EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,009 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- OPOz Pearlman
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- NANarrator
The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music)
- JRJoe Rogan
Are we up? Are we?
- OPOz Pearlman
Surreal.
- JRJoe Rogan
Dude, you've only been here for 20 minutes, you already freaked me out.
- OPOz Pearlman
(laughs) Joe, Joe's freaked out.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) And I'm freaked out by the fact that you're the first guy that's ever come here that ran a marathon-
- OPOz Pearlman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... before you got here.
- OPOz Pearlman
You know, wanted to clear my mind.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- OPOz Pearlman
It's a big day.
- JRJoe Rogan
How long did it take you to run it?
- OPOz Pearlman
You gotta check online, I don't know, I think it was, like, three hours 25 minutes, 3:30, something like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow, that's a good time for a-
- OPOz Pearlman
Went kind of southeast.
- JRJoe Rogan
... casual-
- OPOz Pearlman
Thunderstorming in Austin, Texas, and then, uh, looped around, went back, got some work done. I always do phone calls while I'm running.
- JRJoe Rogan
How often do you run? Twen- you said you ran 27 miles this morning?
- OPOz Pearlman
I think so. I, I don't know. I just, I, I turned around, I got it done, I need to get ready for this shower, but yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that a normal thing for you to do?
- OPOz Pearlman
Very normal.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- OPOz Pearlman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's crazy.
- OPOz Pearlman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a lot of distance, man.
- OPOz Pearlman
You know, I, there was, like, a sweet spot pre-having as many kids and more family constraints and, and work and now life is busy, but where I do 20 miles every day.
- JRJoe Rogan
Br- that's crazy.
- OPOz Pearlman
Yeah.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Okay. …
- OPOz Pearlman
eye by making you look at the wrong place at the right time when I do a move. And I can practice that move over and over and over until I get it perfect, so that when I perform it for you, it works, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- OPOz Pearlman
Stand-up comedy, the most pure art form, right? You and a mic, that's it. Mine is the closest. Magic, you have props. Mentalism, there's no props.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- OPOz Pearlman
Like, I don't need you to pick a card anymore. I don't need it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- OPOz Pearlman
I can just tell you, "Think of a card."
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- OPOz Pearlman
And that's where I go with it. So now, you start knowing how people think. And you, in essence, reverse engineer the human mind.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- OPOz Pearlman
It's kinda like magic of the mind. And so that's where it kinda went from magic, and I kept doing more of the mentalism, more of it. But mentalism has a very steep learning curve. If you go do an open mic and you suck, how many people get to the level of getting better, getting better, putting in the work? Takes 10 years to be funny for most people, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- OPOz Pearlman
There's a couple phenoms, but that's a different story. So most mentalists, they drop off, 'cause I'm just gonna go back to magic tricks.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- OPOz Pearlman
This works every time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. So it's more difficult to learn?
- OPOz Pearlman
Way more difficult.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it, uh, sheltered? Like, is the, the material on it difficult to find? Is like-
- OPOz Pearlman
It's, it's, I think it's more that people don't have the, the thick skin. Like, the same way you said the quitting mentality, where I came back the year later, most people won't improve, because you can't practice mentalism in front of a mirror. You can practice magic. So when I do the trick on you, and it's a card trick, no, no offense to magic, it's great, but what we're talking about's a much higher level. I can't get it right, and the first few times you do it, the first 100 times, you eat, you know, you eat shit. Like, you're gonna get it wrong. And most people don't wanna do that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- OPOz Pearlman
Watch, watch. Let's try something fun.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- OPOz Pearlman
Okay? How about this? If I were to ask you, how long you been married?
- JRJoe Rogan
16 years.
- OPOz Pearlman
Okay, nailed that question. Well, well played.
- JRJoe Rogan
Thank you.
- OPOz Pearlman
You got hit. Your sister's happy, your wife's happy. If I asked you, would your wife know your Social Security number?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- OPOz Pearlman
She doesn't know it?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Right. …
- OPOz Pearlman
multiple ways. One, everybody talks about it. They're like, "Dude, this guy stuck my card to the ceiling."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- OPOz Pearlman
"How the hell did he do that?" They would also bring people back to the restaurant, right? Cha-ching, cha-ching. My, the managers loved me 'cause we'd bring more people back to see it and point at where their card was.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- OPOz Pearlman
Right? Business 101. And so I created a great value proposition to the manager. Why am I there? I'm, you know, getting you guys more customers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- OPOz Pearlman
But one time I'm listening to people that came back in and they're talking about the trick. And they go, "Yo, man. I, I picked a card. I, I put it back in the deck and, and I shuffled it up. And next thing I know, I look at the ceiling and my card's on the ceiling." And I'm like, "Yo, that's not what happened." I threw the deck up, the deck fell down, and then the card was on the ceiling. So I go, "Why did that guy misremember it?" Right? Maybe he's just drunk, maybe whatever, but I'm trying to understand, why did he have a different memory of the same event?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- OPOz Pearlman
And what I realized is that people observe what you have them focus on. Right? Tony Robbins has a great bit where he goes, "Right now, close your eyes, tell me everything that's green in this room." And you're like, "Green? I don't..." You know. But then when you open your eyes, "I see that the UFO lights are green instantly." But I say, "Close your eyes again. What's purple in this room?" I'm like, "I didn't look for purple."You find what you're looking for. So, if I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- OPOz Pearlman
... didn't say, it, it took me a while to, like, iterate and figure it out. But if I don't look up when I throw the cards, when I would throw the cards up and let them fall back down on my hand and not look up, the percentage would go 80%, 90% that afterwards, people, when they told the story, they edited, they clipped out the part of me throwing the, the, the deck. And now it becomes a miracle. How the hell is that card on the ceiling stuck? You mean you shuffled it, it was signed, it's on the ceiling? That went from being a good trick to a miracle. And I kinda learned that at about age 15, and I started to realize, how do I do that with everything I do? Because that's a life hack for everything you do. That's not magic. That's life. How do you get people to remember what you want, and forget the things you don't want?
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- OPOz Pearlman
That's how you achieve success. You start to highlight your strengths. You, you find ways, and that's a learnable skill. That's not something for magic, that's something in all of life.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, and what is it like when you're thinking this, when you're thinking, "I'm gonna get people to remember something."
- OPOz Pearlman
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
What, how, how do you, how are you doing this? Like, what's your intention when you're trying to devise, like, what to, what to do?
- OPOz Pearlman
Well, I guess, I guess my intention, well, at the end of the day, I'm a competitive SOB. I wanna be the best in the world at what I do. Like, I'm driven by that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- OPOz Pearlman
It's like, Olympic gold medalist, like, I wanna do the best things possible. Most people don't know what a mentalist is. You go on the street, 100 people, how many people are gonna say yeah?
- JRJoe Rogan
I have a second, um, ATM card.
- OPOz Pearlman
(laughs) Leave that for the end, huh?
- JRJoe Rogan
You wanna try it again?
- OPOz Pearlman
Not yet. No- I don't like to do the same thing. I gotta do better stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
I wanna see it again, though. I wanna see if you can do it again.
- OPOz Pearlman
All right, before we go, how about that? Not right now. We're, we're, we're in flow.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay, okay.
- OPOz Pearlman
Uh, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm trying to throw you off.
- OPOz Pearlman
Pfft, you could. Listen, I don't get it right every time, that's the other part. A magic trick works every time, this doesn't. I've eaten it on live national TV-
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Ugh. So stupid. So…
- JRJoe Rogan
for?
- OPOz Pearlman
Ugh. So stupid. So we had ... This is so dumb. This almost derailed my whole career. Drunken idiots, I go up to visit a buddy in college, and we steal from a Papa John's, gu- don't ask me why, a broken phone at a college Papa John's. Just being idiots. I paid for the pizza! But there was a broken phone on the counter. And you know, this is like me sleight of hand style. I'm like, "I'm stealing this thing." Just gone. And it was in my jacket. (laughs) And then I told my buddies, "You guys gotta get something too." So they go in the bathroom, which doubles up as the employee locker room, and they take three dirty shirts, dirty shirts from a laundry bin. And we bring them back to my buddy's house, like idiots. We wear them, and we at the party, I barely remember this, I was like blackout drunk, are like, "Papa John's. Who wants a pizza? Who wants a pizza?" I end up going to sleep, uh, on- on his futon, right, at like 2:00 AM, and at 4:00 AM someone comes in and they're like, "Yo, the cops are here." I'm like, "Dude, it's not my house. What do you want from me?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you guys post the videos of the
- OPOz Pearlman
No! This is pre-social media, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
... talking about Papa John's?
- OPOz Pearlman
No, no. Somebody ratted us out. Somebody's roommate, I found this out way later-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- OPOz Pearlman
... called and goes, "Yo, bro, there's a bunch of dudes here with a broken phone from Papa John's." I didn't know any of this. But somebody comes in, they're like, "Yo, the cops are here." And are like, "They're here for you." And I'm like, "Here for me? What do you mean they're here for me? I don't live here." And cops come in the room, and I'm wearing, like, aggressively small underwear at this point.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- OPOz Pearlman
This is like tidy whities. This couldn't have been more of like a bad perp walk. And I, they go, "Yo, you're under arrest." And I'm like, "For what?" And they're like, "For stealing from Papa John's." And what am I gonna say? I'm wearing the shirt. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, my God.
- OPOz Pearlman
This is on a Friday night.
- JRJoe Rogan
How old were you?
- OPOz Pearlman
I was 20 years old. And I was just about to get an internship-
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales)
- OPOz Pearlman
... for Merrill Lynch. And while this story is hilarious now, and it's like a funny chapter in my book, it was like, God help me, did I avoid everything. Be- and then when I went to jail, yo, scariest, one of the scariest days of my life, 'cause it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
How- how'd you get out of everything?
- OPOz Pearlman
So I got outta everything 'cause I had a clean record. I was a pretty upstanding citizen. And, um, you know, not to get in the weeds, there's something called Holmes Youthful Trainee Act, I wonder if they still have it, where I was expunged from my record, didn't have to report it to like the Wall Street firm, and they also said they were charging me, they put us in like a drunk tank, me and two buddies. And they said they're charging us with felony larceny. And I'm- I- I've seen some s- like Law & Order, I'm like, "Felony?" What, it's like ... What did we steal, like 20 bucks worth of stuff? They go, "But you stole things they don't sell. Had you stolen $999 of pizza, it would've been a misdemeanor." And I know they're lying to me. I'm not a mentalist then, and I'm inebriated, but I can read the room. Didn't say a word. Knew this was BS. And then they separate us when we went to general population.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-huh.
- OPOz Pearlman
And it's not like the movies.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- OPOz Pearlman
You know, it's- it's like, it was- it was wild. It was wild when I went in there. And I just knew, this is my cheat code. It was like everything in life had prepared me for this moment. And the jail was also, again, I- I didn't know this, but it was very segregated. Like, the white dudes are here, the Black dudes are here. And I didn't know what ... What do you do when you go in? Like, what do you do? I'm five foot nothing. I'm like a buck 40, dripping wet. What do I do? Who- how do you make friends right now? And- and I see the Black guys playing spades, and I just walk up and it's like, "You make your move." And I'm like, "Let me see those cards." And it was just- it's- it's like a moment I have ... And I didn't stop for hours. And I didn't repeat a trick. Like, I know tricks encyclopedically. I just go all day. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- OPOz Pearlman
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What an experience.
- OPOz Pearlman
It was crazy.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's wild.
- OPOz Pearlman
And then it was all thrown out, and, uh, cost me some money. It was definitely a very, very stressful few weeks. And I never stole anything since. Honestly, that was Scared Straight, that was very, very smart. Like I ... you prefer to learn a lesson like that, for my kids especially, without being stupid. But so many of us have to be stupid to internalize a lesson of touching the stove, and I had to burn my hands. But ...
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you always talk this way, the way you talk? You talk very fast-
- OPOz Pearlman
I know.
- 1:00:00 – 1:04:03
Where do you get…
- JRJoe Rogan
easier. But occasionally I'll find something really interesting on social media, so it's like, "Boy, I don't wanna not know that. I don't wanna not, like, find out about some new scientific breakthrough or some new thing that's going on." One of the things that I've found that, um, helps me though is instead of social media, I just, I just have a bunch of stuff that I curate in my Google News app. And so I'll just, like, find, like, any sort of scientific breakthrough or some weird discovery or a lot o- of really interesting things about ancient civilizations, I just have that stuff curated so it just shows up on my feed, which is so much better.
- OPOz Pearlman
Where do you get that? On your phone? Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- OPOz Pearlman
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's just the Google News app. It's great because it's like that way I can find stuff out without having to go and just hopefully randomly run into it on X or on Instagram.
- OPOz Pearlman
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? That's helped, that helps a lot.
- OPOz Pearlman
Yeah, I'm terrible with X. A lot of my friends get news on X. I'm just like, "Ugh, it's too-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Just too much negativity.
- OPOz Pearlman
It's all, a lot of negativity, and for Instagram, for years, I started realizing that it just, uh, like a compare and despair is one of the... Do you know that?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- OPOz Pearlman
Like, where I'm, I'm like, "Why am I getting off of this and feeling worse than I did getting on it?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- OPOz Pearlman
And so I really had to flip a switch in my brain to, to, to... I got rid of that. Anything that I don't like, I don't show, and I stopped focusing on what I don't have and w- I focus on what I do have.And so, it- it-
- JRJoe Rogan
So did you, like, used to go to it and you see someone with a giant house and a Lamborghini or something like that?
- OPOz Pearlman
It w-
- JRJoe Rogan
Was it material possessions?
- OPOz Pearlman
It wasn't material.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was it?
- OPOz Pearlman
It was, "I need to use..." So I don't look at people and hope poorly upon them. I look more at it and say, "I'm not doing enough." So it's like a inferior. You're always gonna be lesser than, right? You're always gonna be... Someone's gonna be younger, richer, smarter. Y- like, every -er. But in my case, it was more of I wanted to achieve a level of success. And just seeing other people in my field or other fields, and I felt like, "I'm not doing enough."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- OPOz Pearlman
'Cause I'm, you know, tr- somewhat driven ambitious. So I'm like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- OPOz Pearlman
... "I'm just not doing enough right now." And it's that constant feeling of, "I'm not doing enough," doesn't drive you. It would be better to see, "Look at them. I'm so happy for them. I'm gonna do that too." Like, I- it should be a positive, uplifting thing, and it's a flip in your brain. It's like multiplying negative one times negative one, and much more of the inflection point of gratitude. Like, I- I- d- do you know Jay Shetty?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm. I don't know that.
- OPOz Pearlman
Jay, uh, I don't know, podcaster, really good dude.
- JRJoe Rogan
I've hea- uh, I definitely heard of him.
- OPOz Pearlman
Met him last year, and he told me something very stuck with me for the last year, which is million thoughts a day. We're on social media, we're all this, that. He goes, "The only two thoughts," you can't control them all, but try to control two thoughts each day: the first one when you wake up, and the last one when you go to sleep. It's that easy. Those two. Just try to have the first thing you wake up be one, and before you go to bed just have one last thought.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- OPOz Pearlman
And I- it- they're always, for me, it's like, "Yo, I'm- uh, every day alive is a blessing." Like, I- I literally, I believe that in my core, you- I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. Like, a, a, a parent in my school just passed away recently. Shattered, like, young kids, cancer-
Episode duration: 2:37:40
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