sealed two weeks ago. There's a photo. Can you look inside, please? Is there a photo? Look inside before you do it. Grab. There was one photo. Take it out. Swear to God. You just changed your mind, right? Live TV lives.
Stevie Baskin
But it's funny because Oze even needs to clarify because Charles does count quite quickly. And he says, oh, it was short, wasn't it? It was a short name. He says, yes. And because Oze knows who those two players are, he immediately knows that Charles is thinking of the wrong player. So he's got to get Charles to switch to go into Jace Richardson, which he can now justify and he can say, you know what? Just so everyone at home thinks that this is, you know, staged or whatever right now. Change, change. Pick the, pick the other player, right? Change teen's minds, right? Go to. Go to the other one. And leads him to admiration, that that's going to line up with the envelope. What's really interesting about that strategy is that it allows him to then say that he is using body language, that he's using nonverbal analysis, that that is part of the trick, which is to
Pablo Torre
say that Oze knows what's in the envelope. And his thing is I need to get Charles to say the thing that is in the envelope. And I'm gonna do it by illustrating a seemingly random journey, a spontaneous journey that I'm actually again walking him through like it's a kid holding his parents hand. And the thing that you just mentioned is a thing that I've heard other magicians say, which is again this principle of like look, magic is all about tricking the audience. Yes, but one of the sort of like unwritten rules is the audience needs to be able to see some version of the trick that the people present for the tricker also see it.
Stevie Baskin
Now if you think about it, if you just think about the Charles Barkley trick, does some portion of the trick in order to get to the final reveal, does it require some kind of analysis of Charles Barkley in order to get to the final reveal? Yes, it does. It's not a completely self working trick. There's gotta be some point where there's some sort of interaction with Charles that he figures out has he chosen the player with the short name or has he chosen the player with the long name. He has to do that. That then allows him to say very honestly that yeah, body language analysis is absolutely some of what I do. The problem with that is like Pablo, there's body language analysis in what you do, right? You're analyzing my body language now. We all do. Looking at people's facial expressions, how they react to things, what kind of mood are they in? We're all mentalists in that respect. I think that from a legal standpoint, you know, O sells this book, right? Read your mind. I, I'm like, where is the person with the balls to just like flat out accuse this guy of fraud? Like if you know the law, which is that we examine what's going on from the perspective of a reasonable consumer If I was just selling a book that, you know, he has this little disclosure that, hey, buy my book. I'm not going to teach you how to guess people's, you know, crush or, you know, what playing car they're thinking of or any of that kind of stuff, but I'm going to teach you how to use mentalist skills in the real world. Do we not think that a reasonable person would look at this, would digest O's and say, all right, he's this guy who can appear to be psychic, and yet his real skill is this nonverbal analysis. He can do this body language analysis kind of stuff. And he's now going to sell a book where rather than telling me how to use body language analysis and nonverbal cues in order to guess random pieces of information about people, he's going to teach me how to use those skills to interact with people sort of in my everyday life. But I'm going to get some sort of peek behind the curtain as to what's actually going on in this Jason Bourne, Sherlock Holmes, kind of a, you know, 30 years reverse engineering the human mind. Like, it's. It's so obvious to me that he wants people to have that interpretation of what he's doing, that that is his goal. He wants you to believe that that is what he is doing so that you will then go and buy his book. And, like, to me, all the steps for fraud are there.
Pablo Torre
But I think for me, as like a journalist, the realm I see it through is less the law at this point, and it's more finance. Because what is the sort of unifying theory of a guy who has carried himself through this series of unwritten rules and violated them to the amusement of America, but to the dismay of the people who had helped construct and protect the delicacy of these codes? He was a guy who worked at Merrill lynch, and if Oz the mentalist is like, hey, I see what works. I see what makes the number go up. I see what makes the green arrow point up and to the right, and all these other people are inefficient and or too afraid to press the button over and over again, well, guess what I'm gonna do. And that's the story of finance as much as it is legal strategy.
Stevie Baskin
Yeah, that's a really acute observation, Pablo. Kudos to you, man. Yeah,
Pablo Torre
foreign.
Stevie Baskin
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas.
Pablo Torre
I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
Oz Pearlman
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
Pablo Torre
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
Oz Pearlman
That's right. Hey. Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
Pablo Torre
And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
Oz Pearlman
Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
Pablo Torre
Hey, hold up.
Stevie Baskin
This is your minute, your day to play, to make, to move, to move through, to explore. It's your body to rest, to nourish, to grow. It's your mind, you know, it's your place, your life to love, to dream, to change.
Pablo Torre
It's your world to understand. The New York Times.
Stevie Baskin
Find out more@nytimestimes.com your world.
Pablo Torre
This is where I should say that we did reach out for comment from O Pearlman directly and through his representatives, disclosing that we had Stevie Baskin as our guest on this episode of Pablo Torre finds out. And they did not respond respond. But there is one more clip from the Joe Rogan experience that I do think is worth playing towards the end here, in lieu perhaps of any such comment. Because at this point in their conversation, Joe and O's have been talking about religious cult leaders, and O says there's
Oz Pearlman
a fine line between if you looked at a path in my life, again, I don't see myself cult leader, but a con man is very similar in many regards to what I do. Because that's using these skills in what I would describe as like an unethical way. Right.
Stevie Baskin
But don't you think they're the same thing? A cult leader is a type of con man.
Oz Pearlman
Oh, I'm saying what I do is like a con man.
Stevie Baskin
Yeah, but you are a con man
Pablo Torre
for entertainment purposes, right?
Oz Pearlman
Exactly.
Stevie Baskin
It's different.
Pablo Torre
Like, and maybe that is the best defense that O has for all of this. Just in a nutshell, that there are no rules if the goal is entertainment and that the audience actually wants to be conned in order to be entertained. But the question Stevie Baskin and I are raising about the logic here of Oz's brand of mentalism is if you explicitly say that there are no secret superpowers and that you're just noticing things about how a person acts, wouldn't the audience find all of this con artistry a lot less impressive and a lot less entertaining if they knew you were breaking your only rule and being dishonest about what the con even is.
Stevie Baskin
I was thinking about the principle that Penn and Teller, fantastic magicians, by the way, who would describe themselves honest magicians, who have a show for us actually where funnily enough, on the show, one of the rules that they have for the show is that people can't use pre show work, people can't use camera edits. Everything needs to be happening on stage. It needs to be a fair fight.
Pablo Torre
Which brings us finally to another, more self interested reason why still other magicians and mentalists consider Oze such a problem for their industry. Because O's did not pioneer or invent the secret superpowers of backstage devices and pre show deception. But nobody uses them more visibly at this point or with a larger platform. And so the concern among some of Oz's competitors is that the sheer frequency with which he calls these plays, spamming viral clips of them all across the Internet, could damage the market for mentalism in general, turning the whole practice into a form of bad plastic surgery. In part because there are some audience members, members who may or may not have YouTube channels, who love noticing things too, insofar as we are people who are now invested at the extreme end of the spectrum of investment and whether people know the truth about this. I suppose the only check on such a business is whether people hear what we're saying and whether they can actually get to know and find out. Oh, wait a minute. This explains the thing that I thought was truly mystical in its inexplicability.
Stevie Baskin
In many ways it feels like you have to acknowledge that like a really great con artist has a skill set. Absolutely, they do. And there is this kind of lens that you can sit in and you can maybe watch how a con artist weaves these webs of deception around people. And it's masterful to watch, but it doesn't, it doesn't change the fact that there's still an ethical question that needs to be asked here.
Pablo Torre
Well, I think if nothing else, like I think of the truth fundamentally as something that also exists in a bit of an ecosystem. And if you're going to sort of weave together all the concepts here, around harm, around supply and demand, around how is this guy getting away with this and what can be done about it? I do think that someone who decides to exploit these strategies so often that it's made him the most popular and seemingly well compensated and most platformed mentalist that there's ever been on online. The very success of that demands a market response. It is daring someone to come along and say, wait a minute, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't be everywhere and yet undiscussed and unexamined. And that's the thing of like where I, I've always thought of like journalism and the law as like sort of kindred spirits in that regard. It's like, like, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You can get all the money, but it doesn't mean you can't be talked about. You can't be studied and investigated. That's also part of the game.
Stevie Baskin
I think that you've hit the nail on the head there. I would expand on that and say that this whole thing can be flipped into something positive. I think there is real utility in kind of having your heart broken. There is a kind of emotional utility in believing in Santa Claus and then discovering, oh damn, I was wrong. Well, at least there's an opportunity there. And the opportunity is to recognize the vulnerabilities in your own perception, in your own vulnerabilities in interpreting the world. And that to me is the pinnacle value of what magicians bring society is that magicians are capable of showing you, hey, how you perceive the world at first glance, at first blush, is not necessarily the most reliable perception and interpretation that you are capable of garnering from the evidence around you. There is such a thing as taking a second glance. There is such a thing as introspecting and thinking about things and wanting things, finding the isolated variables. There is a tremendous value in recognizing the weaknesses in our own psychology and O has undoubtedly done that. This is something that isn't isolated to magicians and mentalists. This is something that is being deployed by people, people all around you all the time.
Oz Pearlman
Right?
Stevie Baskin
It's a dog eat dog world out there in a certain lens of interpretation where people are more than happy to have you believe things that are completely untrue if it benefits them personally. So recognize those vulnerabilities. And that's where I think the O's Pullman story, that's maybe the saving grace. That's where this can become something really beautiful rather than something super pernicious.
Pablo Torre
Stevie Baskin, thank you for helping us end our own self deception. Thank you for helping us understand, I think the mentalist, the magician, the public performer, who in that lens might be the most perfect person for our era to come to grips with.
Stevie Baskin
Cheers, Pablo. Thanks for having me.
Pablo Torre
This has been. Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.
Stevie Baskin
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Episode: Cheap Trick: Debunking the "Magic" of Mentalist Oz Pearlman
Date: May 19, 2026
Host: Pablo Torre (The Athletic)
Key Guest: Stevie Baskin (Amateur magician, YouTube analyst, lawyer)
This episode of "Pablo Torre Finds Out" is a meticulous exploration and debunking of Oz Pearlman—the self-described "world’s greatest mentalist." Torre and guest Stevie Baskin (creator of a five-hour YouTube breakdown on Pearlman) seek to understand Pearlman’s techniques, examine why his magic tricks work so powerfully on sports and media figures, and argue that his brand of “mentalism” blurs ethical lines by misleading audiences about the nature and mechanics of his performances.
This episode powerfully illuminates the mechanisms, ethics, and implications behind Oz Pearlman’s mentalist feats. Through expert breakdowns and behind-the-scenes revelations, listeners are encouraged to reconsider what’s actually happening in their favorite “mind-reading” TV moments—and to recognize the vulnerabilities Pearlman exploits in both participants and audiences. It’s both a celebration of magic’s artistry and a warning against its unchecked commodification and ethical overreach.
For listeners seeking a richer appreciation of magic, skepticism, and the boundaries of entertainment, this episode delivers both enlightenment and a challenge: Can you spot the trick? And does knowing the trick change the magic?