How to Steal Thoughts Out of Anyone’s Head - Oz Pearlman

1. 0:00 – 1:56

   Is Oz’s Career is Built On a Lie?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      You have said that your career is built on a lie.

   2. OPOz Pearlman0:02

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:03

      What's the lie?

   4. OPOz Pearlman0:04

      The lie is I can read people's minds.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:07

      You can't?

   6. OPOz Pearlman0:07

      I can't. [laughs] I wish I could.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:08

      Okay. Why does what you do work then if you can't read people's minds?

   8. OPOz Pearlman0:14

      Well, because I'm giving the illusion of reading people's minds, right? That's the skill. That's really... I'm crafting a narrative which in your mind plays out in such a way, kinda like the way a magic trick works, but the contract is different with the audience. Because most of us when we watch a magic trick, since we've been young and we kinda first experienced magic, we know that what's happening isn't real. De facto, the bird that appeared didn't really appear out of nowhere. The person doing this isn't God. They didn't cut a woman in half for real because you can't actually put her back together.

   9. CWChris Williamson0:45

      Hmm.

   10. OPOz Pearlman0:45

       Right? Science has established what can and can't be done within reason. That's what we believe. So you can always look and see and say, "Well, there's a gimmick. There's a trick. There's a way that it's being done." And the funny part about what I do, it's called mentalism, it's a form of magic, is that you can't really find how it's being done because there's never that trick. There's never the gimmick. There's never the thing that you do to do it-

   11. CWChris Williamson1:10

       Hmm

   12. OPOz Pearlman1:10

       ... because it's a pure art. It's very similar to stand-up comedy. I can show up with nothing. I could do a show today for thousands of people with literally nothing. A marker helps, a pad of paper helps, but it's not mandatory.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:22

       Is that, you know, when you talk about the prestige when people talk, the reveal at the end-

   14. OPOz Pearlman1:26

       Yep

   15. CWChris Williamson1:26

       ... that's kind of the thing that appears to be missing?

   16. OPOz Pearlman1:28

       The abracadabra, the ah.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:29

       Yeah.

   18. OPOz Pearlman1:30

       Well, it's not... So the, we still get that moment of w- the wow, the ta-da.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:34

       Mm-hmm.

   20. OPOz Pearlman1:34

       The, but the lead up to it typically doesn't have any form of something that looks like it's doing the trick, if that makes sense. It appears to be just a test of wills where I've trained my mind to see and observe things about you or influence you in such ways that the method seems to really be mind reading, and that's, that's the illusion I'm trying to present.

2. 1:56 – 3:22

   Who is the Greatest Mentalist of All Time?

   1. CWChris Williamson1:56

      Who is the greatest mentalist from history in your opinion?

   2. OPOz Pearlman1:59

      That's a tough question. I mean, there's a guy in the UK named Derren Brown-

   3. CWChris Williamson2:02

      Mm

   4. OPOz Pearlman2:02

      ... who's really been the, the godfather the last like two or three decades I would say who broke ground. You can't really th- throw... There's a guy named Kreskin, The Amazing Kreskin, who in the US was on, uh, the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson I don't even know how many times, over 80, and he was a real character and performed. He created that whole motif. But all of this started, don't quote me on this, but about 100 years ago where people used to just pretend to be psychics or, depending on what you believe, were psychics. And then magicians kind of observed the way psychics do their tricks or whatever you wanna call them. Maybe they're doing it real, maybe they're not. But they found methods. And the key thing to understand that's different between a psychic and me is what I'm doing is learnable, repeatable, and based in science. Those are very important things. You can't teach someone to be a psychic. I've never met a psychic that could teach me to also be a psychic. I could teach you to be a-

   5. CWChris Williamson2:52

      [laughs]

   6. OPOz Pearlman2:52

      No, but it's true. I, it's, it's really... And then it's not always repeatable. So if you're a psychic, let's do this three times. Talk to my dead grandma three times. I'm gonna ask you three questions, answer all three. It's not like that, right? It's what's in the ether. It's a little bit more ethereal if you will.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:08

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   8. OPOz Pearlman3:08

      And then it, it's, there's, it's r- rooted in science. I can explain to you the method of everything I do. Most other mentalists can explain to you how I do most of what I do. Not all, and that's what can set you apart.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:17

      Hmm.

   10. OPOz Pearlman3:18

       But that's the key. There is a method. There's something I'm doing, a set of steps.

3. 3:22 – 4:23

   What Are the Core Principles of Mentalism?

   1. CWChris Williamson3:22

      What are the component parts? What are the core principles of being a good mentalist?

   2. OPOz Pearlman3:29

      I think knowing how to build rapport, how to establish trust, the same things that a hypnotist can do, same thing that a good salesperson can do, the same thing that a great con man can do, are very important. If you can't get people to trust you and work with you, it won't work. I'm not hypnotizing people to cluck like a chicken. We're having a fun experience together.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:48

      Hmm.

   4. OPOz Pearlman3:49

      So you're winning them over. I would say charisma's important. I, I would say resilience is really important. It's a lot of core foundational skills that are useful in all of life.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:59

      Hmm.

   6. OPOz Pearlman3:59

      So resilience is really important because it doesn't work at the beginning. [laughs] So you don't-

   7. CWChris Williamson4:03

      You're gonna fail.

   8. OPOz Pearlman4:04

      I've, I've never met somebody who was a mentalist who was good at the start. It's very similar to stand-up comedy. You rarely find someone who's been doing stand-up comedy six months who's incredible and is headlining Madison Square Garden. There were 10 or 20 years of work to become an overnight success for most of those people. The same thing applies. It's the same core skill.

   9. CWChris Williamson4:22

      Hmm.

4. 4:23 – 5:16

   Does Body Language Give People Away?

   1. CWChris Williamson4:24

      You talk about reading microexpressions, body language.

   2. OPOz Pearlman4:27

      That's part of it.

   3. CWChris Williamson4:28

      How, how accurate is that in practice? How much can you detect from being able to see what's going on with someone's microexpressions, their face, their body language?

   4. OPOz Pearlman4:39

      I don't have an easy answer to that because it depends on the scenario. Does that make sense? A big part of what I do is create an illusion that you can generalize my skills to everything. D- does that make sense or no? 'Cause I can explain what it means. I create a very specific scenario that looks... It should look impossible. It should be very entertaining, and it should be a story you tell to lots of people.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:00

      Hmm.

   6. OPOz Pearlman5:00

      People, "Well, if you can do that, then..." Remember that then. The then connector is what people fill in the blanks.

   7. CWChris Williamson5:06

      Hmm.

   8. OPOz Pearlman5:06

      And it's not always true, and that's the honest truth, is that I create an impression of being able to do everything. Should I give you an example?

   9. CWChris Williamson5:12

      Sure.

   10. OPOz Pearlman5:13

       But I don't know if we're too early in the game.

   11. CWChris Williamson5:14

       No, no. Let's do it.

   12. OPOz Pearlman5:15

       But

5. 5:16 – 15:08

   How Did He Do This Trick?!

   1. OPOz Pearlman5:16

      I told your team to get a deck of cards, and they, they bought two decks of cards. Overachievers.

   2. CWChris Williamson5:19

      Yes.

   3. OPOz Pearlman5:19

      Modern Wisdom.

   4. CWChris Williamson5:20

      Correct.

   5. OPOz Pearlman5:20

      Take... Should we put the glasses on? Grab a deck.

   6. CWChris Williamson5:23

      Yeah. I'm, I'm not gonna put the glasses on.

   7. OPOz Pearlman5:24

      It doesn't matter.

   8. CWChris Williamson5:25

      I get canceled.

   9. OPOz Pearlman5:26

      And open it up. I don't wanna touch it.

   10. CWChris Williamson5:27

       All right.

   11. OPOz Pearlman5:28

       Crack it open.

   12. CWChris Williamson5:29

       Cracking.

   13. OPOz Pearlman5:30

       There should be, I'm assuming this is, where? CVS, Walgreens. I don't know where you got it. Are there, there should be Joker and, um, fake cards and whatever.

   14. CWChris Williamson5:37

       Joker. Joker.

   15. OPOz Pearlman5:37

       I don't know what there is. I have not touched these, but take everything out that's not a real card.

   16. CWChris Williamson5:41

       Okay. There's something advertising YouTube. There's some rules. There's two Joker cards. Okay.

   17. OPOz Pearlman5:45

       And please shuffle them up to your heart's content. Like mix. They're, they're in order right now if they came out of the box. This is a brand new deck.

   18. CWChris Williamson5:53

       Yeah. It looks that way.

   19. OPOz Pearlman5:54

       Are you a good shuffler?

   20. CWChris Williamson5:55

       Uh, no. Horrendous. But I, uh-

   21. OPOz Pearlman5:56

       [laughs] At least you're honest.

   22. CWChris Williamson5:57

       Yeah. Dude, I've got, I've got certain skills, but shuffling cards is not one of them.

   23. OPOz Pearlman6:00

       Shuffling cards is not one of them, huh?

   24. CWChris Williamson6:02

       No. I imagine that this is something that you do in your sleep.

   25. OPOz Pearlman6:05

       So I was a magician before I was a mentalist.

   26. CWChris Williamson6:07

       Okay.

   27. OPOz Pearlman6:08

       It's kind of akin to doing pre-med before you go to school and become a doctor, before you become a, a surgeon or a plastic surgeon.

   28. CWChris Williamson6:14

       Mm-hmm.

   29. OPOz Pearlman6:15

       I used, when I quit my job on Wall Street, as many metaphors to becoming a plastic surgeon or doctor to convince my Jewish mother that I wasn't throwing away my life. Um...

   30. CWChris Williamson6:25

       [laughs] Okay. All right. I think-
6. 15:08 – 22:26

   Why Storytelling Makes the Trick Work

   1. CWChris Williamson15:08

      Uh, so you mentioned that story's a big part of it, that being able to sort of build in more than just being the trick.

   2. OPOz Pearlman15:17

      Well, I think that's the key, because the story you tell is the, the true power of what I do and what provides longevity, and has been my secret to success.

   3. CWChris Williamson15:24

      Mm-hmm.

   4. OPOz Pearlman15:25

      Which is, for years, I didn't realize what I was selling, which I think is a core principle that a lot of people don't realize. And when I say selling, people always think that means money. I'm not talking about money. All of us are salespeople in life.

   5. CWChris Williamson15:37

      Mm.

   6. OPOz Pearlman15:37

      We don't realize it. You and me, right now we're selling attention. You're selling people watching and listening to this program. 'Cause if they stop, your business is done. And it took a long time to grow this, right, your equity. So I asked myself, "What was I selling?" For the longest time, I thought, "I'm selling I'm amazing. Look at me," right? It's a very narcissistic approach. I can do a cool trick. Why does that matter to you?

   7. CWChris Williamson15:56

      Mm.

   8. OPOz Pearlman15:57

      And then I started in-inverting the question, saying, "Why does it matter to anyone else?" It shouldn't matter. Who cares? Sure, it's an escape. Sure, it's fun. I could do the same thing as 98% of my competitors and realize it's cool, that's great. I realized what's gonna differentiate me is when I make it about other people. So the way the story gets told, the way a thing is remembered, is much more emotionally impactful if it has something to do with the person watching you.

   9. CWChris Williamson16:20

      Mm.

   10. OPOz Pearlman16:21

       Right? That moment that connects with them, where I... That was a card trick, so to speak. But the card trick, when you recount it to somebody, will be completely different. Because when I just guessed two pair in a poker hand, that wasn't that meaningful.

   11. CWChris Williamson16:35

       Mm.

   12. OPOz Pearlman16:35

       But when you sit back and rethink this through, and go, "I shuffled these cards, I cut them a bunch of times, and then it was the date of my birth? Like, how could that be?" Right? That story is gonna get told in a very different way.

   13. CWChris Williamson16:46

       Yep.

   14. OPOz Pearlman16:46

       And hopefully for months and years to come. And that's a very small parallel, but when I perform, I always make it about the people watching.

   15. CWChris Williamson16:53

       Mm.

   16. OPOz Pearlman16:53

       If it's for an NFL team, it's gonna be what matters to the football viewer, somebody who's not a fan of me. They, I, they're... I came along for the ride. I'm trying to catch new people-

   17. CWChris Williamson17:03

       Mm

   18. OPOz Pearlman17:03

       ... and have them buy into me and what I do. And doing that is making it all about them. Like, when I do my shows, if you come watch my show, the audience is the star of the show. I don't mean that in a cliché New Age way. I mean, literally, I don't have a show without the audience. I'm panning for gold, and my version of gold is genuine, authentic reactions, people [gasps] freaking out, and other people, even if you're not in observing that, and feeling that same feeling. Because wonder is kind of universal.

   19. CWChris Williamson17:30

       Mm.

   20. OPOz Pearlman17:31

       Music isn't, comedy isn't. There's almost nothing that is universal. There's a few things, right? But wonder is one of them that's, like, hardwired into our DNA.

   21. CWChris Williamson17:42

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   22. OPOz Pearlman19:32

       [chuckles] Nice. That's perfect.

   23. CWChris Williamson19:33

       And it's this wonderful example of what Alain de Botton calls reverse charisma or inverse charisma. Some people are interesting, some people make you feel interesting.

   24. OPOz Pearlman19:42

       Right.

   25. CWChris Williamson19:42

       Why is it that around certain friends we have lots to say, and around other people we don't have so much?

   26. OPOz Pearlman19:49

       Right.

   27. CWChris Williamson19:50

       You go, "Well," and no, it's how much they encourage us to dig deeper and to think about ourselves. How much of us they can tolerate or they seem like they're willing to hold onto, uh, how prepared are they to open up about their experience that makes us feel like we have the headroom to be able to do it about ourselves. And I think, uh, yeah, a lot of people want to develop charisma. They want to me, me, me, look at how impressive I am. They want that aura to be electric and the stories to be energizing and everyone in the room to walk in and just... But I- when I think about the people that I like spending the most time with, it's not always the ones that are the most interesting, it's the ones that make me feel the most interesting.

   28. OPOz Pearlman20:29

       I think that's 100% true, and the power of silence that people don't really observe or realize, and it took me so many years. A comedian, if they step on their own jokes, if you tell another joke while people are laughing, that's-- it's, it's known as stepping on... You're taking away some of their laughter. You're taking away some of the feeling. You cut it short.

   29. CWChris Williamson20:47

       Mm.

   30. OPOz Pearlman20:47

       It took me years and years to realize that when people start reacting in a performance, I stop because it will continue. It's like an-- sometimes it's an avalanche that continues. And in fact, we're shooting, uh, pretty soon an, a special, I think I can talk about it, a Netflix special, and one of the big things we talked about is when you n-normally watch a show, you watch on stage. We have more cameras pointing into the audience than on stage.
7. 22:26 – 30:03

   The Secret to Telling a Gripping Story

   1. CWChris Williamson22:26

      little bit. Wh-when it comes to storytelling, you know, not everybody is going to be prestiging their way through some date of birth revealing card trick. Telling stories more generally, what are some of the principles that you think about when it comes to telling a good story?

   2. OPOz Pearlman22:42

      I think this applies, there's a parallel, which is you're not gonna probably learn to be a magician or a mentalist, but the core skills that I have are ones that are interchangeable in life. Asking yes or no questions gives you yes or no answers. Doors get closed, right? The more you can give a branching tree and ask questions that haven't been asked before. So a lot of what I do is I design my ideas with the end goal in mind. I literally know what I want the ending to be-

   3. CWChris Williamson23:08

      Mm

   4. OPOz Pearlman23:08

      ... and then I work backwards from there. Does that make sense? I know, uh, I observed that, for example, I just did something on Fox Business last week. I'm gonna be on CNBC next week. I'm watching what do people care about right now, truly. Th-this is a unique time. There's chaos in the Middle East. Gas prices are going up. Most people are in debt. People care about what's the price of gas gonna be. And I went on there and I, I, I made up the story, but the story, the, the hook at the beginning is I said, "There's four Fs that matter most to all of us: family, friends, faith, finances." So you-

   5. CWChris Williamson23:39

      Thought you were gonna say fuel.

   6. OPOz Pearlman23:40

      Yeah. [laughing] You know, I... Damn it, Chris, I need you on, on payroll. Uh, but yeah, I, I, I, I didn't wanna... It was on Fox News, so faith was important. But I, I said that-That's a good one, though.

   7. CWChris Williamson23:50

      Yeah.

   8. OPOz Pearlman23:50

      Is that, uh, you just needed to... You- The hook, the interesting part at the beginning is you wanna liken something that somebody can say, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense." That, like-

   9. CWChris Williamson23:59

      Mm

   10. OPOz Pearlman23:59

       ... it makes sense to me. And right away, I, I brought it back to what are gas prices gonna be? How does this affect people around the country? And it, it tied together. And again, you're not gonna do this as a mentalist, but most people, I think they're on autopilot, and when they ask someone else a question or when they meet someone, they slip into, just like in an airplane, autopilot. After you take off and until you land, the plane is mostly flown by a computer that just does if this, then this, if this, then this. We operate 95% of our lives in that exact fashion. You meet someone, is it like fight or flight? What do I ask them? Oh, what do you do? Okay, where are you from? And, yes, you can do that. I'm not saying to be, like, a weirdo, but if you scratch below the surface and think of the first question, second question, third question you wanna ask them, and then, oh, oh, what's the fourth? Ask them the fourth first. You're much more likely to hit a question that they haven't been asked recently that jars them out of autopilot themselves, where they go, "Oh, that's interesting. I never thought of it that way. That's a great question to ask."

   11. CWChris Williamson25:00

       Mm.

   12. OPOz Pearlman25:01

       Something that brings you back to something more introspective. And then listen. I know that's the craziest part, but most people just simply wait for their turn to speak next, and as soon as you say something that resonates with them, ding, ding, ding, their brain starts saying, "I need to say this next. I need to say this," and you're not listening to what they're saying anymore. Read and write are two different operations that rarely work at the same time in our brains.

   13. CWChris Williamson25:23

       Mm.

   14. OPOz Pearlman25:24

       So you have to... It's like my, my six-year-old has an idea, and he s- wants it, and I'm like, "Put it in the thought bubble. Leave it in the thought bubble. Let's come back to it," right? That's the hardest thing. It's hard for me, too, but the raising your hand approach and saving the thought is such a challenge in a conversation.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:38

       Everybody criticizes the fact that they don't like small talk. It, it, it's a almost universal thing that people dislike.

   16. OPOz Pearlman25:44

       Right.

   17. CWChris Williamson25:44

       You know, the idea of getting into an elevator with somebody that's gonna stop at every floor, trying to hold together some conversation that means nothing to everybody. And, uh, yeah, the idea of ridding yourself of the social foreplay and jumping straight to third base or whatever the equivalent is-

   18. OPOz Pearlman25:57

       Right

   19. CWChris Williamson25:57

       ... uh, I think is a good idea.

   20. OPOz Pearlman25:58

       Well, even asking something that's just different. Like, I... You and I probably encounter far more new people on average than almost anyone. I will meet sometimes thousands of people in a week. It's just a, a part of my job. So how do you connect with them on a real level? I will stop and try to get everyone's names. If I don't know your name, I'll make sure... It was Jared? I wanna make sure I got it right. Like, that's a very core skill that's so easy to do that most of us just think nothing of.

   21. CWChris Williamson26:22

       How can people become better at that? I've... I met a million people on the front door of nightclubs.

   22. OPOz Pearlman26:26

       So it's very tough. So i- in that situation, if you're meeting a bunch of people all at once-

   23. CWChris Williamson26:30

       Mm

   24. OPOz Pearlman26:31

       ... it can be overwhelming, right? It's like trying to drink from a fire hose. There are ways to slow it down. There's ways to remember names for short-term purposes. Long-term is very different 'cause of the way memory imprints. Um, I gave a TED Talk last year, most viewed in the world for that year, humble brag. I'm very proud of that.

   25. CWChris Williamson26:47

       Congratulations.

   26. OPOz Pearlman26:47

       I'm very proud of that, though-

   27. CWChris Williamson26:47

       Well done

   28. OPOz Pearlman26:47

       ... 'cause I didn't expect it to do that well, and I barely made it to the TED Talk, by the skin of my teeth. That's a different story, but if you ask the TED Talk people, the fact that I even made it for the TED Talk was within minutes. Flight was diverted. It landed in Seattle instead of Vancouver. We were on the tarmac for two and a half hours. We're trying to figure out how to get me there. Am I gonna get in a car and just drive across the border? Finally, it takes off. I... Anyway, it was very funny. I sprinted faster than any marathon finish I've ever had-

   29. CWChris Williamson27:13

       [laughs]

   30. OPOz Pearlman27:14

       ... out of the Vancouver Airport. You know when you're changing in a car, how many times have you changed in a car where you're just, like, in a movie, legs out the window-
8. 30:03 – 38:36

   Memory Hacks From a Mentalist

   1. CWChris Williamson30:03

      What, how can people become better with memory outside of that? It's not just names. Ebbinghaus, forgetting curves, spaced repetition-y stuff. This is a little bit of spaced repetition-

   2. OPOz Pearlman30:14

      Right

   3. CWChris Williamson30:14

      ... with some mind palace location-based stuff going in there.

   4. OPOz Pearlman30:17

      It's not full mnemonics because if you're trying to remember people's names for longer-

   5. CWChris Williamson30:20

      Yeah

   6. OPOz Pearlman30:20

      ... you really have to do a little more kind of like hard wiring and cementing and re- repetition, but also having something that hooks the person to either a visual. Um, I'm with you. Like memory palace is smart. One thing connects to the next, connects to the next, and you can build that out.

   7. CWChris Williamson30:34

      Mm-hmm.

   8. OPOz Pearlman30:34

      How many people can remember that for a long time is difficult.

   9. CWChris Williamson30:37

      It's tough.

   10. OPOz Pearlman30:37

       My memory's not that great, which people will not believe. They'll say... You ask my wife, she'll be like, "His memory's terrible." But my memory is great for things that are important for me to remember.

   11. CWChris Williamson30:47

       Mm.

   12. OPOz Pearlman30:47

       Right?

   13. CWChris Williamson30:48

       Mm-hmm.

   14. OPOz Pearlman30:48

       Think about that again. For most people, I think that's the case. You can stre- like, you can play to your strengths. If you're good at bis and back and those chicken legs, then you're skipping legs day, right? I didn't mean that about you. Legs are great. But [laughs] I like how Chris is like, "What did you say to me?"

   15. CWChris Williamson31:04

       Train today.

   16. OPOz Pearlman31:04

       Yeah. But I think that I will do very well at the things that I have to remember, and things that I don't care about will kind of atrophy, and that's the part that's harder to, to really condition.

   17. CWChris Williamson31:14

       Well, this was something that I get asked a lot at the live shows that I've been doing, which is how do I get better at remembering ideas?

   18. OPOz Pearlman31:21

       Yep.

   19. CWChris Williamson31:21

       And when I first started trying to not be so much of an adult infant, I'm listening to Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson and, and Rogan, and these guys just seem to have, like, eidetic memory. Like fucking Ben Shapiro seemed to have this, like, photographic memory. I remember reading things and then trying to explain them to a friend later on that day, and I couldn't even remember what book it was that I'd been reading, and it was so embarrassing, and I thought, "God, you know, this sucked." These, these people out there that, uh, uh, w- they either have a skill set that I don't have or a capacity that I don't have or they're, they're, they're using some sort of strategy that I'm not aware of, or maybe they're just better people than me. And then I realized that there was no reason for me to remember it. I was remembering ideas to tell my friend in the gym.

   20. OPOz Pearlman32:00

       Right.

   21. CWChris Williamson32:00

       And a lot of the time, when people are saying, "I wish I remembered more of what I read," I'm like, "Well, why? Why is it that you want to remember this thing that you're reading?" "Well, it would be cool to g- explain to other people." A lot of the time, it's that I want to be able to say that I've read it. I want to be able to tell other people and show other people that I know this book that I've been going through or this particular documentary or whatever it might be. And as soon as I started doing the show, I had a reason to remember things. It was, uh, high valence for me, like very, very highly important for me to hold onto stuff because I wanted to talk about this thing today with this guest about their book.

   22. OPOz Pearlman32:35

       Right.

   23. CWChris Williamson32:35

       So there was a purpose for me to do that, or I'm writing. You know, I do this newsletter every week. 300,000 words later, well, there was a reason for me to learn stuff that week, so I know that I've got 1,000 words to hand in this Monday. So there is a purpose for me learning things and remembering things so that I can then recall them. But without that, it's very difficult to have memory stick. It's very effortful, and the only reason that you do it is if there's an outcome on the other side of it. So if you're struggling to remember things that you're learning, I think look at what's the motivation for doing it? And if you don't really have one, I think giving yourself a, an output reason to remember this stuff-

   24. OPOz Pearlman33:10

       Right

   25. CWChris Williamson33:10

       ... is a great place to start.

   26. OPOz Pearlman33:12

       I agree. Yeah, I think memory's a difficult one because, again, most of us will think, "Oh, I'm so bad at remembering names," or, "I'm so bad at..." They'll, they'll... You'll, you'll give yourself... Y- you won't give yourself credit for certain things when you probably have very good memory for things that are important for your survival.

   27. CWChris Williamson33:27

       Correct.

   28. OPOz Pearlman33:27

       For your day-to-day, I need to pick up the kids from school. Hopefully, you are remembering that. That's very important. But the things that are missing, what is it that's, that's lacking in that department? I find if you can't remember it, cheat. I write things down.

   29. CWChris Williamson33:41

       Hmm.

   30. OPOz Pearlman33:42

       Take copious notes. It's been one of my really big hacks in life, is I, I would say about 10 years ago, what started happening is I would have repeat clients who book me for another show, and I have a certain set list. And with what I do, you don't wanna repeat tricks over and over because they lose a lot of their pizzazz and appeal. So I, I'd start panicking, be like, "What did I do for them? Oh my God." And then I realized that what I had done for them was asymmetrically special to them and not as special to me. So you meet someone, and you guessed their ATM PIN code two years ago, right? "Oh, you, you remember?" "I don't remember it 'cause I've done 317 shows since you, but the feeling that I gave you was so strong and so adamant." And I've done things where I guess, I guess the name of kids before they're born from parents, and I will give them notes, and these will be kept in scrapbooks. I've met kids who are 10 years old-
9. 38:36 – 41:59

   The Best Ways to Detect Deception

   1. CWChris Williamson38:36

      What about deception? How can people better spot liars?

   2. OPOz Pearlman38:40

      So people... I wish I had a, a, a clear-cut way, and I don't wanna lie to people and tell them, "Here's how you can know who's lying." I feel that anyone who does that is not telling you the truth because people are different, right? We're all different, but all of us have kind of guiding principles that if you observe people, you can tell when something's different. Benchmarks. The same way that you can watch the stock market and you see is it doing better or worse, and that's how you can judge your financial advisor. How did you do against the S&P last year?

   3. CWChris Williamson39:08

      Mm.

   4. OPOz Pearlman39:08

      Right? Oh, we had a great year. How did the S&P do? You got 13%. That was 15%. You're not better. So people, to observe them when they're deceptive, most people add more details when they lie. They add more details to a story. "Oh, you know, I, I wanna come, but my daughter's this and that" Bullshits, right? Like, as soon as you start adding in more, you're feeling the need to prove beyond.

   5. CWChris Williamson39:29

      Yeah. Yeah.

   6. OPOz Pearlman39:30

      When people tend to be cut and dry and say, "I'm really sorry, I can't make it," boom, that tends to be true.

   7. CWChris Williamson39:34

      Yep.

   8. OPOz Pearlman39:35

      Not always, but more often than not. Now, there are cases where certain people are, are, are tight on words. They're not very garrulous. So somebody who might say, "I can't make it" might be lying to you. Is that different than how they normally talk? Check their cadence. I believe that AI in the very near future will become incredibly good at detecting deception because if you can watch somebody when they lie, watch somebody when they tell the truth, watch both of those with several examples... I'm surprised they're not doing it already, to be honest. Is that you can now view the difference purely by objective measures of how much time between their words, when they then speed up, right? All of those things that are very hard to control, your body does it the same way your heart rate goes up if you had a bender last night. Your body doesn't lie. You can't control the fact that if you go for a workout and you're in zone three the whole time when normally you'd be zone two heart rate, oh man, my body's working harder than normal. So I think that catching people in lies is much easier than people expect. I do it in a very hyper-focused way for my show, which is at the end of the day, one out of 52 cards in this case. Or pick a name, think of the first letter. You'll be like, "That's impossible. What was 26 letters?" Also, nobody's name starts with a Q, X, or a Z almost ever, so we can throw out those three, right? I have a skill that looks impossible but that I've been studying for 30 years, hence there's kind of tactics I use.

   9. CWChris Williamson41:00

      Mm. Yeah. I, uh, I think it's an interesting one to think about what AI's able to do to detect that because you've already got it with the baseline metrics of a, uh, polygraph.

   10. OPOz Pearlman41:11

       Right, which is not... Those are not 100% at all.

   11. CWChris Williamson41:15

       You think that the verbal and visual cues of someone's speech pattern, cadence, observing their face would be more accurate than a polygraph if you had a bit of a data set?

   12. OPOz Pearlman41:24

       I think very soon, yes. I think so.

   13. CWChris Williamson41:26

       Wow.

   14. OPOz Pearlman41:27

       I think that in, in conjunction with the polygraph, but we're not gonna be able to polygraph people very often.

   15. CWChris Williamson41:31

       Yeah, just on the street.

   16. OPOz Pearlman41:32

       It's a whole to-do. Have you ever been polygraphed?

   17. CWChris Williamson41:33

       No. Have you?

   18. OPOz Pearlman41:34

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson41:34

       How... Were you able to beat it?

   20. OPOz Pearlman41:36

       So I can't tell you if I was able to beat it. I was actually on a TV game show. [laughs]

   21. CWChris Williamson41:40

       Okay. Which side? Were you one of the contestants or one of the-

   22. OPOz Pearlman41:43

       Contestants.

   23. CWChris Williamson41:43

       Okay.

   24. OPOz Pearlman41:44

       Yeah. And so I don't know if I could tell you because the only way to know if you beat it is you'd have to have access to the results, and we'd have to sit there and do it together.

   25. CWChris Williamson41:51

       Right.

   26. OPOz Pearlman41:51

       Which I've... That's actually a pretty good idea for a show.

   27. CWChris Williamson41:54

       Yes.

   28. OPOz Pearlman41:54

       But I'm certain that you can.

   29. CWChris Williamson41:54

       To see who the best deceiver is?

   30. OPOz Pearlman41:56

       Sure.
10. 41:59 – 48:44

    How to Become Indispensable to People

    1. OPOz Pearlman41:59

       [laughs]

    2. CWChris Williamson41:59

       What about... You, you mentioned, you mentioned sales. You mentioned sales there. What, uh, what are some of the ways that you teach people to become better salespeople, more confident as they step into a room where they're nervous, more commanding and likable?

    3. OPOz Pearlman42:12

       Being vulnerable is a huge one. So if, if you feel nervous, just saying that. It's just allowing people into your head and saying, "Hey, I-"I've never done this before. I'm actually quite nervous right now, but you seem like a great person. I just wanna tell you more about what I'm... Like, just anything that opens you up that allows you to be human. People hate fakeness. I don't... Uh, if you have somebody who's a great salesperson, but they feel fake to you, "Hey, I gotta tell you," you just see that's not you. I can instantly detect deception, that that's not really you right now. And you can detect it in a performer, you can detect it in a politician, you can detect it in people very clearly. There's a spider sense we have-

    4. CWChris Williamson42:50

       Hmm

    5. OPOz Pearlman42:50

       ... that we can't explain. But right now, if somebody was in the room that I didn't know watching me behind my back, right, that wasn't here, I could feel it. Do, do you know what I mean? I don't know if it's sonar, I don't know where it comes from, but there's some way that you can sense a presence near you. And I'm not talking about ghosts, I'm just meaning you can feel someone next to you, situational awareness.

    6. CWChris Williamson43:08

       Mm-hmm.

    7. OPOz Pearlman43:09

       I think there's something similar to that where you can detect authenticity. And for me, if you watch my show and you meet me in real life, I'm the same person, I'm just slightly exaggerated. A lot of other people that do what I do aren't the same person when you meet them. Offstage, they're not the same. Comedians especially are not the same people. Actors and actresses, day and night.

    8. CWChris Williamson43:28

       By design.

    9. OPOz Pearlman43:28

       Well, by design, but also it's shocking when you meet some people and you're like, "Oh, you're so different than what I expected." It's kind of a cool thing. You've probably met a lot of famous people, but you're, you're just not at all the person I thought you would be. So right away, I think vulnerability is a huge one, being able to open up to somebody at a moment's notice and being real with them. Another one is know what resistance is going to occur. I call it channel your inner mentalist. Try to think like they think. Stop thinking like you. Most of us don't think in terms of benefits-oriented language. I, I somehow learned this very young, which is if I go up to a restaurant, 'cause my hustle when I was 14 years old, I started doing magic tricks and I needed to buy more magic tricks, was I went to restaurants and I would get a job being a strolling magician at the restaurant. And I real-

    10. CWChris Williamson44:11

        At 14?

    11. OPOz Pearlman44:12

        At 14. I started when I was 13. But at 14, I needed to make money. My folks had gotten divorced, kind of really messy, and I... We had no money, so it's not like I had no disposable income to be like, "Give me an allowance to buy this." So for me to keep doing more tricks, which I loved, I needed to go work. My mom was like, "Well, go work." And so there was another restaurant magician somewhere else in the city. So I knew that was, uh, something you could do, and get tips and get parties and print business cards. But I realized if I go in the restaurant and just show them tricks, what makes me special, they don't care about that. They really... They, they might be cool, but so what? What they care about is we have a line of people waiting to get seats. They're a little annoyed, they're on edge. Go entertain them while they're waiting. Someone just had to send back a steak, it was overcooked. You know what? Go sweeten the deal. Go make them happy, because the next 10, 15 minutes while everyone else is eating, they're kinda low-level pissed off. Now we have this little, you know, song and dance boy. Head on over. And so I realized that the language I could use for them wasn't, "They're gonna be amazed." They don't care about amazed. Every single person that leaves this restaurant today is going to walk up to you and say what a great time they had and how they're gonna come back again with friends. Boom. That's what they wanna hear. The manager wants to hear about sales, not about how good my tricks are. So the more you can position yourself as a value add to the people around you and what's important to them, right, that's what's gonna open doors.

    12. CWChris Williamson45:33

        Hmm.

    13. OPOz Pearlman45:33

        That's what opened doors for me.

    14. CWChris Williamson45:34

        I had Will Guidara on.

    15. OPOz Pearlman45:36

        Oh, yeah. Great.

    16. CWChris Williamson45:36

        Unreasonable-

    17. OPOz Pearlman45:37

        I just saw his book. So funny.

    18. CWChris Williamson45:38

        Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    19. OPOz Pearlman45:38

        It's everywhere.

    20. CWChris Williamson45:39

        Yeah, yeah, he's crushed it. So, uh, 11 Park Ave-

    21. OPOz Pearlman45:42

        Of course

    22. CWChris Williamson45:42

        ... would be number one restaurant in the world for a while.

    23. OPOz Pearlman45:45

        11 Madison.

    24. CWChris Williamson45:45

        11... Is it 11 Madison? I think so.

    25. OPOz Pearlman45:48

        Yeah, I think so.

    26. CWChris Williamson45:48

        Okay. Um, uh, anyway, he said, uh, he was telling me this, some of the crazy stuff that he'd done. Uh, one of them was a couple had supposedly got married that day, and the wedding party was such a catastrophe that they weren't able to have the reception. They'd d- done the marriage thing, but two families bickering, g- backbiting, power games, all the rest of it, and they had gone for dinner at this place. They'd booked a dinner for that evening. So one of the staff made it her job to work out... They didn't have a first dance. Made it her job to work out what the first dance song would be, and they slowed the service for this couple j- a little bit.

    27. OPOz Pearlman46:28

        Yep.

    28. CWChris Williamson46:28

        So they were the only... By the end of the evening, they were the only people left in the entire restaurant, and I think there's two floors to it. And once they'd finished up, they said, "Oh, just head upstairs. We've g- we've, we've gotta thank you for, for..." They go into the elevator and they go up, and as they walk out, they played the first song that they would have had at their wedding, and all of the staff had left. Slowly, all of the different serving staff had left. They'd thought, "F- you know, we're kind of left here. We were the last people here." They were going upstairs. So they were welcomed for their first dance-

    29. OPOz Pearlman46:57

        Wow

    30. CWChris Williamson46:57

        ... with the song, and they, they've never... That, what an unbelievable way to reverse... Like, a even cooler story-
11. 48:44 – 54:06

    Why You Should Try to Boost Your Confidence

    1. CWChris Williamson48:44

       What about confidence? A lot of the time people step into a room, they're nervous.

    2. OPOz Pearlman48:47

       Yep.

    3. CWChris Williamson48:47

       They are about to do some big presentation or some pitch. I understand that likability can come from vulnerability. I think that's a, a cool way to connect-

    4. OPOz Pearlman48:54

       Yes

    5. CWChris Williamson48:54

       ... and also to kind of stop the additional level of pressure and shame that you feel about having this hidden thing. You have this secret that you're hiding from someone, which is that I do feel nervous or whatever.

    6. OPOz Pearlman49:07

       Right.

    7. CWChris Williamson49:07

       But how about getting over the nervousness, feeling more confident, feeling more c- more, uh, compelling and prepared when you step in?

    8. OPOz Pearlman49:14

       Confidence is a funny one because once you become confident, you ask yourself, "Why wasn't I confident five, 10, 20 years ago," right? Experience leads to it. How do you fast track it?

    9. CWChris Williamson49:22

       Mm-hmm.

    10. OPOz Pearlman49:23

        So I had a kind of a paradigm shift when I was young, when I was about 14, which is I would go up to restaurants, I would go to the restaurants, I would be going up to somebody at a point where they don't want me at all to walk up to them.

    11. CWChris Williamson49:33

        Mm-hmm.

    12. OPOz Pearlman49:34

        It's kind of like a telemarketer call. I'm 14 years old. I walk up to your table-

    13. CWChris Williamson49:38

        [laughs] Fuck off, kid.

    14. OPOz Pearlman49:39

        You... Exactly.

    15. CWChris Williamson49:40

        [laughs]

    16. OPOz Pearlman49:40

        Exactly. You're... So right away I started to understand that when I walk up to you, if, if they don't like me or they don't like what I'm... my trick or anything about the approach went wrong, it's just negative. Some people wouldn't be that kind. They'd be apathetic. Even worse than telling you, "Oh, get away"-

    17. CWChris Williamson49:54

        Yeah

    18. OPOz Pearlman49:54

        ... is to just sit there and not pay attention and look at you awkwardly, which is just brutal.

    19. CWChris Williamson49:58

        Yeah.

    20. OPOz Pearlman49:58

        Just brutal. And so here's what happened. That same thing you talk about confidence, I would leave the table furious. I would feel terrible. I... If that happened at two or three tables in a row, it would compound. And by the time I got to the fourth table, even if they were nice to me, I kinda hated them. I had low-

    21. CWChris Williamson50:12

        It's like a comedian chasing the audience

    22. OPOz Pearlman50:14

        ... but I had low level rage, and I realized-

    23. CWChris Williamson50:17

        [laughs]

    24. OPOz Pearlman50:17

        But truly, I can't, I can't allow you that power over me. I had this re- And here's why. It was selfish. Because I go, "If I can't keep doing this, I'm not gonna be able to buy more tricks." It was, it was very A to B, very linear. And I go, "If I can't buy more tricks, how am I gonna get better at this thing?" So I said, "I have to find a way around this." It was a do or die in my mind of I can't allow the audience, or in anybody else's case, the people around me to dictate my self-worth and my confidence. And what I did was almost a weird schizophrenic multiple personality thing. I decided that I was almost two people. And in my brain I created this like split where I said, "They don't actually know me. The people that were just not nice to me, they don't know me, Oz Pearlman. They met Oz the magician." And I thought the same way that a movie star has an agent, the agent handles the negotiations for contracts, right? You don't go to Brad Pitt and say, "You can't have this trailer. I'm not paying you 18 mil. You get 60 mil." He has somebody who does that for him, who doesn't... who deals with the dirty work. Now most of us in life don't have agents. So I decided that I now have an agent in my mind, and when I walk up to you, if you don't like me and you were nasty to me, I don't care at all. The agent handled that. That wasn't me. I didn't take it personal anymore. And I know that sounds easier to s- to, to say than to do, but I truly somehow disconnected the pain associated with rejection, which is really what it is for most people, the pain and fear of rejection, and decided to put that on someone else who wasn't my core psyche. The best way I can liken it as a visual metaphor is if you have a bowl of water, and if I take salt and I pour salt in the water, that water, once you stir it, is salt water. There's nothing you can do about it. But if you could somehow find a way to insert a piece of plexiglass in the middle, it's invisible, and I poured salt into only one side, this other side stays fine. So I did this as a survival tactic at a young age, because otherwise I don't think I could have made it through continuing to do this job because the rejection is so, is so pronounced-

    25. CWChris Williamson52:16

        Mm

    26. OPOz Pearlman52:16

        ... when somebody just dislikes you. It's the same as romantic rejection. I had trouble with that as a teenager, that I wish I had that agent in my mind. I'm like, "No, it wasn't the trick."

    27. CWChris Williamson52:25

        You weren't able-

    28. OPOz Pearlman52:25

        "She didn't like me." [laughs]

    29. CWChris Williamson52:26

        You weren't able to apply the agent model to the romantic world?

    30. OPOz Pearlman52:29

        No, because I, like I didn't have anything. There was no buffer. I'm like, "She just doesn't like me. Damn it. I don't know what to do. I can't get any taller."
12. 54:06 – 1:00:13

    Is Everyone Susceptible to Manipulation?

    1. CWChris Williamson54:07

       If you know these techniques so well, how good are you at stopping yourself from being manipulated?

    2. OPOz Pearlman54:12

       N- not great. There's... It's funny because-

    3. CWChris Williamson54:15

       Goddammit, dude.

    4. OPOz Pearlman54:16

       [laughs] I think that- th- that- that's funny because it- it's, it's almost like the chef who goes home. You know, we're-

    5. CWChris Williamson54:23

       Cooks shit food

    6. OPOz Pearlman54:23

       ... and eats, and eats like ch- you know, exactly. It's ramen.

    7. CWChris Williamson54:25

       Yeah.

    8. OPOz Pearlman54:26

       So figure that one out. Three Michelin stars, best restaurant in the world-

    9. CWChris Williamson54:29

       Yeah

    10. OPOz Pearlman54:29

        ... hitting up Shake Shack afterwards. But I think that I'm, I'm very astute at being manipulated in certain parts of my life versus like my kids can manipulate me like crazy. That love gene will, will... They go like, "Um, mom said you could do that." I'm like, "Did she though? Did she?" It's like full manipulation.

    11. CWChris Williamson54:45

        I'm sure she did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    12. OPOz Pearlman54:46

        Like my son, this is so funny. He's in like a, a after school, uh, math program where I know for a fact he's not allowed to use a calculator, but he was so damn convincing. He's gonna love when he hears this. My, m- my, my nine-year-old's gonna love this. And he's like, "No, we're allowed because we're going into fifth grade." And he goes, "For certain word problems, she told us that we should use a calculator because it enhances our skills." And I go, "There's just no way that's true. Like email her." And so he was trying to call my bluff. So I, I-

    13. CWChris Williamson55:11

        He knew that he, you weren't gonna email her

    14. OPOz Pearlman55:12

        ... I fricking emailed her, okay? And here's what happened. She writes me back the most dismissive email of like, "All of our questions are designed for no calculators. So no, there's no calc-..." As if I'm an idiot.

    15. CWChris Williamson55:23

        Yeah.

    16. OPOz Pearlman55:23

        Meanwhile, I now get in trouble from my wife for how did you allow him to influence you-

    17. CWChris Williamson55:26

        He'd been outwitted by a nine-year-old

    18. OPOz Pearlman55:27

        ... that you even emailed. And now he looked at me because he couldn't believe that he had gotten me to email the teacher. So to answer-

    19. CWChris Williamson55:33

        So he wins either way.

    20. OPOz Pearlman55:34

        Yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson55:34

        Either gets to use the calculator or managed to get dad in trouble and look like an idiot.

    22. OPOz Pearlman55:37

        He triple wins because if he hears this podcast, he's gonna be in heaven when he hears this.

    23. CWChris Williamson55:40

        Damn it.

    24. OPOz Pearlman55:41

        So yes, it was full manipulation.

    25. CWChris Williamson55:43

        Yeah.

    26. OPOz Pearlman55:43

        I can't lie to you and pretend that I'm not manipulated either.

    27. CWChris Williamson55:45

        Mm-hmm.

    28. OPOz Pearlman55:46

        But again, I have a hyper-specific focus on what I use man- manipulation for.

    29. CWChris Williamson55:51

        Mm.

    30. OPOz Pearlman55:52

        I am an honest con man, if that makes sense. Our contract is not one of, I'm gonna talk to your dead aunt and tell you things and you're gonna pay me money.
13. 1:00:13 – 1:02:23

    How Similar Are Comedians and Mentalists?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:00:13

       Are you... You must be familiar with a bunch of-Tangential skill sets

    2. OPOz Pearlman1:00:18

       Yeah

    3. CWChris Williamson1:00:18

       ... hypnotism, magicians. Who else are behind, who else is sort of, if there was a dressing room of people doing stuff similar to yours, magicians, hypnotists, who else is in there?

    4. OPOz Pearlman1:00:27

       I would say stand-up comedians.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:00:28

       Right.

    6. OPOz Pearlman1:00:28

       Because stand-up comedians, in essence, are hypnotizing an audience in a certain way, and the best ones are guiding you kind of up and down, and there's a rhythm to it. And my show has a rhythm. So if you were to watch a full show, I have, I keep playing devil's advocate as I go. If you were to watch my full performance, which I'm starting a tour, so should we, should we plug this now?

    7. CWChris Williamson1:00:47

       Absolutely, yeah.

    8. OPOz Pearlman1:00:48

       So I'm, I don't know when this comes out, but May 2nd I'm at the Wynn in Las Vegas. Uh, June 5th I'm at the Borgata in Atlantic City, and coming this summer I'm shooting a Netflix special, which is gonna be, I don't know the exact date yet, I don't wanna, but it's gonna be in July in New York City. And all those tickets-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:01:01

       Where should people go to find out?

    10. OPOz Pearlman1:01:03

        Everything is on my social. You can just click the link, but I'm @OzTheMentalist. So it's @ O-Z, looks like Oz, the mentalist on everything.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:01:11

        Cool.

    12. OPOz Pearlman1:01:11

        Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, go there, click the link, get tickets, come see this for yourself.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:01:16

        Unreal. I had, uh, Dr. David Spiegel on the show, and he is Stanford's head of the, uh, hypnotism, e- evidence based sort of, uh, hypnotism lab. And he was saying that you can have a single one-time intervention for lifetime smoking addiction that's got a 25% chance of single intervention, full cessation for the rest-

    14. OPOz Pearlman1:01:39

        Wow

    15. CWChris Williamson1:01:39

        ... of your life. And I think when you do two or three or four sessions, that goes up to 50 to, uh, 60%.

    16. OPOz Pearlman1:01:45

        But again, I would say that that, and ask him, is that against somebody's will? So if somebody doesn't-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:01:49

        Whatever

    18. OPOz Pearlman1:01:50

        ... want to quit smoking, then that won't work is my opinion. But if somebody comes in and they now connect a core memory of something disgusting, something that repulses you. A- again, there's different ways that they do it, but I've seen smoking cessation sessions, and now if you connect the two together inextricably in your mind, where this thought of doing this is no longer my feeling of I want to have coffee and a cigarette in the morning.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:02:12

        Mm.

    20. OPOz Pearlman1:02:12

        That feeling of it now feels disgusting. It feels like if you were to take a, a bunch of cockroaches and crunch them in your mouth. If you could create those two together in your mind on a subconscious level, then you won't be able to do it anymore. It will

14. 1:02:23 – 1:09:27

    Can We Train Ourselves to Lucid Dream?

    1. OPOz Pearlman1:02:23

       disgust you.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:02:23

       Isn't it funny that the human brain has got these sort of weird keyholes-

    3. OPOz Pearlman1:02:28

       Yeah, it's trickled

    4. CWChris Williamson1:02:28

       ... that you're able to slot into, that hypnotism is able to slot into, that comedy is able to slot into? And I, and with comedy you can kind of see why, because normal day-to-day human interaction, people say things, and you both share in a little bit of surprise and delight. Isn't that cool? When you get toward hypnotism, you go, what is the mechanism that's going on inside of the human brain? Why is it there? Is it purpose-built?

    5. OPOz Pearlman1:02:53

       Right.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:02:53

       Or is this a spandrel in the same way that a light bulb gives off light, but it also gives off heat? It's not supposed to give off the heat, the heat is just a by-product of the light. Are human brains meant to have this? Is it built in for us to be suggestible, or is it a by-product of us having a few other attributes that need to be important, and by playing with it for a few thousand years, humans have found out, huh, actually I can tell something about your cards. I can tell something about your life. I can suggest you to behave in this sort of a way, or I can encourage you to stop or start doing something.

    7. OPOz Pearlman1:03:25

       Well, why do we dream? That's a... Have you ever, have you ever lucid dreamed?

    8. CWChris Williamson1:03:29

       A little. A little. Not much.

    9. OPOz Pearlman1:03:31

       So when I was in high school, and I, this is no connection. I wasn't doing mentalism, I was doing magic, but I really was very into like Carlos Castaneda. I was introduced to those books, and just some with lucid dreaming and remote viewing, and all of this kind of, uh, paris- paranormal things, which I didn't know if I believed or not, but lucid dreaming is real. And for about six months, I, I wrote a paper on it my senior year in a psychology class, and I was doing it. So lucid dreaming, do you know the techniques to do it? These might be rudimentary 'cause they go back about 25 years.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:03:59

        Okay.

    11. OPOz Pearlman1:04:00

        You do reality testing. So what I used to do is I would wear a watch, and I became almost OCD level. I would check my watch every five minutes. It's kinda like the Leonardo DiCaprio Inception where he spins it. I would check my watch every five minutes, and you have to start doing this religiously so it becomes a tick. Not a big deal. I'd check my watch, I'd look at it, I'd look away, I'd look back and make sure it was the same time. I did this at school every day. I did this throughout the day every day. Then, as you're going to bed, this, I didn't invent any of this. This is all from a book. There's, I, I hope I'm saying this word correctly, but it's the hypnagogic stage. Hypnago- do you know how to say that word?

    12. CWChris Williamson1:04:35

        Yep, yep.

    13. OPOz Pearlman1:04:35

        So as you're falling asleep, the best way to do it is hold your arm at your side up, and you know that moment when you jolt right before you f- that's when your brain goes into that kind of, that's the most suggestible part of your whole night. If you can hold your arm up right before you go to sleep, everyone try it, and right when you feel that, that means you went into it. Now start self suggesting. In my mind, I would say, "I will remember my dream. I will remember my dream." And you will nod off to bed within the next, for most people, 30 to 45 seconds once you feel that jolt. If you say that as the last thing before you go to bed, what started happening is you will start to remember anywhere from three, four, up to eight dreams a night. This was my, my [laughs] my project, and you'd wake up for a minute in between the dreams. If you want, you could write them down, but you'd start having very vivid dreams. And within about a week of doing this, the checking my watch in my dream, I would now check my watch. It's fully Leonardo DiCaprio. I'd look away. I'd look back. The watch is always a different time if you're in a dream. It never has consistency. So I'd look at it. Now your brain goes into overdrive trying to explain, well, this is the reason why. The same reason that an alarm in your, in your house turns into a car honking in a dream.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:05:41

        Mm-hmm.

    15. OPOz Pearlman1:05:41

        Do you know what I mean, before you wake up?

    16. CWChris Williamson1:05:43

        Mm-hmm.

    17. OPOz Pearlman1:05:43

        So now your mind is racing against you to try to pull yourself out. So as you get better at it, you realize, "I'm dreaming right now. This isn't real. I will not wake up," and now you can take control of your dream. And it's actually the coolest thing in the world if you can put the w- in the work to do it. I have had moments where I've been lucid since without doing, just spontaneous, but I used to have lucid dreams almost every night, and it was the coolest thing.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:06:06

        It's like playing a video game while you're asleep.

    19. OPOz Pearlman1:06:07

        It is truly. It's better-

    20. CWChris Williamson1:06:08

        The original virtual reality

    21. OPOz Pearlman1:06:10

        ... it's better than virtual reality 'cause it's real.Yeah, it's, it's incredible. It's worth... It's not that hard to do, it's just most people don't put in the work. I haven't put in the work. I don't sleep that much anymore. [laughs] I've got five kids. But, like, it's, it was super cool at the time, and I think that I realized at that point there's much more to the mind, and there are these things which I don't think are explainable.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:06:28

        Mm.

    23. OPOz Pearlman1:06:28

        They're not mystical. But why is that?

    24. CWChris Williamson1:06:30

        Yeah.

    25. OPOz Pearlman1:06:31

        Why is that a skill that I could learn within a week and be able to just take control of my dreams?

    26. CWChris Williamson1:06:35

        It's like a backdoor in a computer program. It wasn't designed to necessarily be there, but for some reason it is, and because we've tested and played around with it so much, people have found these ways to do it. How long did it take you to do the, to learn to lucid dream?

    27. OPOz Pearlman1:06:46

        I think within less than a week I was able to start doing it somewhat consistently. And then it was v- because if you, again, if you were to just do that, little changes, you know, like the atomic habits you have to do, like small... This was one that wasn't that hard. Every five minutes, check my watch. I would always check my watch anyway, but this was just more obsessive, but I would only look at it once. That was the double tap. Look at it, take a moment, then look back. If you just did that, it started to become something. And then when you, in the dream it was so crazy, because the dreams are just as real. When was the last dream you remember?

    28. CWChris Williamson1:07:19

        Uh-

    29. OPOz Pearlman1:07:19

        'Cause I don't remember my dreams that frequently anymore.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:07:21

        Uh, I had one last night that I kind of remember.
15. 1:09:27 – 1:14:26

    How to Recover When a Trick Goes Wrong

    1. CWChris Williamson1:09:27

       at checkout. When tricks go wrong-

    2. OPOz Pearlman1:09:30

       Mm-hmm

    3. CWChris Williamson1:09:31

       ... how... First off, do I, do, do I-

    4. OPOz Pearlman1:09:33

       They never go wrong. I'm perfect, Chris. No, uh, they, they definitely go wrong.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:09:36

       Do any times come to mind where there was a really big faceplant? And then I'm also interested in how you recover from that in front of a live audience, whether it's big or small, because I think that, you know, someone-

    6. OPOz Pearlman1:09:47

       Yes

    7. CWChris Williamson1:09:47

       ... meant to do something, they messed up this thing that they'd maybe planned or prepared. Perhaps it was their fault or it wasn't their fault, something occurred just at the right moment or the wrong moment.

    8. OPOz Pearlman1:09:56

       Sure.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:09:56

       Or on a sales call, they quote the wrong number and that kind of, they notice themselves starting to lose it. What have you learned about dealing with sort of failure in the moment? Can we talk about sort of the more fluffy side of failure, seeing yourself-

    10. OPOz Pearlman1:10:07

        Yes

    11. CWChris Williamson1:10:08

        ... as a failure, the self-labeling, the overcoming of the self-rejection and the esteem side? But I think in the moment winning back, uh, because you have to do that. If you're-

    12. OPOz Pearlman1:10:16

        Right

    13. CWChris Williamson1:10:16

        ... at the table and you mess up the first one, you go, "I, I think I might be able to salvage this."

    14. OPOz Pearlman1:10:19

        Right.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:10:20

        What have you learned about dealing with it emotionally, psychologically, and then also trying to charmingly bring that back around?

    16. OPOz Pearlman1:10:26

        So I've gotten better, like, on a, a couple fronts. One, I've gotten better at realizing that people remember, uh, the beginning and the end more than the middle.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:10:33

        Mm-hmm.

    18. OPOz Pearlman1:10:34

        So how you leave someone is so much more important than what happens before that. If you can win somebody back over, that will be the last feeling they leave with.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:10:41

        Peak-end rule.

    20. OPOz Pearlman1:10:41

        Yeah. Huge. And people forget the misses and remember the hits. So and that's the key to psychics. So a lot of psychics, if you were to sit in a room and check off what did you get right, what did you get right, what did you get right, they mostly get things wrong, right? It's kind of the Roger Federer. He only won 54% of his points.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:10:56

        Yeah.

    22. OPOz Pearlman1:10:56

        He's arguably one of the greatest of all time.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:10:58

        I love that s- I love that stat.

    24. OPOz Pearlman1:10:58

        It's crazy.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:10:59

        Yeah. Won 54% of his points but 80% of his games.

    26. OPOz Pearlman1:11:01

        Exactly.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:11:02

        Yeah.

    28. OPOz Pearlman1:11:02

        It's wild. So the, win the right point. So with me, I realize that how I end is the most important in a show, and the, the ones that move you. For me, it's 'cause I'm a performer, that what matters, but there are still major faceplants. There are things that go wrong, and I actually find I learn way more, cliche, but from the mistakes. Because if there, it's a mistake that I completely didn't see coming, it really eats me up of like, "What happened? How did I misjudge that so much?"

    29. CWChris Williamson1:11:28

        Mm-hmm.

    30. OPOz Pearlman1:11:28

        And some of those you learn from, some of those you kinda take the hit and you move on. I learned in a big way for me is that defining something as a mistake has been a gray area. For years the only way that you know if I made a mistake is if you know what wasn't a mistake. Which is funny because-
16. 1:14:26 – 1:25:44

    Will Oz Be Able to Trick Donald Trump?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:14:26

       So have you got something special planned for-

    2. OPOz Pearlman1:14:28

       Oh my God

    3. CWChris Williamson1:14:28

       ... The Donald?

    4. OPOz Pearlman1:14:29

       The most special thing I've ever planned in my life, I think.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:14:31

       [laughs]

    6. OPOz Pearlman1:14:32

       I think, I, again, you never know what will happen, but my hope is that it's kind of like the Joe Rogan moment. When I, when I guessed Joe Rogan's PIN code, there was a feeling of there's no way that Joe was in on this. There's no way... And Joe didn't even know that was gonna happen, 'cause you can register surprise very clearly. It's very hard to fake surprise

    7. CWChris Williamson1:14:50

       Yep

    8. OPOz Pearlman1:14:50

       It's truly, like even an actor or actress to say, " [gasps] Oh," if you know what's happening, you can't. That's why a lot of the scenes they do that are surprises-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:14:56

       First take

    10. OPOz Pearlman1:14:56

        ... they actually f-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:14:57

        Yeah

    12. OPOz Pearlman1:14:57

        ... first take surprise them

    13. CWChris Williamson1:14:59

        Yeah

    14. OPOz Pearlman1:14:59

        Uh, like in Die Hard.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:15:00

        You know, sorry-

    16. OPOz Pearlman1:15:01

        Do you know the Die Hard when the drop, the, when-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:15:03

        In the what?

    18. OPOz Pearlman1:15:04

        Uh, Alan, is it Alan, what's his name, Alan Rickman? Okay, so they-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:15:07

        Yeah

    20. OPOz Pearlman1:15:07

        ... when he gets dro-... Oh, spoiler alert, Die Hard 1 [laughs]

    21. CWChris Williamson1:15:09

        Yeah. I mean, it's, it's-

    22. OPOz Pearlman1:15:10

        Sorry for anyone who hasn't seen it, but it's been 30 years

    23. CWChris Williamson1:15:12

        ... 30 years old. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    24. OPOz Pearlman1:15:13

        The drop, I was told, I think I saw the behind-the-scenes, the director's cut, is, do you know at the end when he gets-

    25. CWChris Williamson1:15:17

        Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

    26. OPOz Pearlman1:15:18

        ... that they didn't rehearse that, and in the first take they actually dropped him. Like, do you understand that he was, it was... Yes. So the first one-

    27. CWChris Williamson1:15:24

        Yeah, I remember that scene

    28. OPOz Pearlman1:15:24

        ... was an honest one, because otherwise-

    29. CWChris Williamson1:15:26

        I remember that scene

    30. OPOz Pearlman1:15:26

        ... it's just like shooting a gun. If you know, you jolt up because you register before you shoot that you're gonna feel it.
17. 1:25:44 – 1:29:43

    How Oz Hacks Your Sense of Reality

    1. CWChris Williamson1:25:44

       I'm interested in what you think your work teaches us about how unreliable our perception of reality is, you know?

    2. OPOz Pearlman1:25:50

       Very.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:25:50

       Yeah. Uh, w- what have you learned about that, about people's attachments to reality?

    4. OPOz Pearlman1:25:54

       I can't believe... So I, this is something that I've kind of had to process, is yes, I've spent 30 years doing this, and I've really studied this, and it's been my mission to exactly create these moments of wonder and amazement that can't be explained by seemingly reverse engineering the human mind. Knowing how people think and using that knowledge against you in a certain way. And doing this, I've done this for some of the most successful and literally of the top 10 wealthiest people in the world, the majority of them. And knowing that they've run companies, built companies, and I'm not saying that your measure of wealth is a measure of your intelligence. I've also done this for people who've won Nobel Prizes. None of those things are de facto. Your IQ doesn't have anything to do with the way in which I fool you-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:26:32

       Mm

    6. OPOz Pearlman1:26:32

       ... and use your behavioral, like, your knowledge of your behavior against you, and knowing how people think to trick them-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:26:39

       Mm

    8. OPOz Pearlman1:26:40

       ... in a certain way, because misdirection, magic, a lot of things, the core principles, what do I... I'm blown away by how easily people can be fooled. It's wild because it's like what you just said. You said there's a keyhole in the back.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:26:53

       Yeah.

    10. OPOz Pearlman1:26:53

        There's a certain set of tricks. It's like a lock that you, you have to... You, you know certain locks, the key doesn't really work. I call it the Jiggle Master 3000, but if you hit the door a certain way, click up, click over, it opens.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:27:04

        Yeah.

    12. OPOz Pearlman1:27:04

        Like, I had one of those apartments in college-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:27:06

        Mm-hmm

    14. OPOz Pearlman1:27:06

        ... where if I gave you the key, you could, you'd be like, "Dude, the key's broken."

    15. CWChris Williamson1:27:09

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    16. OPOz Pearlman1:27:09

        And I'm like, "No, no, no."

    17. CWChris Williamson1:27:10

        It's both a combination lock and a keyhole.

    18. OPOz Pearlman1:27:11

        It's everything.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:27:12

        Yeah.

    20. OPOz Pearlman1:27:12

        I have to lift it up while I do it, 'cause the lock is not straight, and then I have to kinda like-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:27:16

        Yeah, yeah, yeah

    22. OPOz Pearlman1:27:16

        ... jiggle this way and then turn.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:27:17

        Yeah.

    24. OPOz Pearlman1:27:17

        And if I did it, I'm like, "Don't you know?" They go, "Dude, it's broken." [laughs]

    25. CWChris Williamson1:27:20

        Yeah.

    26. OPOz Pearlman1:27:21

        It's a Jiggle Master 3000. Your brain is the same way, and all I've done is learned how to use the keys in different way, where if it doesn't jiggle this way, if I say to you this, "Do this," and you're like, "No," I can see that you're gonna move a little this way, a little this way, and now I've got you.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:27:35

        Mm.

    28. OPOz Pearlman1:27:35

        And what people want in general is to feel like they're in control. And I know when people heckle me, people always think the hecklers are the tough ones, the skeptics. I think that's easier. Because if you can figure out what is the core motivating factor for them, what is it? Is it attention? Is it not looking like they're stupid? Is it not being the center of attention?

    29. CWChris Williamson1:27:54

        Yeah.

    30. OPOz Pearlman1:27:55

        What's driving their behavior at this moment? If you can figure out what that is, give them what they want within a seeming set of parameters that they've chosen, but you've chosen. So again, within the guise of my show, that person wants to call me out, great. I'm prepared for it. Call me out. "Oh man, you're a smart guy. You know exactly..." I say, "Come on up here. Let's get you." And now you've gotten that shine. You've gotten that love. You've felt like you're the smarter person. I've shown you behind the curtain in a certain way for certain people, and then I do something you don't understand that's more impressive. Now you've bought in.
18. 1:29:43 – 1:36:10

    Why Endurance Training Builds Mental Toughness

    1. OPOz Pearlman1:29:43

       and it was awesome.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:29:43

       Are you still doing... I know you said you ran with Casey Neistat yesterday.

    3. OPOz Pearlman1:29:46

       Yeah.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:29:47

       Are you still pushing on the endurance stuff at the moment-

    5. OPOz Pearlman1:29:49

       Yeah

    6. CWChris Williamson1:29:49

       ... or what?

    7. OPOz Pearlman1:29:49

       So I, right now, what's happened, and I always have excuses. Do you know, do you know Ken Rideout?

    8. CWChris Williamson1:29:54

       Yes.

    9. OPOz Pearlman1:29:55

       Yes. I just did his podcast recently, and Ken's like, that guy just, man, I, I like seeing people, he's got four kids. He's so busy. Wrote a book, and just keeps executing, and it, he kind of reinvigorated me that day, where-I have all these excuses.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:30:07

        Yeah.

    11. OPOz Pearlman1:30:07

        Screw that. My baby's old enough now, she's almost a year old, she's sleeping. There was some difficulty where if I don't sleep the night, it's very challenging for me to get up at 5:00 AM. I can make all the excuses I want. If I've only slept two hours, I could be tough talking, I could call David Goggins, be like, "Stay hard."

    12. CWChris Williamson1:30:21

        Yeah.

    13. OPOz Pearlman1:30:21

        I wanna go back to bed. [laughs] So now I've, I've dialed in where I'm waking up five, 5:00 or 5:30, I'm getting an hour and a half to two-hour run. No excuses, get it done before anyone's awake. And I had that a few years ago too, and now I'm getting... I'm finding myself again. 'Cause for about a year I just wasn't really with it, and now I'm doing... I've got a marathon in a week and a half, and I'll probably do an ultra.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:30:40

        When's the White House dinner?

    15. OPOz Pearlman1:30:42

        Uh, I'm doing the marathon s- six days before.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:30:44

        [laughs]

    17. OPOz Pearlman1:30:44

        But that's...

    18. CWChris Williamson1:30:45

        [laughs]

    19. OPOz Pearlman1:30:45

        I would run a marathon that day if I could. I might run a marathon that morning. That's not a big deal.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:30:49

        Dude, holy shit.

    21. OPOz Pearlman1:30:50

        Anything less than 50 miles does, has no material impact on me. Like I-

    22. CWChris Williamson1:30:54

        How old are you?

    23. OPOz Pearlman1:30:55

        I'm 43.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:30:57

        Jesus Christ. We-

    25. OPOz Pearlman1:30:58

        But a 100-miler, a 100 mile would give me a little run for the money, but I'd like to do a 100-miler this year, at least one.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:31:02

        But you did 100 miles inside of Central Park.

    27. OPOz Pearlman1:31:04

        116.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:31:05

        Yeah.

    29. OPOz Pearlman1:31:06

        Just four years ago today.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:31:07

        Congratulations.
19. 1:36:10 – 1:47:27

    The Hidden Impacts of Being a Mentalist

    1. CWChris Williamson1:36:10

       So fascinating that you've spent a long time trying to understand how other people's minds work and to manipulate and guess those appropriately. Uh, but a good part of the lab that you've learned that in has been internal-

    2. OPOz Pearlman1:36:22

       Yeah

    3. CWChris Williamson1:36:22

       ... in yourself.

    4. OPOz Pearlman1:36:23

       Well, everyone, I think you probably... I still have imposter syndrome. I still am in rooms where I go, "How am I in this room right now? How is... am I?" Where you go back to some part of yourself that was probably the most insecure. So like maybe 15-year-old me is still somewhere in me, and there's like, I don't know if it's trauma or whatever, but you don't really believe you deserve it-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:36:42

       Hm

    6. OPOz Pearlman1:36:42

       ... but you have to earn it. So I, I still have those. I could be as confident as you could think of on live national TV, millions of people watching, some part of me is in there that's still that person. But I think overcoming that person is kind of the mental talk that you give yourself is, "It's there, but I've now earned the fact that I think I'm here. I've worked hard, I deserve it, and I'm gonna tell myself that I'm gonna kill it."

    7. CWChris Williamson1:37:06

       What's the biggest lesson that you've learned about overcoming that imposter syndrome?

    8. OPOz Pearlman1:37:13

       I, I don't know if you can ever overcome it, if that makes sense. I... Because overcoming it means it doesn't stay there. I think that it helps me in a certain way, where if I have a show that other people will think was a 10 out of 10, it might have been a seven out, and a half out of 10 for me, and I'm gonna be the one who says, "How could I have done that better?" And it's a relentless drive to improve, and iterate and improve. And I actually see some people who are in my field who I don't wanna say I'm jealous, 'cause that's the wrong word, but I envy in a certain way where they go, "I just killed it. That show was amazing. That was..." And I'm like, "How do you believe that?" Because I have the best show ever, I'm still looking on how to polish it, how to make it better, how to improve. You have found such fulfillment and satisfaction [laughs]

    9. CWChris Williamson1:37:52

       Mm.

    10. OPOz Pearlman1:37:53

        In not necessarily mediocrity, but I'm obsessed with being the best ever at what I do.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:37:59

        It's very difficult though if you don't have that level of intense self-scrutiny to become the best ever at what you do. Because-

    12. OPOz Pearlman1:38:04

        And I might never become the best ever. But if I never stop going for that, I think I will continuously improve.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:38:10

        If you had the mentality of someone who was happy with where they were at or-

    14. OPOz Pearlman1:38:14

        Right

    15. CWChris Williamson1:38:14

        ... more grateful. It's interesting that gratitude and performance a lot of the time are kind of inverse.

    16. OPOz Pearlman1:38:20

        Right.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:38:20

        Because the gratitude helps you to not push so much, to not self-assess and scrutinize and self-criticize and improve and c-continue to sort of exist in that lack. And, you know, this is a, a balance I think that a lot of people are looking at at the moment, which is, well, how much do I want to have a string of more miserable successes that reach a higher peak?

    18. OPOz Pearlman1:38:41

        Right.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:38:42

        And how much do I want to trade some of that in place of being happy?

    20. OPOz Pearlman1:38:46

        Right.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:38:46

        Contentment, unfortunately, by design. You know, it's radical in the modern world that's filled with ambition and a meritocracy and capitalism and people trying to acquire as much status and acclaim as they can. It's radical to say, "I'm satisfied." Like that's one-

    22. OPOz Pearlman1:38:59

        Radical, right

    23. CWChris Williamson1:38:59

        ... of the most radical things that you can do.

    24. OPOz Pearlman1:39:00

        It feels like you're dying. People are like, "What do you do next? What's next?"

    25. CWChris Williamson1:39:03

        Yeah.

    26. OPOz Pearlman1:39:04

        Like, as soon as I do this, even if it's the biggest moment of my career, this White House Correspondents Dinner, "What's next?" will be the question you get the next day.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:39:09

        Right.

    28. OPOz Pearlman1:39:10

        It's very funny how that exists.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:39:12

        Right. I, I... Whenever, middle of December last year, I didn't know that it was the day that the Spotify charts were going to drop, and Modern Wisdom was eighth in the world on Spotify. And it was amazing for a bit. And then [laughs]

    30. OPOz Pearlman1:39:26

        [laughs] I saw that. I saw you post that.
20. 1:47:27 – 1:47:41

    What's Next For Oz?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:47:27

       Unreal. So coming up next, White House, then Netflix special. Two big things?

    2. OPOz Pearlman1:47:33

       The two big things and a, a few shows. I'm starting to tour, so for the last, like, 10 years I've been mostly a corporate act if you saw me was at corporate events, but now I'm doing more and more public shows.

21. 1:47:41 – 1:56:19

    Oz Breaks into Chris’ Mind

    1. OPOz Pearlman1:47:41

       And I wanna try one more thing with you.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:47:42

       Okay.

    3. OPOz Pearlman1:47:43

       I'll leave you on a high note.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:47:44

       All right.

    5. OPOz Pearlman1:47:45

       I walked in here.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:47:46

       Right.

    7. OPOz Pearlman1:47:46

       Beautiful studio.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:47:47

       Thanks.

    9. OPOz Pearlman1:47:47

       We shook hands. You hit me up with some delicious drinks, by the way.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:47:51

        It's good.

    11. OPOz Pearlman1:47:52

        And I said to you that the same way... I asked you how many podcasts. I wanna go through this. You, how many episodes have you had of this podcast?

    12. CWChris Williamson1:47:58

        1,100.

    13. OPOz Pearlman1:47:59

        So 1,100 moments that hopefully have given people modern wisdom. That was the name of it, right? Successful, interesting people. Find out what makes them tick. All of that sum total has gotten you to be here from February 23rd, 1988 to today. So I want you to close your eyes, okay?And I want you to imagine that you could hop into a time machine, but the time machine is to go through your own life, as if you could rewind, the same way people say in their last moments they get to see their life. And if I were to say to you to zip back in time and look into the face of someone who, for whatever reason, and this is only in the eye of the beholder, impacted you in some way. This could be great. This could be small. This could be recent. This could be years ago. I prefer, I, I would say not this year because it's too poignant. There's a recency bias if you just pick a recent guest and you say, "Oh, I spoke to Sam Harris or Tristan Harris." Ah, no good. I don't like that.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:48:56

        Hmm.

    15. OPOz Pearlman1:48:58

        I want you... This is more of a, a right-brain exercise at first to see if you can visualize that person's face. Can you see-

    16. CWChris Williamson1:49:04

        You want someone from the show?

    17. OPOz Pearlman1:49:05

        No, no, I'm so sorry.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:49:06

        All right.

    19. OPOz Pearlman1:49:06

        It had nothing to do with the show.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:49:07

        Right. Yep, yep.

    21. OPOz Pearlman1:49:07

        I... That's not, that's not the way... No, I wanna make sure. It's someone that had an impact on you-

    22. CWChris Williamson1:49:12

        Cool

    23. OPOz Pearlman1:49:12

        ... but I don't know why, what, or how.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:49:14

        Yep, yep.

    25. OPOz Pearlman1:49:14

        Open your eyes. Now, when I did this, right, and I had you think of someone's name, and now I had you think of their face-

    26. CWChris Williamson1:49:25

        Mm-hmm

    27. OPOz Pearlman1:49:26

        ... someone popped in your head initially, I know.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:49:30

        Mm-hmm.

    29. OPOz Pearlman1:49:31

        And you go, "Mm." I don't know whether you said to yourself that's too obvious of a choice or I don't know what, but always you think of someone and there's a hesitation, and you go, "Should I do that person?" It's just that, should I?

    30. CWChris Williamson1:49:40

        Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 1:56:19