Did He Read Mayim’s Mind… Or Did She Outsmart The World's #1 Mentalist?! How You Can Use Oz Pearlman’s Tricks to Better Trust Your Instincts

Is Your Mind Giving Away More Than You Realize? Mentalist Oz Pearlman Reveals All! What if you’re unintentionally broadcasting your deepest thoughts every time you meet someone? In this mind-blowing episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, world-renowned mentalist Oz Pearlman (world’s preeminent mentalist renowned for his captivating performances and extraordinary mind-reading abilities, author of READ YOUR MIND) pulls back the curtain on the psychology of first impressions, influence, intuition, and the true magic hidden inside us all. Oz answers questions like: Are you revealing more than you think when you meet someone new? Can you really trust your first instinct, or is it misleading you? How does a mentalist convince people to believe in the impossible? What secrets are you unknowingly signaling to others? He also breaks down: - How to objectively analyze the way you present yourself - "Magic” habits that can help you influence anyone - How reframing rejection can change your life - Why magic tricks are just “packaged emotions” - Truth behind “psychic cold reading” (Oz does it better than most psychics!) - Why Oz compares magic to jazz - How to spot a lie, and why trusting your gut still matters - Secret sales mindset that can transform every area of your life Plus: Oz shares the personal story of how he first started learning magic, and what it taught him about human behavior, resilience, and tapping into instinct. Whether you're fascinated by magic, human psychology, or just want to understand yourself and others on a deeper level, this conversation will blow your mind. Don’t just watch the trick—learn how it works. TUNE IN to MBB now to unlock your inner mentalist! https://lelo.to/SWITCHxMAYIM - Use Code MAYIM15 for an extra 15% off, STACKABLE with current discounts and for ALL products! Stop cooking with toxic cookware, and upgrade to Our Place today. Visit ⁠⁠fromourplace.com/BREAK⁠⁠ https://fromourplace.com/?utm_source=audio&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=BREAK and use code BREAK for 10% off sitewide. With a hundred-day risk-free trial, free shipping and returns, you can experience this game-changing cookware with zero risk. Oz Pearlman’s book, READ YOUR MIND: Proven Habits for Success from the World's Greatest Mentalist: ⁠https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/783252/read-your-mind-by-oz-pearlman/⁠ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/783252/read-your-mind-by-oz-pearlman/ Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mentalism, it's magic of the mind. Knowing how to read people, misdirect people, deceive people, influence people. The same skills are life hacks, superpowers, that will allow you to achieve your own goals and success. I want to teach you the skill of how I made Snoop Dogg stop. And listen to me. How can you create a memorable experience for somebody or a memorable moment that they continue to talk about?

• 0:24Mayim Bialik?

  Oz the Mentalist Pearlman is the world's preeminent mentalist, renowned for captivating performances and extraordinary mind-reading abilities. He's going to explain how to build confidence, sharpen your memory, connect more authentically with others, eliminate fears with very, very easy-to-master strategies that he says can be learned in minutes.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Understand, everyone is in sales. If you're a teacher at a middle school, you're selling your students on listening to you, on turning in their homework. How do you make it so that they care about you and what you want from them? You need to start thinking like someone else thinks.

• 1:01Mayim Bialik?

  You are willing to share certain aspects of what you do. What is this secret that you possess?

• 1:09Speaker 00

  The trick is what I call the packaging. You can connect with somebody on a level that instantly gives you a higher chance. And a lot of that has to do with very important skills that have nothing to do with magic or mentalism that you can improve.

• 1:23Mayim Bialik?

  I don't trust you.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  I am just tricking you. That is literally what I do for a living. Anyone who tells you they know how anybody lies is a liar. But you can see the pattern of lies. What we give focus to is what others give focus to. The most interesting person you usually meet in a room is also the most interested person. It's all of the habits that I've learned over 30 years of doing this that work for you. So the cheat code is that...

• 1:56Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Mindy Alex.

• 1:57Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 1:58Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to our Breakdown. How much are you revealing about what is going on in your inner world when you meet people?

• 2:08Jonathan Cohen?

  And how much should you be focused and trusting your first instinct?

• 2:13Mayim Bialik?

  Today, we're going to be talking with someone who literally navigates these things on the daily in incredible, incredible settings with results that are astounding and what many could be convinced to believe is magic, psychic ability, psi phenomenon. According to Oz Pearlman, it's just learning signals, listening to intuition, and being open to the possibility of the magic that already exists within all of us. Oz the Mentalist Pearlman is the world's preeminent mentalist, renowned for captivating

• 2:56Mayim Bialik?

  performances and extraordinary mind-reading abilities. He actually rose to national prominence. He was working for a corporation, not as a mentalist, and he was on America's Got Talent. He went on to earn an Emmy Award for his acclaimed special, Oz Knows. And I mean, if you've seen any of his clips with the Seattle Seahawks, with Snoop Dogg, he works with sports teams and corporations. He is absolutely magical. But he's going to be talking to us today about Read Your Mind: Transformative Success Habits from the World's Greatest Mentalist. His book is out today. And he's going to explain how to build confidence, sharpen your memory, connect more authentically

• 3:39Mayim Bialik?

  with others, eliminate fears with very, very easy-to-master strategies that he says can be learned in minutes.

• 3:47Jonathan Cohen?

  If you haven't already done so, come check out Mindy Alex Breakdown on Substack. Get exclusive content not released anywhere else and join the growing community.

• 3:55Mayim Bialik?

  Let's welcome to the Breakdown Oz the Mentalist Pearlman.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  Jonathan Mind, thanks for having me.

• 4:03Mayim Bialik?

  Want to talk about your book, which is actually out today. Read Your Mind: Transformative Success Habits from the World's Greatest Mentalist. So you are a mentalist, but you are willing to share certain aspects of what you do because you believe that it holds the potential to help us achieve a higher level of success, you know, present-ness. What is this sort of secret that you possess that in theory I can learn to harness?

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I mean, I would go further than saying I believe, but I know because I am, the proof is in the pudding. So again, very important to distinguish and tell people what it is that I do because if I'm watching this and maybe I've seen some of my viral clips, I'm like, are you going to teach me to read minds? And spoiler alert, I can't read minds. I am not psychic. I am not supernatural. I do not claim to possess some sort of powers that you yourself couldn't learn or attain if you were willing to dedicate potentially decades of your life. This is not like an innate skill, like a psychic says they have, that I was born with. This is something I've developed. But I would reference the fact that you could probably learn to do what I'm doing, but will you be as good at it as me?

• 5:19Speaker 00

  That is more of one of those God-given talents where I always, I always mention music. I have a friend who is an amazing violinist. If you locked me in a room for the next two decades, I would never play Carnegie Hall. I don't have it. My five-foot shrimpy frame is never going to the NBA. Like, there's certain things that limit where I can get to. And so with mentalism, it's a form of magic known as magic of the mind. It's relies on a lot of the same infrastructure and skills of knowing how to read people, how to misdirect people, deceive people, influence people. And that's what I do for a living as an entertainer. But what I'm going to teach and what the book is all about is not how to be an entertainer. It's not how to do mentalism tricks because that's a very small subset of people that that would be useful.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  It's all of the habits and kind of ingrained things that I've learned over 30 years of doing this that work for you. The same skills I use not to guess things, but to read people, influence them are life hacks, superpowers that will allow you to achieve your own goals and success.

• 6:22Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, so I want you to explain to us some of the most kind of clear messages that people give that we don't realize we're giving. So, my hair is a mess, and I'm assuming anyone looking at me would be like, "That lady either doesn't care, doesn't know, or did an oil treatment last night before bed that she's letting moisturize her hair." But I want you to tell us some of the things that when you or anyone meets someone, what are the first things that you are reading that I'm not, or that other people might not know about?

• 6:59Speaker 00

  Here's the funny part about that, and this is one of those exercises that you have to try for yourself, which is, all of us are the star of our own movie. What does that mean? That means that every other person in your life is the star of their movie, but to them, we're just the supporting cast. It's important to note that because when you meet someone, they're judging you, maybe similar, maybe slightly different, but they're judging you just the way you judge them. And I have a chapter, it's called "Channel Your Inner Mentalist," where you need to do an absolutely objective analysis of how do you present yourself.

• 7:34Mayim Bialik?

  I'm just thinking about all the things that people are thinking about me when they meet me.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  You're thinking of things, but a lot of the time, people are only thinking of themselves. So, when I meet people, and there's a professional and a personal component to this, which is, what is success, right? In this book, I'm delving into how do you improve your relationships, whether that's how your, if success means you want to meet somebody and have kids, maybe it means you want to close more deals, be the best salesperson in your organization, all different places where you set a goal and you hope to achieve it. Big picture stuff. So, when you meet someone, what do you think about them? So much of that occurs in a split second. And I can tell you things that I learned and where I learned them, which is, I started doing magic and sleight of hand when I was a teenager, when I was 13 years old, had my bar mitzvah, we didn't have one of those big parties, we saved up a bunch of money, I didn't really come from means, we went

• 8:23Speaker 00

  on a cruise, which I've never been on, a cruise is my family, and I saw a magician on the cruise ship. This guy brought me on stage, I'm pretty sure my dad bribed this guy. In hindsight, I think he greased the wheels. I go on stage, I'm fricking blown away. Like, I can't explain it any other way as if somebody just turned a switch in my brain to obsessive. And when I got home, I literally would not stop reading magic books. Even on the cruise ship, I followed that guy around. And there's a part in my book where I describe how hard it is for a grown man to hide on a cruise ship if you have a very committed teenager trying to find you. And so this guy, this poor guy, like, he had no privacy. Anytime I'd see him, I'd find him. I think he went out to the crew cabins to get away from me because I wanted him to show me more tricks. I was so

• 9:08Speaker 00

  annoying as a teenager. It's hard to process. Hopefully, I've grown. Ask my wife. But I started learning magic tricks over and over. And at a certain point, I checked out all the books from the library. I had bought all the books at Barnes and Nobles and Borders. Throwback, it's bankrupt. And I had to buy tricks at the store, and they're very expensive. That's how they make it so not everyone gets tricks because they're pricey. So my mom, you know, a strong Jewish mother is like, I'm not buying you any more tricks. Like, you gotta go work, you know, with an Israeli accent, like, it was very distinctly like, go work. So I went into a restaurant. Where I got the confidence for this is another chapter. And I managed to talk my way

• 9:50Speaker 00

  into working at a restaurant as a strolling magician at age 14. And I would say that that was a masterclass in human psychology and interaction. Because that is a way to walk up to people who do not want to meet you, and might not want anything you're selling.

• 10:06Mayim Bialik?

  It's called dating.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  And they will reject you brutally to your face. You know, there's no, like, you got a babysitter, you did your hair right, mine. You go to a restaurant. Do you want this twerp coming up to you that you don't know what they do? Do they want my money? Are they any good? Like, all of the things that you would ask yourself in your head when you saw me within one second. I learned that for me to get through your initial resistance, I had to answer all the questions in your mind as quickly as possible. And I had to flip the power dynamic. When somebody calls you and they want to sell you something, I want to sell you life insurance. You have all the power in that equation.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Because you can say, no, thank you. I've already got some or no, thank you. I don't want any or I'm healthy. I don't need you. All of these things that you could say, no, no, no versus if that person that's selling you life insurance, you would like to get your kid into a tennis club and they're the president of that tennis club. Now it's very different. Now you need something from them. So in a power dynamic, when I walk up to a table, when I approach them, I want them to want me. But what I want to do is within as few seconds as possible, make it so that they now want me more than I want them. In life, no matter how you play it, and I don't mean to make it manipulative, there's power dynamics. If you have children, I want you to do your homework right now. There's a power dynamic

• 11:26Speaker 00

  as to who's going to do what that somebody wants. It's how to influence people effectively. And so when I walked up to a table, I started realizing that what are they thinking? What are they thinking? And this is where you analyze when you meet people. For me, I realized they don't know if I work here. They don't know who I am. They don't know if I've been granted access. They don't know, oh my God, he's about to do something. Is he any good? What does he do? Oh God, do I need money to tip this kid? All of these things happen in your mind in two seconds. And so I need to address every one of those questions very effectively. And will he stay? Is he going to leave? How long is he staying? Oh my God. So I learned that if I walk up to you straight, eye to eye, it makes you

• 12:09Speaker 00

  very tense. It's kind of hardwired DNA.

• 12:13Mayim Bialik?

  I'm already tense with you looking at me now through a screen.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  But if I walk up to you like this with an one eye, as if I'm one foot in the door, one foot out the door, it feels like I'm leaving shortly. It feels like I'm just stopping by.

• 12:26Mayim Bialik?

  That's Jonathan for our entire relationship.

• 12:29Jonathan Cohen?

  Six years, one foot in, one foot out.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Jonathan is still not sure. Are you seeing this? He's turning eye to eye. Jonathan's like, I don't, I'm loving this. Oh, I'm using this from now on. So when I walk up to the people, aside from looking sideways, I realized that if I create a time constraint and also don't ask yes or no questions, a huge mistake we do a lot of the time is we allow other people to dictate where the conversation goes. If you walk up to somebody and say, hey, want to see some magic? No. What's your rebuttal? Oh, well, I'm really good. My mom says I'm good. Like, you're done. So instead, create a positive experience and a question that you can't answer with a no, which is, oh, my God, did you guys hear what's going on? It's your lucky night. Well, no, nobody says no to that. They said, I want, what do you mean it's my lucky night?

• 13:18Speaker 00

  And so I've intrigued you. I've created something that's only positive. I've walked up with one foot and I go, I only have a minute, but the owner brought me in as a special treat for you tonight. And I've got something incredible to show you. Notice there's been no questions. I've established the owner brought me in as a treat. The owner of the restaurant knows I'm here, brought me in as a treat. I don't need to spend money. I'm only staying one minute. So all of this has happened in under 10 seconds. And the interaction, and again, I've iterated. I learned this over years, made it so that really quickly, all your tension dissipates. And you're like, what is this guy about to do? Now, that just gets the foot in the door. Now I need to kill it and do something amazing and capture you. But know how you present yourself.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  And so in interactions, new interactions are different than people you've known for years. Right? The familiarity, what you're going to do. But ask yourself, what is that person thinking? When you're coming up to them? Have they just introduced themselves to 10 other people? Are they stressed? Are they, the more you can analyze what's going on in their head, kind of like a mentalist does, but not to guess things, but to glean knowledge that you can use in that conversation, the better.

• 14:30Mayim Bialik?

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• 15:15Mayim Bialik?

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• 16:02Mayim Bialik?

  I don't know why the first thing I go to when I think of someone acquiring these skills is, and I don't, I don't know. I know from the year that you were born, that you were born in the middle of a war. Yeah. And I instantly wonder, you know, so many of us are born into a necessary hypersensitivity to what people are feeling, what they're projecting. You know, I'm the master of getting into someone's head to assume what I think they're feeling about me so that I can change my behavior and make everybody feel better, which is essentially all in my head, right? But I'm curious, if you, if you don't, you know, use these skills for the incredible

• 16:46Mayim Bialik?

  things that you use them for, what do you think this set of kind of sensitivities and kind of tuning in allows us to do really on the spectrum of the human experience?

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Well, I think that a couple of the things that again are secret sauces to my success. And I'm describing success because again, it's, it's creating a goal and accomplishing it. And for me, the goal has been within the spectrum of entertaining and being a mentalist is just being able to spread the word and be performing bigger and bigger places that you wouldn't expect me to, which is creating that kind of critical mass of captivating. You've never seen, I'll just give you an example, no other mentalist or magician has ever been on CNBC. And it's not that I'm flaunting or bragging, it doesn't inherently make sense to go on CNBC, which is a financial network, to do what I do. It makes no sense. Why would you bring me on when you have Jerome Powell on?

• 17:42Speaker 00

  It's because I adapt to the people that are watching. So instead of me making it about me and doing a magic trick, here's cards, here's this, that's about me. I will go on there and present what is my skill, which is the ability to pseudo read minds. And I make it all about the viewer. I do things that are about interest rates, stocks, bonds, high frequency trading, all these things that are fascinating to the viewer at home. And that exact recipe for success, which is making it about someone else. If you can do that in your life with benefits oriented language, with a lot more of asking people questions that will make them jump out of autopilot. How many times have you been at a dinner or at an event with somebody new?

• 18:26Speaker 00

  And they ask you the exact same predictable questions everyone else has. And it's not their fault. It's like Family Feud. The number one question is always the number one question for a reason. Oh my God, how'd you get into this? Oh my God, is your parent into this? Like the same questions, but if they ask you something you've never thought of before, boom, it jerks you out of autopilot. And suddenly you open up to them in a new way. Suddenly the person who does that becomes more interesting to you. So the cheat code is that if you ever really notice when you leave an event or a party and you go, did you meet that person? Oh my God, they were so interesting. The most interesting person you usually meet in a room is also the most interested person.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  They're the ones who not only talk about themselves, but they find a way to turn the mirror around and get you to open up about yourself. And that's where you create like an intimacy, a rapport, something that feels deeper than the surface conversation you have with most people who are inherently forgettable. I don't say that in a mean way.

• 19:26Mayim Bialik?

  For our podcast, we're going to get people to talk in ways that they don't normally talk about things that they wouldn't normally talk about because apparently I make people want to admit secrets, but I have a different set of skills.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  I stole the breakdown script is all I just did. I just stole the breakdown script. I'm going to be hearing from your lawyers. I think I have a strong case.

• 19:48Jonathan Cohen?

  How do you apply the restaurant approach to other situations? You know, obviously it's specific to each one, but if you're in a sales environment, for example, or in relationships, like even friendships, how do you apply that to make people bring their guard down instantly, you know, set that time parameter, you know, where they're not going to wait too long and talk your ear off. And also then, you know, you have to wow them in some way. So it's easier to think about it in terms of magic, right? But how do you do it in other situations? Can you give us some examples?

• 20:23Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So I'll give you a few examples in personal relationships, things that I've been guilty of, and I bet so many that you have and so many of your listeners is I will take things very personally that I think have nothing to do with me. So in essence, somebody I'm talking to, they haven't returned my call. Or if it's more on a business sense, I want to, let's say, I want to get on a podcast. I give you a great example recently of someone that I knew and I really wanted to get on the show and I'm promoting the book and they didn't get back to me for two weeks and I feel very offended. I'm like, what did I do? What happened? And I start getting in my own head about the fact of what did I not do enough? And then I convert that to anger and they're such a jerk and they ghosted me and all these things where if you can really take a high level view, most likely it has nothing to do with you. Most likely you can create a

• 21:08Speaker 00

  better environment in a certain way, just by the way you frame it. So my example is this, in most instances I found when I'm mad at other people, they just have a lot going on. And if you give the benefit of the doubt in a certain way, and instead of when I do a follow up, this caustic like, hey, I haven't heard back from you, I assume just in a communication say, I bet you've had a lot going on, love to check back in. You know what? I promise to follow up with you again in a week if I don't. Your back. So again, it sounds like it's passive or that it's weak labeled language. But what you've done is you've created, I've given you somewhat of an excuse. I've made it so it's not a personal affront. And in many instances, when you give people that grace, they go, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I totally know that that happened.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  And I've seen things that spiral, especially with personal relationships, where you get so mad at somebody about something that they didn't even know you were mad about. And those expectations are the killer because you haven't clearly laid them out. And that's where like the intermentalist is, is you need to start thinking like someone else thinks, because that's very challenging to do since we're all stuck in our own bodies and minds. And that's what I literally do for a living is think like other people. So that's one great example in business, huge one in business is in sales, you need to know what is the pain point for the person you're selling to. And understand everyone is in sales. I don't care like you're thinking you just have to be a salesperson. If you're a teacher right now at a middle school,

• 22:35Speaker 00

  you're selling your students on listening to you, on turning in their homework. You're selling, everybody is selling. It's the attention economy. How do you make it so that they care about you and what you want from them? And thinking about it, there's great ways to do it. In my show, I like to be vulnerable in a way where right from the start, people didn't expect me to go, I don't read minds. Like, you know, first person to say I'm full of crap is me. I am not telling you I'm psychic or supernatural. And people are shocked because they think that's what I'm about to say. Let's say you're a middle school teacher. You walk in the room, they are sizing you up. Teenagers are brutal. Like my second grader, I had to do a kids magic show for them, eviscerated me. I left like ashen faced.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  Well, we can go into that story, but like I rethought my career choice at that point. So you walk in and you're trying to get a raise from your boss. You have been setting up the story for a while of what have you achieved? What are my numbers? All these different things that are a measure of why you deserve this. But you might approach at the absolute wrong time and not get what you deserve, simply because you weren't thinking like they are, which is a great example. How many people sit on something? When it's important to you, you feel it should be important to them. I've been thinking about this all weekend. Monday morning, I'm going to go in there and we're going to talk about this. What if Monday morning is the worst time? What if they're in a bad mood? What if they just got in, they're stressed, they've had all, they have 150 emails to deal with. Worst time ever.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  Instead, start analyzing. When are they at their most relaxed? Is Thursday happy hour a good chill time? You can come up to them, you can break the ice, have that moment where we're not seeing each other. As I work with you, but more like we're equals, we're just having fun. By the way, man, I just want to tell you about something. You can connect with somebody on a level that instantly gives you a higher chance. The words you use, making it about them, not about you.

• 24:27Mayim Bialik?

  Kind of drawn to how much this applies to relationships in particular. You know, I can't tell you how many times Jonathan has an amazing idea, but delivered, you know, at like 9:15 PM.

• 24:41Jonathan Cohen?

  When I'm at my most creative.

• 24:42Mayim Bialik?

  He's at his most creative. But, you know, so much of it, then we get into this sort of like battle of wills. And, you know, I think that's where some of these, I don't want to say hypersensitivity, but your keen, you know, awareness and attunement that you've kind of cultivated. There's a set of skills that we also can use to even in small ways, try and refine some of these interactions that we have with other humans, no matter how we're interacting with them.

• 25:08Jonathan Cohen?

  You know, the psychological term for what you're talking about is charitable interpretation.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:12Jonathan Cohen?

  Don't make it negative about them. Don't assume the worst, assume the best. Even if you can't imagine it in your mind, try and push yourself to say, there may be another explanation for what's going on here, instead of an initial negative association that I might have or, or version of it. So that is extremely applicable.

• 25:31Speaker 00

  Most of us, we don't want to do that. It's really important, like inherently your rubber band state, you know, of not stretched, is to be like that fricking jerk. Like I'm just like you, there's not, I'm not some sort of saint who thinks like, oh, cut them some slack. I did it as a selfish response in my teenage years, because when I'd walk up to a table and they'd be rude to me, that hurts. Like that, that hurts to deal with somebody rejecting you. So I started in my head, learning and saying to myself, you know what? Maybe their kid's sick. Maybe they just had a fight before I walked up to the table. And it actually took the heat off of me because if I dislike them immensely, then I go to the next table with that angst and energy of being like in a bad mood, which then makes it bad for the next table.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  So selfishly, I would say to myself, these excuses for them, for their behavior. So I would never take it personally. And if you can cheat, cheat. It's like one of those things where cheating is good. If you can rewire and trick your brain, I am just tricking you. That is literally what I do for a living. I, like I said, not psychic. It's a skill where I know how people think, which inherently tells me what people think. And I lead you on a narrative, many of, many of the times where you think you know how I'm doing it, but I'm actually sending you down the wrong road. I have multiple methods for everything I do. So that when you think you figure me out a little bit, I switch lanes. And then you go, how the hell did you do that? That's on purpose. That's by design.

• 26:57Mayim Bialik?

  I don't trust you. I don't want to trust you.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  But she doesn't trust anyone.

• 27:02Mayim Bialik?

  I don't trust anyone. No, but I especially don't trust this guy. So here's, here's the thing that I think of. How did you snag a partner in life? Because I would just assume that you are, you know, are using your powers for evil and not good in the dating world. Right? You could be like, I know exactly what this person wants and I'm going to be that. And I mean, and also like, I'm saying this as a fellow entertainer. Like I can put on a lot of things. I can be what you want, right? But with this set of skills, and I'm not saying that's the reason to get your book. There's many reasons to get your book and it's awesome.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  How to snag a partner against their will. We, we tested that title and it didn't go well.

• 27:43Mayim Bialik?

  You can be the most intolerable person, but if you can read the other person and know what they want, you too.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  You can snag the partner of your dreams. So what is that like? What is it like on an interpersonal level? Can you turn this off? Yes. Or is it like, once it's on, game on? And you're like this all the time? And every morning, you're like, pick a card. Oh, for better or worse, I can't turn it off. But when I'm performing, it's really important to note, the performance is very different than day to day life. Because most people, and this is the skill, the biggest compliment I get, if you go on social media, is that people think it's staged, that it's scripted. That is the highest compliment I can achieve. If I could script these things in a room with football players who have $300 million contracts, that would be in and of itself, the most amazing thing.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  To get them to act on camera, when athletes are the worst actors in the world, no offense to them, it would be spectacular. What I do is all about a very specific skillset that delivers huge reactions, an amazing moment, and it's magic of the mind. It's magic with no props, where I don't have to know that you're gonna pick a card and, you know, fool you with my sleight of hand. I know how you think. Okay, I believe you. You generalize those skills and assume that I can use them everywhere in life. If I can do what I do, why do I not just go to a casino right now, make millions of dollars playing poker until I get kicked out? Right, like, what, what, let's stop BSing. Why don't I do that? What's the, what's the jig?

• 29:19Speaker 00

  If I could, I would have. The problem is, is that in my life, when you see me perform, I'm the director of the movie. The camera points where I want it to point. I frame the shot, which means it feels, and this is the skill, that I could just do this anywhere, in any place, in any situation. But it's not, because there's a procedure with it. Inherently, I'm not psychic, I'm not pretending to be. So I have to guide you along in a certain way to do the things I want you to think of this, look this way, do that, that in the real world, when it's not within the context of entertainment, people go, I'm not doing that.

• 29:54Mayim Bialik?

  Very humble because if I were to put you, forget that you're an entertainer. You acquired a set of skills, which also we, we to some extent, right? Can try and learn from you. But if you, if you go up to someone and you want to ask them on a date, you're gonna know quicker than I am if someone's interested. Because you're kind of tuned in on this level, right?

• 30:18Jonathan Cohen?

  What I hear from you is that like, oh, in an entertainment setting, there's a process and people are coming into the room and you're controlling the environment in a way that isn't the same as just the natural world. What I hear my him saying is yes, and if we let you loose in the natural world, you're able to pick up on the subtleties of human expression that other people are not. I'm curious how much you're willing to talk about the details of how you track people to get the information that you get. Like you're reading people, not psychically, but you're analyzing micro-movements, physical tells that everyone has.

• 31:02Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'll give a couple of examples that are, you know, just on your Instagram page. You ask Snoop Dogg to think of the name, someone's name. And then you ask him to think about the syllables in their names. So it's not that you're tracking their thoughts, but there's a micro-movement that's happening that's related to his thinking. Can you talk about what you're tracking as you are able to basically see the physical expression of the, what's happening in his head? When you ask him, and yes, you're directing in that moment, but in that moment, you're also tracking cues that he is giving you. So let's talk about some of these cues that you're able to read. We'll use Snoop Dogg as one, because it also goes to what you were just saying about how you know how people think.

• 31:47Jonathan Cohen?

  And I think it's not just in a controlled environment that you would know how people think. You're gonna know how they think in other ways as well. So let's try and one level deeper here, starting with Snoop Dogg. What are you watching that he is giving off that is signifying his mental process?

• 32:07Speaker 00

  If you want to know the behind the scenes, we were both performing a venue in Pittsburgh for about 22,000 people. Pat McAfee had a big night out. I was on stage earlier. Snoop comes offstage. I said hi to him. He's going to catch a jet. And I had somebody with me who was capturing content and they were like, Snoop's team goes, he's got to go, he's got to go. I'm like, oh, you've got, you know, I didn't have time to talk to him direct. We just shook hands and I say to my guy, follow me and we start walking. And this is an ethereal skill called chutzpah, where I am relentless and I don't give up easily. And that's been me in life forever. And so I walk and I see that, you know, the stars have aligned. He stops at craft services and just jumps in to get a coke. The quietest room in the entire backstage area as well. I walk in and again,

• 32:52Speaker 00

  how you approach somebody is so important because he's in a rush. His security guy does not want me to do this. If you watch the video, the security guy, go on my Instagram. He's mad. He's like, we gotta go, we gotta go Snoop. So I need to, at that moment, win him over. So before we even get into the trick and the reading, the real magic of that moment was getting him to stop to make that video. Because nine out of 10, you would have approached him, he would have said no, his security would have said no. So how do I win him over when there's a few seconds at best? And how do I create that social value and all of that? So in that moment, I literally said to him and I said, I said, Snoop, you saw me on stage? So that's a great question because if he says no, then I can warm up.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  He goes, no, I can tell him what I did. Or if he said yes, I now have a value proposition. You were amazing. So it's a, it's a win-win question for me. And then I go, Snoop, 30 seconds, most amazing thing you've seen all month. And giving the time constraint of 30 seconds is, it's just, it's such a little amount of time.

• 33:56Mayim Bialik?

  You've got to be so confident that you can do something. I mean, this is like, name the times in your life when you can say, give me 30 seconds, I'm going to change your life.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  The 30 seconds is your entry point. You've now hooked the fish. The fish might take longer to reel in, but the 30 seconds is the smart play. Because it's very hard for somebody to say no to 30 seconds. If they repeat the amount of time to you, they're hooked. The fish is hooked. Because now you've assigned the amount of time and now, once you've intrigued them, they're likely to stay longer. I've never had somebody who, once they've repeated the amount of time back to me, now you've already shown interest, like an indicator of interest. Now I'm, I'm, I'm interested. So now the, the ball's back in my court. So at that moment, I had him think of somebody and I said, think of somebody you're going to talk to soon. And now the part that Jonathan is going into is the actual brass tacks of how the trick is done. And this is unfortunately the spoiler alert.

• 34:49Speaker 00

  I am not teaching in the book or in life how to be a mentalist. And here's the reason why, truly, because you could already learn that. I learned it too. There are books, there are videos. Everything can be learned in the palm of your hand. If you have a phone, you can Google it, you can go to YouTube. But you'll run into this barrier of, holy crap, I'm gonna have to do this for years to get good enough at this specific, hyper-specific skill that might not be applicable to the rest of your life. So teaching mentalist tricks is, it's, it's like the book would have sold 10 copies to other mentalists that I know. Instead, I want to teach you the skill of how I made Snoop Dogg stop and listen to me, because that is so valuable. I want to teach you the skill of when he finished the trick.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  Why did he then tell people for the next few days all about me? And that's not the trick. I need you to understand that. That's so important for you to grasp. The trick is what I call the packaging. If you unpackage it, what's inside? The feeling he felt that I did to him. The trick made him feel that feeling, but how people feel when you leave them or after they meet you is so important as to what impact you have and how they'll remember you and will they talk about you to others. And a lot of that has to do with very important skills that are nothing to do with magic or mentalism that you can improve. Those are like, that's what I'm going into in the book is how can you create a memorable experience for somebody? Or a memorable moment that they continue to talk about and become your champion?

• 36:19Jonathan Cohen?

  I 100% agree with you and if there's no meat in the middle of the sandwich, he's not leaving that experience telling you that you're a warlock or wizard, or whatever he said, and like being like blown away.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  100%. Had I not done a trick, what would he have gone to talk about? But here's what I would argue, there are lots of other people that can do my tricks. But why aren't they at the same level of success? Or whatever you want to find it, objective measures, how much TV? How many shows? How many reviews? All of the things that denote success in our day and age. Why, if we're doing the same things, have I grown and done things they haven't? That is an X factor that has nothing to do with the trick. That's the same in life. How many people are plumbers? But how many people own a plumbing company that then has 400 other plumbers that are making millions and millions of dollars a year? If that's your measure of success, what made them great?

• 37:17Speaker 00

  I think those core skills have nothing to do with what you do, but how you do it.

• 37:23Mayim Bialik?

  This is what Jonathan talks about a lot in terms of business, in terms of scaling business. You know, Jonathan comes from startups and like all things that I don't understand. And he talks a lot about this and I usually like fall asleep while he's trying to explain it to me. Because you know, I just, I don't think that way. I don't stretch things out that way.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Well, think about, think about if you're a VC. I do stuff all the time for venture capital firms, for private equity funds. People whose job is to do exactly what I'm doing, right? But not to guess a number, not to guess a name, Mariah Carey for Snoop Dogg, but to look somebody in the eyes who's a founder, who's starting a company that has no revenue, that we're going to invest Series A and we're going to say to ourselves, are they the next Uber? When things get tough, will this founder flounder? What will their leadership skills be like in a year, two years, three years when they scale?

• 38:10Jonathan Cohen?

  But this goes back to the methods of observation or what you're tracking.

• 38:17Mayim Bialik?

  I don't trust either of you. When people are like, oh, I have a company, it's going to be amazing. I'm like, no, you don't.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  I'm with you usually, Mym. I'm usually exactly the same. I'm like, you're lying to me, except I know you're lying.

• 38:28Mayim Bialik?

  Nothing's going to work. You can't, don't dream something that doesn't exist.

• 38:32Jonathan Cohen?

  Elon Musk did. Well, you're not Elon Musk. Get over yourself. I'm not giving you money. You were on the Rogan show. He got very upset with you in the clips. He was very uncomfortable. I mean, he was blown away by what you did, but the process, he felt it felt very uncomfortable. At one moment, he puts his hand over his mouth and you say, you've basically told me yes in that moment.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 38:55Jonathan Cohen?

  And that's actually what I was the most interested in. I was also interested in in your comment that, oh, men tend to over exaggerate. Women tend to under exaggerate. So that's speaking to a pattern of thought that I think is applicable to everyone and in every situation.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  I want to stop you. It's very important to explain this, and I want to say this because I I'm not trying to debunk people that are body language readers and certain people like NLP, because again, you'll assign me skills that I use in my show. But I am using them where you're think that's 90% of the method and it's 10% of the method. That's why I'm in a in a craft that's built on deception. I'm never showing you my actual hand. So to give you an example, when I will give cues and say, well, men always exaggerate bigger. I'm watching to see how you react. That is actually from the world of psychics where psychics have you in a room. And I am not going to say that nobody is a psychic in this world. That would be just majorly egotistical.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  But I am yet to have a personal experience with a psychic that I've witnessed where I couldn't do the same thing as them. Very important to understand what I'm saying. But in most instances, I could do it better than them. Except I have more of what I feel is an ethical, if I did this to you and we talked to somebody that had died and I'll tell you things that you couldn't possibly know. And then I say, well, listen, I I'm losing the the feeling to them. I just need to sit another private session for 25 grand. I don't know that I would sleep. Well, I'd have a distaste in my mouth about how I felt. Now, maybe there are people who are really psychic and I've heard stories and I've and I can't say without they'd be crazy. It's like saying there's no God. At best, you can be agnostic, but.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  When I see psychics, they know how to cold read. Cold reading is something that exists in the world. Cold reading is when somebody wants to, they with their body language. You say something of interest, they lean in. You watch their eyes. There's different things that they do because they're interested. When they're bored, they sit back. These are very easy cues to tell in an interview process. I don't need to teach you, it's instinct. So I, when I'm doing this, I'm doing a lot of things where I'm watching your reaction to what I say. And based on moments of levity, where I try to break the ice and then I get, and we laugh. And then you don't understand, but I'm resetting you. And now I'm doing things where boom, you don't realize. You think I already figured it out. I'm lying to you.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  I don't know anything yet. So I get you down this road where you believe I do. You relax, then you give it away. You don't know that, but it's a series of skills that is designed to elicit reactions. And it's exactly like jazz. It doesn't have a circuitous step one, step two, step three. So if I were to tell you right now, here's how you know if someone lies. Step one, step two, step three, I'm a liar. Anyone who tells you they know how anybody lies is a liar. But what you can do is observe someone and based against themselves, you can see the pattern of lies. In a polygraph, they can't just strap you in and start asking you questions. They cannot.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  It's important to know why, because first they need to measure, what is your body like when you tell the truth? So they take questions to see what happens when you tell the truth and they mark it. Then they ask you questions that are clearly a lie. Like my, is your name really Ruth? You're like, yes. And that's a lie. Like you can see, so now they can measure against yourself. It's just like blood doping. Certain athletes were pained for high testosterone because they measured against charts. But this person just had really high testosterone. So we learned, oh my God, we have to measure people against their own blood over time. That's how they checked doping. You measure against yourself. So the best way that I can tell somebody, if you want to learn if somebody in your life is lying to you, I would study their.

• 42:45Speaker 00

  Patterns and see when they tell a story and you they're clearly telling the truth. How do they tell it? What's their cadence? How many details do they add? Where do they pause? There's just three really easy measures. When somebody starts lying, most people change almost every single one of those measures. They talk quicker. They add extraneous details they don't need. Some people do the opposite and they but you can tell you can tell with your kids so easily if they're lying. Once you know your kids well, you can do this with other people as well. But meeting somebody for 10 seconds and knowing if they're lying, that's very hard. I don't even know that.

• 43:21Jonathan Cohen?

  No, but what I appreciate and what I think is very, very interesting is the testing. When you throw something out and you're testing how people are responding to it. It is all you're gathering that data as an experiment. So what you're positioning and saying you have, you know this. Oh, men tend to over exaggerate in that moment. What you're doing is seeing if he validates you or not. And he may say, oh, actually, if he leans back or he's kind of shakes a small subtle head no. Or, you know, if he's not just totally poker face, then you're getting more data. So it's not that you can objectively see this without putting them through some sort of paces in order to get more information.

• 44:04Speaker 00

  Exactly. And it's masqueraded. It's the schmooze. It's what makes the show fun and funny. And again, if you notice, it's the ability to influence people. Because I'm taking you on a journey that if you decide to be a stick in the mud and say, I'm not doing anything to say, I'm not talking, not anything. Then it won't work. It literally, I'm not in control. The audience is in control of my show, but I need to win them over to do my bidding or it will not work.

• 44:31Mayim Bialik?

  So much of what you're talking about also requires people to know what instinct feels like. So when you say, you know, to kind of like watch a pattern, right? It's like, why do people trust people that they know are untrustworthy? Right? If someone has a pattern of a certain kind of behavior, right? And we keep. Going back and you know, I don't mean to make you be a relationship expert, but you think of people who are like this person is a chronic alcoholic and they don't want to stop drinking. But like, you know, I keep going back, right? What is it? What does it feel like in your body when you are tapping into instinct? Because I think that's a lot of what, you know, I've watched all these people say like,

• 45:13Mayim Bialik?

  bring me an artifact and I'll be able to tell you everything about this person and what they're trying to communicate to you from the dead. You know, I've watched all those shows like, what is it about you that you've learned to tap into instinct? And is that something I can learn to tap into?

• 45:30Speaker 00

  I think that instincts are something that over time, we actually work against ourselves. So I think most people as they're growing up have very strong instincts that with time, you actually, the same way that when you watch your kids and if they're like two or three years old, everything is amazing, everything is wonderful and magical and new. And that's such a joy to see your kids, but then by the time they're six or seven, things are tired. I'm bored, right? It's like, what was that childhood quality? And kids, for whatever sake, tend to have very good instincts. Like there's something, there's something that as you grow up, you have a very strong sense of, I know that you don't know if Easter Bunny is real or Santa's real, but your instincts are very sharp and attuned.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  And as life continues, many of us start to second guess ourselves in a certain way. I think that in many instances, your first instinct is the correct one. And that so many times people say like, you know what? I don't, I don't really think this person's good for me, but and then they start going through all these things where they talk themselves out of what the initial one, the initial one was correct. And now all you're doing is lying to yourself to try to create some sort of justification for the rest of it because of the baggage you have. So again, I'm not saying to just like end something because you ah, seems like a cheater. Like you need to have some sort of validation, but I think, and in my profession, I can tell you that I live by the fact

• 46:57Speaker 00

  that my instincts are what I trust and rely on. Because when I'm picking people in shows, like I'm doing big shows, thousands of people and I run out in the crowd. The X factor is how do I know which person when I look at them in the span of a few seconds, based on stuff that I can't even explain to you, the way they inflect, the way they smile, the way they looked away, all of these things, I can instantly in a moment say, they're going to be perfect for this, they're going to be the one who cries, they're going to be the one who freaks out, they're going to be the one who, you know, yells and runs out of the room. And that's instinct, it's iteration, you've done it over and over and over, so you've gleaned experience, but then you trust your experience. I wish I had like a good formula for you,

• 47:37Speaker 00

  but my gut instinct is to tell you that what you thought first is more often right than it is wrong. And notice that if you're really honest with yourself and look like a month or two later, be like, I knew this person wasn't going to work out, I knew they weren't going to work out, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. Notice how that happens. So few and far between is it the opposite, where you said, I thought this person was great, and then later, oh, I get shell shocked that they're not, it's the opposite.

• 48:06Jonathan Cohen?

  You said something at the beginning of the podcast that I'm curious to circle back on, which is the difference between reading and influencing. And I think I was watching a docu-series about mentalists. The big reveal was, you know, being in a boardroom and, you know, them knowing what the person was going to share and like it got really down to the specifics. And when you tracked back, you saw that they placed cues, subconscious cues, and there was like 12 subconscious cues on the guest's entire journey from the hotel to the event with like signs and like all these that you wouldn't normally think,

• 48:50Jonathan Cohen?

  which primed the person in order to like reveal the thing. And it makes me think of the clip that you have where you take off the Rocky, you're wearing the Rocky shirt.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Did your homework, Jonathan, I remember that one.

• 49:02Jonathan Cohen?

  I did my homework. And maybe you don't want to tell us this, right? Like, so I respect that if you don't want to, you know, reveal the craft. But like, is that reading the person in, or are you guiding them through an entire course of a day or a moment where you're priming that person to choose that movie over? You know, because if you were to ask me that question, and that's what I did when I was watching that clip, I'm like, if I was in that situation. What would I have picked? And there's probably five movies that I would have picked, right? I don't think one person has like one movie that they're gonna pick. So there has to be some guiding force in order to get them to that result.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  So again, that's the window dressing. I know exactly what you're referring to. So in some instances, I do what I I perform knowing the story I want you to tell, which is exactly what you just did, which is the story you told is about all these things that happened along the way that made them pick that, when that could be completely false and just a red herring explanation that's easier for you to discuss, but has nothing to do with how it was actually accomplished. But it makes for a way better story and it's much more intriguing of a premise. And what everything boils down to with what I do is what's the story that's told later? So again, do I know how that's done? Of course, I know how it's done. Is it done the way you think it was? Absolutely not.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  It's done so that at the end of the day, you tell this fun story of all these things that you saw along the way. And it might've been much, much simpler than how it perceived. It's Occam's razor. Most things are much simpler than you think of. But I am all about what kind of memories I can create in people. And then what story do they tell later? And what's fascinating is that most people don't realize that your memory is not a representation, like a carbon copy of reality. In fact, it's completely devoid of reality at certain points. Sometimes rose colored glasses, sometimes people don't realize how easily their memory can be manipulated by doing certain very easy things.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  Like a great example is eyewitness testimony when people are in a very stressful situation, like something happened, a crime or a car accident. You have these heightened levels of adrenaline, cortisol, all these things in your body flood into your brain. And it's actually very, very shaky. If you watch true crime, the person who interrogates you afterward and questions you can completely mess up your reality by asking leading questions.

• 51:28Mayim Bialik?

  That's also, that's how false confessions happen. I mean, there's all sorts of pressured like we're, we had Dr. Amir Raz on and the Suggestible Brain and we love like, I mean, that book, you know, it absolutely blew my mind, especially from a scientific perspective, when you see how these things can be harnessed and are harnessed and used for placebo effect and, and things like that, you know, even with very, very significant. Medical conditions, but I think that's, you know, sort of one of the, one of the things that people can't believe is that, but I remember it this way. And that's sort of, you know, the, the benefit of the doubt also means saying that, I mean, I have this with my mother all the time.

• 52:08Mayim Bialik?

  She is so definite, you know, whether it's about like her computer or the password or, you know, like whatever it is. And it's like, there's always this, this realm of, of possibility, but I think also, and this is more of a psychology question and not necessarily for you, but I just want to mention it. You know, people who are pathological liars, people who are compulsive liars, their reality is even different in their own head. You know, when we say people are not reliable narrators of their own experience, or, you know, in the worst cases, like when you think of gaslighting. That didn't happen. You're wrong. That's your emotional reaction. You're just premenstrual. You're hormonal. That's, and it can really mess with you, right?

• 52:51Mayim Bialik?

  This is where these powers can be used, kind of, you know, not for entertainment purposes, but I think it's really fascinating that you're able to tap into all of this in a way to sort of, to sort of show, in many cases, the fallacy of what we think is reality.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  It's a hundred percent true. I mean, you're, you're completely aware of that. That's everything you just said is, is a fact, that your memory isn't infallible. And that if you're observant of it and you have to kind of notice it. So I can, I can tell you where this evolved for me and it was in teenage years. There's a very specific trick I would do at a restaurant. I would do a card trick and it's, it's a well-known card trick. I didn't invent it. Where I have somebody take a deck of cards, they shuffle them up, they take out a card, they sign it with their name. So we know it's the only card like it in the world. They put it back in the deck, they shuffle it again, they put a rubber band around it. Okay. It's really like, how could you do this? I took the cards, I would throw them up at the ceiling. They would hit the ceiling, they would fall back down and their card was stuck to the ceiling.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  It's a great trick. It's a great, great, people freak out and they loved it. Don't get me wrong. And then I'd be at restaurants where I have cards all over the ceiling. And I noticed, because I Love, love being out of earshot or just in earshot, but out of sight and listening to what people would say after I left a table. Right? It's the director's cut. It's like, what are they saying about me when I'm not there? And that's where you learn the real stuff. And I noticed a few times, and I couldn't understand why, that when people would be asked at the next table, next table would say to them, dude, what do you do to you? What do you do? He goes, you're not gonna believe this. And they would say the trick wrong. Okay, they would leave out one very important detail, which made it a miracle. They, I shuffled the cards, I signed a card, and then you're not gonna believe it.

• 54:34Speaker 00

  All of a sudden, I look up and the card is on the ceiling. Now, that's a miracle, because I threw the deck at the ceiling, it hit the ceiling, then it fell down and one card stayed up there. It's a very minor point to leave out, but without that point, you shuffle, you put the cards in, and something's just on the ceiling. That's truly impossible. That's even better than what I did. So I couldn't understand, I'm like, are these people's memory faulty? Like, how, why is that happening? And I tried to dissect the same way when you make a recipe. You tweak a little ingredient here, a little ingredient there, and figure out what does it taste like, what's the perfect? And it hit me. It took like a few months, but I realized it was so minor. But if, when I threw the deck up, I didn't look up, I didn't take their gaze and move up, I just threw the deck up and hit the ceiling, it fell down in my hand.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  Then, because I didn't assign importance to the throw, people wouldn't always look up. They wouldn't notice. I'd catch the deck, I'd wait for them to look up and notice the card. And when I did that, the hit rate was through the roof of when they would tell the story to someone else. They forgot to mention me throwing the cards up. And it was like this aha lightbulb moment, where I realized that what we give focus to is what others give focus to. And this is, you know this in life, where people around you who are negative, who are always complainers, who always talk about why they don't have something, and why this person got it and they should have, and that kind of stuff. That kind of negativity keeps feeding on itself versus, I know people in my life who are super positive. But when I get off the phone with them, I'm like jazzed. I'm like, let's go.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  They're always that wanna do something? Yeah. They always have the uplifting energy versus the negative energy. Again, you are what you focus on. And so I learned that in my tricks, I could retell the story while they're at peak amazement. When you're in the peak amazement, I retell the story, I leave out the things I want you to forget. And I do it in such a way that it re, it rewires your brain. So when you tell the story back to someone else, you're gonna say it the way I said it.

• 56:30Mayim Bialik?

  Oh my God, Oz, how did the card get on the ceiling? I don't get it.

• 56:36Speaker 00

  That one is actually easier to do. I'm not going to tell you, but that's an easier trick than anything I will do for you today. Jonathan was very obsessed with one concept, which is how did we read people? Mine, how long have you known Jonathan? How many years have you known him?

• 56:52Mayim Bialik?

  Too long.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  Too long, indeed, if that's the answer.

• 56:56Mayim Bialik?

  We've known each other 15 years.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  Okay, so we're gonna go back. Let me ask you a question right now. Mine, think of somebody that you know very, very well, that you probably talk to on a very regular basis.

• 57:10Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  Did you just do that right now? Was it spontaneous?

• 57:15Mayim Bialik?

  Sure, yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  So if I right now say, think of that person, right? And I want to guess that person's name. It's kind of like when with Joe Rogan, I guess the PIN code. The first thought people said is, oh, he must have looked it up. Now, the PIN code's hard to look up, but shockingly, people you know, especially if you don't have a best friend, is you have social media. What if you posted a picture of them? What if they posted a picture of you? What if there was a birthday wish like a year ago on Facebook? So right now, if I try to guess this person, the skeptical mind goes, that was, he guided her towards somebody obvious. Also, I said, you've known each other 15 years. So how about this? I'm gonna go back in time to pre-social media, to before you knew Jonathan. And I want you, mine, close your eyes.

• 58:00Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  Go back in time, and I want you to visually, I want you to picture the face. And this is typically elementary school, middle school. Picture the face of your first crush. Can you picture what he looked like? Can you still see it? Or is it tough to like fully form the image?

• 58:18Mayim Bialik?

  Got it.

• 58:19Speaker 00

  Open your eyes.

• 58:22Speaker 00

  Is this, is there any way in the world that this is on your social media? Or that this was brought up on a previous episode of Breakdown or Jeopardy? I don't know why I'd be on Jeopardy, that'd be super weird. But is there any way, shape or form that this came up in a conversation that was aired? Or exists anywhere? Does Jonathan know who this is?

• 58:40Mayim Bialik?

  No.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  So it's safe to say this is not a matter of sleuthing. Before today, right? I made you think of this person. When was the last time that he had even entered into your thoughts? Before today, was it like months or years?

• 58:55Mayim Bialik?

  Years.

• 58:56Speaker 00

  Okay, so here, watch Jonathan. You ask how we do it. This is a puzzle that seems to have no solution. It's not something we could have found out in advance. She hadn't thought of this person in years. It doesn't exist anywhere. I want you, not with your fingers. Whenever people do the fingers, I can see them. Try to do this entirely inside of your brain. Count the number of letters in the first name just to yourself. Not out loud, just to yourself.

• 59:21Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 59:21Speaker 00

  So notice how quickly she said, okay. You ask me, is this like a skill? It's an easy skill. She said, okay, lightning fast. If that name was a long name, Alexander, Mitchell, especially if it has two letters, two letters throw people off in the count. You could not have counted that fast.

• 59:40Mayim Bialik?

  Wait, but I have a question. I was saying okay to the instructions.

• 59:44Speaker 00

  Whatever you want to say, whatever you want to say to yourself to justify. I think I know that you just gave something away. Because you had finished counting. And so you knew it quickly. And if you have a kid in first grade and they're learning to read, they have sight words. They don't know how to read the words. They look at the words by sight. You just did a sight word. I'm gonna guess, and again, we're doing this over a camera where I can't see you. Don't say anything. I would guess that the name was three, four or five letters. But three letters would have been slightly a hint faster. So I think it's four or five. I think it's four letters. The name is four letters long, isn't it? Yes. So again, how we just narrowed down from every possible name that exists to a four-letter name.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  Do you have a pad of paper or something you can write on there that can be out of camera view where there's no way I could see it? So people know that you're not colluding or just pretending. Yes. Grab a pad of paper and ideally a marker or a pen or something that will be able to see it. And either cover your camera with your hand if you want, which I don't mind you doing. I think that's a good idea. And then write it down as big as you can, but cover the camera so we cannot see what you're writing. There's no way in the world.

• 1:00:55Jonathan Cohen?

  Also, your decision between was it going to be four letters or five is very interesting because you're tracking something in that moment.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  I'm playing the odds too. So you've got the name, it's hidden off camera. I can't see it, but we can show it later to validate and prove this if it does indeed work. You have four letters. We're playing a game of hangman, you and me, Mime. Look down at the letters and I don't want you to physically do it, but imagine you reach down, you go back and forth, you weigh your options, you don't know which one, you jump to this letter, you go to this letter and in your mind, not out loud, you circle one of the letters on the paper. Don't actually do it, but think of yourself doing it. Could you see yourself circling one of those four letters? Okay. Okay. I, okay. So I said one of those four letters in the name.

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  Now again, this isn't a thing, but it's how you influence people. In the name tends to make you avoid the first letter because starting is different than in. You weren't circling the first letter, were you? No. Because that would have been a different feeling. Also Mime is smart and a very hardened skeptic. So she goes, if I give away the first letter, he's going to frigging figure out the name. So she wouldn't have done the first letter. She wouldn't have done it. So then I asked myself, which one did she jump to? Now, unless this is like a hardcore Polish name, there's got to be some vowels in there. There's probably one or two vowels, you know, like a Z and X and a Z, you know, I've got some Polish fans, but those names are brutal. Never done a show in Poland.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  But you probably avoided the vowels because I've always called it, there's a negative connotation. They, they cost money and we'll fortune. You didn't do a vowel, did you?

• 1:02:38Mayim Bialik?

  No.

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  Again, so there we go. Say the letter in your mind over and over that you circle. Don't say it's not the last letter.

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  Uh, say it over and over in your head, just like you're saying it like you're, you're feeling the mouth feel of it.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  It's so tough on this camera because I can't see you well. I, I think it's one of two. I think it's one of two, but I don't know. But it's the, it's the hissing sound, the purse in the lips, the C. Is the letter you were thinking of a C?

• 1:03:07Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  It's a C, right? Like C as in cat. Is that correct?

• 1:03:12Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 00

  This is not premeditated. This is not staged or set up. We have never spoken to each other in our lives before today. I want to make sure we had never met in our lives. You could have thought of anybody. You think of your first crush. Jonathan doesn't even know it. Look down. I don't know how it's pronounced weird, but it's like, um, how did he say it? It's like, it's gotta be with a T, but it's not, it's tasty, tacky, T A C Y. Is that the name?

• 1:03:40Mayim Bialik?

  Yes.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  Turn it around. Show us.

• 1:03:49Mayim Bialik?

  There it is.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  Jonathan's not impressed. He goes, that's a very common name. It's a very, very common name.

• 1:03:55Jonathan Cohen?

  It's a very uncommon name.

• 1:03:58Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, do another one. I want another one.

• 1:04:01Jonathan Cohen?

  It's very impressive and like the mouth, like, is he reading your mouth as you're saying it? Is he like looking at how your mouth is moving because your mouth is going to betray or portray what is going on in your head is the real question.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  You know what? That's all of these questions and more. Uh, shameless self-promotion. But if you're enjoying this and it's going to be a good read, I promise you this and even better. Uh, if you get the audio book, I am very animated, but that is what it's all about. The, uh, this is the key one. The quote on the front says, learn to master the most powerful weapon in your mind by David Goggins. And that's honestly what the book is all about. This is the most powerful thing. And if you can kind of know how to use it more effectively, unlock so many doors. Uh, and this is one of them, which is 30 years in the work of just how to freak people out. But I want to give you some of the same skills.

• 1:04:52Mayim Bialik?

  Amazing. Where can people find out more about you? What's your website or where can people find you?

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  Like, I have a website. You can go to it. It's Oz Pearlman. It's a weird name because it looks like Oz. You know, blame the Wizard of Oz, blame my folks. But it's, I would just go to social where it's @OZTheMentalist. So it looks like @OzTheMentalist. Name happens to be Oz, but @OzTheMentalist. You'll see all my shows, TV appearances. That's the best place to find me.

• 1:05:20Mayim Bialik?

  Amazing. Thank you so much. We wish you great things with the book and thanks for being here.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:05:29Mayim Bialik?

  So you may notice, we've had a little change of scenery here.

• 1:05:33Jonathan Cohen?

  We actually did a magic trick. It was the same day. We snapped our fingers. We're in new outfits and new locations. Just kidding.

• 1:05:40Mayim Bialik?

  The reason that we wanted to record this outro is we wanted to think a little bit about how to put a button on this episode we just did with Oz. So you may have noticed in the reveal of the name.

• 1:05:59Jonathan Cohen?

  Oh, you have it there.

• 1:06:01Mayim Bialik?

  You may have noticed that I wasn't super shocked. And it is a, this trick is one that he's done before. And usually the reaction is like, what? And I'm gonna, we're being very, very honest with our community here. This was a decision we made. I figured out how he knew that name. I figured it out. And I figured it out kind of as it was happening.

• 1:06:29Jonathan Cohen?

  Because he could see your eyes moving and your eyes were spelling the name. And I could hear it. That wasn't it.

• 1:06:35Mayim Bialik?

  That wasn't it. And I'm choosing not to reveal how I figured it out and what the quote "secret" is. That doesn't feel right to do. However, we had this choice. Do we, you know, act like I hadn't figured it out? Or do we do what we're doing now? So what we're doing now is say that we had a really, really great time talking to Oz. But with this particular... Case, we just, we felt like we wanted to add this on just to say, that's why I didn't have a huge reaction and have a lot of respect for what he does. Very entertaining, very exciting, very interesting.

• 1:07:11Jonathan Cohen?

  I also think that the remote aspect is very different than being in person. Now, while you are a PhD in neuroscience and you understand the inner workings of all of our brains, but I also think that it is a different experience and he's able to get a different level of information from the people he's working with when he's able to read their cues and, and as he says, he's always leading, right? He's always saying something to see a reaction, to see what he can get and clearly over Zoom or the internet is very different.

• 1:07:51Mayim Bialik?

  And even, you know, from what I know, because I really do, I like magic, I like mentalists, you know, we've talked to others here, Scott Barry Kaufman is one of them, Amir Raz, you know, we've talked to other doctors who are, you know, who are into that world and into prestidigitation, it's actually the big word. There's even, you know, a hierarchy of skill, right? In terms of close up magic versus like stage magic. So like doing like close up magic is a special kind of magic. It's like that sleight of hand. I mean, I've had, I wear a, you know, a digital, you know, old school Casio watch usually. I have had

• 1:08:28Mayim Bialik?

  a close magician person at a party, take my watch off my wrist and put it on his own, all strapped up, you know, the kind of Casio where you have to like peel it back, put the thing in, put the strap through. I had that done and I had no idea, I wasn't drunk. I remember it was a Disney party. That level of, I was this close to this person who took my watch, and it wasn't like a slide off watch is what I'm saying. And then he put it on his own and he said to me, what time is it by the way? At the end of the bit? And I was like, what? I don't, and he held up his wrist and he was like, that's a whole

• 1:09:11Mayim Bialik?

  other level. So I'm going to grant that you're right. Doing this by Zoom, very, very difficult. And in person, I would love to see Oz's work.

• 1:09:19Jonathan Cohen?

  That's crazy that you had that experience because in the movies like in Ocean's Eleven, like those movies, you see Matt Damon and he's like this amazing pickpocket and he's like, but I always think, oh, that's so fake. People can't actually do that. You would always 100% feel it. And I a little bit, I'm not 100% like, I still feel skeptical. I'm like, maybe she was distracted. And sometimes she wears her shoes on the wrong feet. So maybe she didn't have the physical awareness to know that someone was pulling a watch off of her. You know what I am struck by in this episode is something that aligns a lot to the spiritual

• 1:09:58Jonathan Cohen?

  practices that we talk about into the way in which people have intuition, that they are sensing more than they're actually processing, right? Like, we're processing billions of bits of information all the time, but consciously, we're only processing a very small fraction of that. And that, you know, when he says, "Your first instinct is right," to almost always trust that and to get really clear and practiced at not having your mind rationalize that first instinct, maybe unpack it. I'm not saying if it says you should move out of the country today, you should just immediately do that, right? Like, I'm very big in understanding instinct with a level of rational explanation, but not dismissing

• 1:10:43Jonathan Cohen?

  that instinct, looking to unpack it and to follow it.

• 1:10:46Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. And I think just something that was interesting to me, you know, Oz is kind of, he's sort of very humble, like, "Oh, I just do this. Like, it's a gift and like, I honed it and blah, blah." I think that like, you know, I always love to ask, like, what would this person have been doing for a living 3,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago? What did this level, right, of acuity, intuition and sensitivity equip him or humans for that he is able to kind of tap into and hone? And that, you know, I think is some of the most interesting parts of mentalism, of magic, and honestly, of interacting with other humans. What can I make you believe? What do I believe myself? And how do we work with that?

• 1:11:30Jonathan Cohen?

  You know, to create a shared reality. I'm really appreciative of being on this journey of this podcast with you and everyone here, increasing my intuition, changing the way that I see reality and meeting people that we would never otherwise cross paths with. So, thank you, everyone, for being here.

• 1:11:48Speaker 03

  From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.