You have said that your career is built on a lie.
The lie is that I can read people's minds.
Okay. Why does what you do work then if you can't read people's minds?
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, kind of 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 kind of first experience 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, 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 because it's a pure art. It's very similar to standup 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.
Is that, you know, when you talk about the prestige, when people talk the reveal at the end, that's kind of the thing that appears to be missing.
The abracadabra, the ah yeah, well, it's not. So we still get that moment of the wow, the ta-da, 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 the illusion I'm trying to present.
Who is the greatest mentalist from history, in your opinion?
That's a tough question. I mean, there's a guy in the UK named Derren Brown who's really been the godfather the last like two or three decades, I would say, who broke ground. You can't really throw... There's a guy named Kreskin, the Amazing Kreskin, who in the US was on 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 a hundred 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 want to call them. Maybe they're doing it real, maybe they're not. But they found methods. And the key thing to understand that's the difference 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... No, but it's true. 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 going to 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. And then it's 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. But that's the key. There is a method. There's something I'm doing, a set of steps.
What are the component parts? What are the core principles of being a good mentalist?
I think knowing how to build rapport, how to establish trust, the same things that a hypnotist can do, the same thing 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. So, you're winning them over. I would say charisma is important. I would say resilience is really important. It's a lot of core foundational skills that are useful in all of life. So, resilience is really important because it doesn't work at the beginning. So, you don't... 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 standup 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.
You talk about reading micro expressions, body language.
How accurate is that in practice? How much can you detect from being able to see what's going on with someone's micro expressions, their face, their body language?
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. Does that make sense or no? Because I can explain what it means. I create a very specific scenario that looks like it should look impossible. It should be very entertaining and should be a story you tell to lots of people. You go, 'Well, if you can do that, then remember that,' then the connector is what people fill in the blanks. 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? But I don't know if we're too early in the game.
But I told your team to get a deck of cards. They bought two decks of cards. Overachievers. Modern wisdom. Correct. Take... Should we put the glass on? Grab a deck.
Yeah. I'm not going to put the glasses on.
It doesn't matter. And open it up. I don't want to touch it.
There should be, I'm assuming this is where CVS, Walgreens, I don't know where you got it. There should be Joker and fake cards and whatever.
I don't know what there is. I have not touched these. So, take everything out that's not a real card.
Okay. There's something advertising YouTube. There's some rules. There's two joker cards. Okay.
And please shuffle them up to your heart's content. Like mix them. They're in order right now if they came out of the box. This is a brand new deck.
Uh, no. Horrendous. But I...
Yeah, dude. I've got certain skills, but shuffling cards...
Shuffling cards is not one of them, huh?
No. I imagine that this is something that you do in your sleep.
So, I was a magician before I was a mentalist. It's kind of akin to doing premed before you go to school and become a doctor, before you become a surgeon or a plastic surgeon.
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.
Okay. All right. I think moderately well shuffled.
But anybody watching this, they're going to assume so magic is sleight of hand. As soon as I touch these cards, everything's out the door because I could touch them and do something. Does that make sense?
And truly, that's the honest truth. If you hand me these cards, I could cheat ten ways from Sunday. So, here's what I want you to do. I don't want this to be about the cards. The cards are meaningless. I just want to show you how you could generalize a skill. Do you feel like these are mixed?
Okay. So, if you feel good, if not, by all means, we can shuffle more, but it's inconsequential because I'm not going to touch them.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did a good job. I did good.
Mix them again. Do whatever you want. Put them down in front of you.
So, you nor I can see them. And what I want you to do is take and how do I describe this effectively in a casino? They always tell you to lift off a piece. It's kind of like a cut. So, I want you to lift off. It could be a little. It could be a lot, but place a piece over to the side.
You're going to go for a little.
Do you feel good about that?
Would you like to do it again? It's completely your choice.
Okay. So, see where you cut to. Grab the card. Bring it close to your body.
I honestly couldn't care less. If that doesn't feel right, do it. Cut again. Cut somewhere different. And take this card. Here's what I want. Very important. I want you to take and I want you to bring it very close to you against and bring it close to your body and make sure I can't see and look at it. Do you see it?
And now look at me. Right now it's one out of 52. Are we in agreement? If not, we start over because you want to change.
So you ask me what has to do with actual physical parameters like observing you.
Google right now. If you want to Google this, Google 'is muscle reading real'.
Yeah. Look it up because right now you say to me, 'Well, this can't be real.' Literally, if you want to Google it right afterwards, you can Google 'is muscle reading real'. Everybody do that. The ideomotor response, scientifically, ChatGPT will tell you it's real. You can see things in people that will give away the answer. Watch. Try not to react. Cover the card. Put it away. I don't care what you do with it. Think red, black, red, black, red, black. Hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades. Hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades. Ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king. It's a black card. It's a spade. It's the king of spades. Turn it over. How do we do anyway?
Dude. [__] you. [__] you. No.
Now, what somebody would think in this scenario, one is the card trick, but it's not because I didn't touch the cards ever. You could do this again with any cards. It doesn't matter at all. In fact, try these glasses. Try these. Try this. Take the cards, put them all together.
And mix them one more time, please.
Okay. You know what's dumb? I actually forgot that that was the name of it. And for the first half of it, while you were looking at me, I thought it was clubs.
Only after that when you said go through it, I was like, 'Ah, that's why I checked again.'
And then you got it right. No, but you got it right. You got it right when you were going through the... But the first time I was like, and then that's why I checked again. I was like, 'Oh, [__] no. That's a spade.'
If you would have thought it differently, the funny part about it, I would have gotten what you thought and not what was wrong.
All right. Mix them again. Mix them again, please. Now, here's where you could generalize the skill. So, let me ask you a question here.
Do you know how to play poker?
But do you know the rules of games like how a pair, three of a kind, two pair, flush, you know, all the rules?
Okay. Mixed. If you want to put on the table, kind of mix, do whatever you want. I just want you to feel like...
I've done the mixing, dude. I'm aware that I can do this. Add in an item and you're still going to be able to... People are going to watch this and go, 'Why couldn't he mix better?' That's what I know there.
So, take and I want you to... I'm teasing you. That's my skill. Lift off like a chunk. It could be a little, could be a lot. And put one to the right. Perfect. Pick up another and put one to the left. Wonderful. If you saw me right guessing one card, why am I here right now? Think about this. You shuffled the cards. You made them three piles. Why don't we just go to Vegas and why don't I just play poker? Let's monetize the skill. It's not necessarily generalized to everything. You've shuffled these. You made three piles of your own volition. Is that true?
Pick up any one of the piles. Please put it in your left hand. Like this. Like as if you're going to deal poker and pick up another one of the piles. Does that feel right? Put it on top. So you're kind of reassembling. Pick up the last one. Put it on top. You've cut the deck three times.
And here's what I want you to do. I want you in front of you over there to deal one, two, three, four, five cards face down in front of you, please. You can put them on top however you want. You're going to take those cards yourself.
No, bring them close to you.
Okay. I'm just getting them in.
Perfect. Grab them all. Put the deck away and bring it close to you.
So there's no way I could see what your poker hand is. Now, don't tell me, but this becomes more monetizable than guessing one card.
And close the cards and bring them close to your body. Do you know what poker hand you have?
Now, again, statistically, you probably have nothing because that's what happens in most poker games. But you seemed a little happy. How happy did you feel? We don't know. You also said you don't play poker very much, so I'd have to observe you for much longer. But a pair would be the worst hand. The next one would be two pair. Three of a kind. Then we would have a straight or a flush or a straight flush. This isn't a card trick. This is just watching you and seeing where was their response statistically. Again, I've never touched the cards. This isn't a card trick. This isn't about sleight of hand. I think you have two pair. And hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Before you do this, don't do anything. Hold on. Don't tell me anything about it. I don't think... I think the pairs too are... I would describe them as both relatively low. That's my feeling. Do me a favor right now. Nothing jumped. I bet you there's no face cards. I want you to take and lay the cards out in front of you one at a time face down in front of you in any order you want. Just lay them in a row of five in front of you, please.
Eights. Was there a pair of eights?
See, when I said low, you didn't know what to say. You were confused because is that low? It's right in the middle.
It's right in the middle. That's the difficulty.
I don't care what the poker hand is. Do you want to know why?
Because from the day you were born until today, a card trick will not be something you remember. It won't. So, I'm going to show you something that you will remember.
Are you ready? Because you put these five cards down. From the day you were born until today, what month were you born in? Could you tell me please?
Dude, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. [__] I can't tell if it's better or worse given that you're wearing that mask right now. I can't tell. I didn't even realize. I didn't even realize. You're terrifying. You're a terrifying human.
You know, we were talking about cults before we got started.
I'm starting one now. Are you joining?
Yes. Yes. Yes. Tell me. We all need to tell me what... This is broken already. Jared, we got six.
It's okay. Good. Uh, dude, that's unbelievable.
I think you're broken, too. It's very disconcerting.
Yeah. Where do we even go from here? It's the first one.
I don't know, dude. I'm... Holy [__] Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's it. From the day you're born until today. Put these away. That was just a fun warm-up. I didn't even want to throw these out there that early.
it's the worst thing I'm going to do.
Okay. Holy [__] Thanks, man. Thanks. Now I feel like I'm going to get jump scared by a ghost or something. So, you mentioned that story is a big part of it. That being able to sort of build in more than just being the trick.
Well, I think that's the key because the story you tell is the true power of what I do and what provides longevity and has been my secret to success.
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. We don't realize it. You and me right now, we're selling attention. You're selling people watching and listening to this program because 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? And then I started 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 going to 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, right? That moment that connects with them where 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. 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 going to get told in a very different way 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. If it's for an NFL team, it's going to be what matters to the football viewer. Somebody who's not a fan of me. They came along for the ride. I'm trying to catch new people 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. 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 freaking out and other people, even if you're not in, observing that and feeling that same feeling because wonder is kind of universal. 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.
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There's a cool story about Jenny Jerome. It's Winston Churchill's mother and she got to dine with Prime Minister William Gladstone and his rival Benjamin Disraeli on consecutive nights. And when she left the dinner after sitting next to Gladstone, she said, 'I left feeling that he was the cleverest man in England.' And the following night after sitting next to Disraeli, she said, 'I left feeling like I was the cleverest woman.'
This wonderful example of what Alain de Botton calls reverse charisma or inverse charisma. Some people are interesting. Some people make you feel interesting, right? Why is it that around certain friends we have lots to say, around other people we don't have so much, right? 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 on to. 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, yeah, a lot of people want to develop charisma. They want to be like, 'Look at how impressive I am.' They want their aura to be electric and the stories to be energizing and everyone in the room to walk in and just... But 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.
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 known as stepping on... you're taking away some of their laughter. You're taking away some of the feeling. You cut it short. 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 pretty soon a special. I think I can talk about a Netflix special. And one of the big things we talked about is when you normally watch a show you watch on stage, we have more cameras pointing into the audience than on stage. Because when people sit back down after they've experienced it, that's the best moment by far. No, but it's not even that. It's because they don't feel like they're on camera anymore. When you're standing, the spotlight's on. Action. When you sit down, you get to unpack what just occurred and it feels as if you're no longer on camera. I liken it to, you know, when you cook a steak, how all the juices come in? If you just take the steak and put it on a plate, you don't pour the juices. That's the most delicious part of it. That's what gives it all the juiciness. It's like the real flavor that happens in my show when people sit and they turn to the person next to them and they're like, 'What the?' And he's like, 'I don't know, man.' And he goes, 'How do you... I don't know.' I like that right there. The real part when I leave the room and you guys... that's the best part. That's where you want to leave the tape recorder on. That's where you want to hear what people really say. And he goes, 'Was he in... dude, I don't know how he did that. I changed my mind in the middle. How did he...?' That's the best part. That for me is the real joy.
Sitting with silence is something that takes a lot of skill to realize that there's a third participant if you're ever doing any kind of performance, especially if it's between two people. You and your person that's on stage, there's a third participant or 3,000 participants and that's all of the people that are watching, right? And allowing that to sit, allowing the sort of wonder to hang a little bit. What 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?
I think this applies. There's a parallel, which is you're not going to 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 and then I work backwards from there. Does that make sense? I know I observe that. For example, I just did something on Fox Business last week. I'm going to be on CNBC next week. I'm watching what do people care about right now. Truly, 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 going to be. And I went on there and I made up the story, but the story, the hook at the beginning is I said there's four Fs that matter most to all of us. Family, friends, faith, finances.
Yeah. You know, I... Damn it, Chris. I need you on payroll. But yeah, I didn't want to... It was on Fox News, so faith was important. But I said that... that's a good one, though. Is that you just needed to... the hook, the interesting part at the beginning is you want to liken something that somebody can say, 'Oh yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense to me.' And right away I brought it back to what are gas prices going to be, how does this affect people around the country and it tied together. And again, you're not going to do this as a mentalist, but most people I think they're in 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 want to ask them and then, 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. 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. So, you have to... It's like my six-year-old has an idea and he wants it right. I'm like, 'Put it in a 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. Everybody criticizes the fact that they don't like small talk. It's an almost universal thing that people dislike. The idea of getting into an elevator with somebody that's going to stop at every floor trying to hold together some conversation that means nothing to everybody and, yeah, the idea of ridding yourself of the social foreplay and jumping straight to third base or whatever the equivalent is, I think is a good idea.
Well, even asking something that's just different. Like, 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 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 want to 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.
How can people become better at that? I've met a million people on the front door of nightclubs.
So, it's very tough. So, in that situation, if you're meeting a bunch of people all at once, 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 because the way memory imprints. I gave a TED talk last year, most viewed in the world for that year. Humble brag. I'm very proud. I'm very proud of that though because 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 going to get in a car and just drive across the border? Finally, it takes off. Anyway, it was very funny. I sprinted faster than any marathon finish I've ever had out of the Vancouver airport. You know when you're changing in a car, how many times you change in a car? You're just like in a movie, legs out the window, changing. They're seeing my tighty-whities. These underwear were embarrassing. They were not designed for public consumption. Anyways, it was crazy. I don't know how that thing came together, but in it, I taught you how to never forget someone's name after meeting them within two seconds because it's very embarrassing. And so I have a little thing where I've switched up the instructions on a shampoo bottle, which are normally what? Lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat. Three words every shampoo bottle. Here's what I say. Listen, repeat, reply. So when you meet someone, most people when they hear a name, they actually didn't forget the name. They actually never knew it in the first place, which sounds so silly, but when they say the name, you weren't listening because your brain is going through a stressful period at that moment. Do I already know them? What's going on? You're thinking of a million things, especially if you're meeting people. There's all different things going on in your brain. So, when they said the name, you didn't actually hear it. You don't know it. If you ask them right then, you don't know the name. So, right away, the easiest part, listen. Sounds silly. Repeat. I immediately repeat the name twice if I can. 'What was that? Jared or Jerry?' 'Jared.' Got it. Listen. Repeat. If you said it twice, your odds go down by over 90% of forgetting it within the next 10 seconds. And then reply involves some sort of a hook. You want to cement the name in your brain. I've got a few different tactics I use. One of them is how to spell it. So in this case, Jonathan, right, we had Jonathan here. Is that J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N or an O at the end? And then he goes J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N. Oh, that's the way to spell it. That's the only way. Those other guys. So right away I've said Jonathan three times. I'm going to remember it much more likely. Like, it's much more likely it will not disappear. Second, if spelling... if the name is Chris, I'm not going to be like, 'Is that C-H-R-I-S?' Yeah, psycho. Of course it's Chris. C-H-R-I-S. So, you can't spell it. What I might do in that case is pay a compliment, which is, 'Chris, I love that shirt, man. I haven't seen that logo for Modern Wisdom. Great shirt, Chris.' Now, I've said it two more times. I've hooked it with a visual, which is Chris wearing the shirt. In your brain, it tends to click more. The third one is I connect it to somebody else I know. So if I met someone, I go, 'Jonathan,' I go, 'That's so funny. I just read a book by that guy, Jonathan Haidt. What a great book, Jonathan. Good name.' Boom. I've just connected it. All of those things can happen in under 10 seconds. It's not that much. People like being complimented. It shows that you care about them and you will now remember their name. It's been a cheat code in life for me because I will meet people and they will feel seen and heard where when I leave, regardless of if I'm really a jerk, they go, 'Oh, he's a nice guy.' Right? It connects with you on a level because you're being personable and most people don't take the time to do that.
How can people become better with memory outside of that? It's not just names. Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, spaced repetition stuff. This is a little bit of spaced repetition with some mind palace location-based stuff going in there.
It's not full mnemonics because if you're trying to remember people's names for longer, you really have to do a little more kind of like hardwiring and cementing and repetition but also having something that hooks the person to either a visual. 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. How many people can remember that for a long time is difficult.
My memory is not that great which people will not believe. They'll say, you ask my wife, she'll be like, 'His memory is terrible.' But my memory is great for things that are important for me to remember, right? Think about that again. For most people, I think that's the case. You can play to your strengths. If you're good at biceps and back and those chicken legs, then you're skipping legs day, right? I didn't mean that about you. Legs are great. But I like how Chris is like, 'What did you say to me?' Train today. 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 really condition.
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. 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 Rogan and these guys just seem to have like eidetic memory. Like [__] Ben Shapiro seem 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 I'd been reading and it was so embarrassing and I thought, 'God, you know, these people out there, they either have a skill set that I don't have or a capacity that I don't have or that 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, right? 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 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 high valence for me, like very, very highly important for me to hold on to stuff because I wanted to talk about this thing today with this guest about their book, right? So there was a purpose for me to do that. 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. I know that I've got a thousand 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 an output reason to remember this stuff is a great place to start.
I agree. Yeah. I think memory is a difficult one because again most of us will think, oh, I'm so bad at remembering names or I'm so bad at... you'll give yourself... you won't give yourself credit for certain things when you probably have very good memory for things that are important for your survival, 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 lacking in that department? I find if you can't remember it, cheat. I write things down. Take copious notes. It's been one of my really big hacks in life is 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 want to repeat tricks over and over because they lose a lot of their pizzazz and appeal. So I start panicking, 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 guess their ATM pin code two years ago, right? Or you remember... I don't remember it because 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 the name of kids before they're born from parents and I will give them notes and these will be kept in scrapbooks. I met kids who are 10 years old.
Yes. That's a big, big reputation maker. I meet someone who's pregnant. I go, 'Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?' They go, 'Yes.' I go, 'Do you care if it's a surprise?' I won't say, but I know right now if it's a boy or a girl. And do you know your not-top name? And I'll guess the name. I've actually guessed in a few instances not the name that you didn't think this was going to be the name and it ended up being the name, the one that your husband wanted, you didn't want. And so again, why do I say this? I'm not trying to brag. If you meet someone five years later, they remember that moment crystal clear. If you don't, it's hurtful.
Do you see that? It's like they... it turns something really beautiful into something that's actually a little bit tarnished now.
Exactly. And so after that happened on one or two occasions, now I can somewhat to a degree fake it because I can elevate my energy to theirs and they're not really guessing out. But I said, I don't want to have that happen again. So that never happens anymore. Do you know why? Because after that happens, if I'm at an event, I write their name, I write everything. I try to cement it in my mind. Just writing things enhances your memory right away. Just sit down, take the effort at the end of my show, which you might not have a show, but at the end of your day, debrief. What was really important today? I don't journal. I'm not going to lie about that. But I will write down everything that occurs from a business perspective that I want to recall and that I can use in the future. And just by doing that, if I go back to those notes and I can connect these two people, which now through CRM, through very simplistic methods, I can just see this person met me here. They know this person. They might be at this next event. Boom. I have all this information that I can use. Not as a trick. I'm not revealing it in a magical way, but it almost feels that way to people. If I remember something I did for you three years ago, it feels like another experience of wonder and awe. 'Oh my god, how do you know that still?' I don't technically... I re-went over my notes, but the fact that I took the time to take the notes and reviewed them is already a leg up. And you can always find that I do a lot of sales meetings. And at sales meetings, I'm always intrigued by the fact that one person in the room is the number one performer. Right here. We're in a room with 3,000 people that flew to the Bahamas because they all want a trip. One person did the best of everyone. What made that person the best that year? That to me, that's a fascinating thing. That's like when I used to run marathons, my faster days and I would win marathons. Being at the start line, there's no bigger rush. There's no better drug. There's no better anything than looking around at everybody else and saying, 'I'm going to beat every single one of you today.' I can't even imagine being in the Olympics and winning a gold. Like that's the rush. I can't. It's unfathomable because I did that at like a lower level weekend warrior and it was still the best. But in that room, that person must have believed they would be number one. And then that became self-fulfilling and they kept doing everything they could to make that happen. They didn't stumble into it. There's no way the number one person at your company is doing it by chance and never thought it would happen. It's impossible.
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What about deception? How can people better spot liars?
So, people... I wish I had a clear-cut way and I don't want to 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 could judge your financial adviser. How did you do against the S&P last year? 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 want to come but my daughter's this and that. Right? Like as soon as you start adding in more, you're feeling the need to prove beyond. 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.
Not always, but more often than not. Now, there are cases where certain people are tight on words. They're not very careless. 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 hyperfocused 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 Q, X, or 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.
Yeah. I think it's an interesting one to think about what AI is able to do to detect that because you've already got it with the baseline metrics of a polygraph, right? Which is not, those are not 100%. At all. 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...
Very soon. Yes, I think so. I think that in conjunction with the polygraph, but we're not going to be able to polygraph people very often.
Yeah. Just on the street.
It's a hassle to do. Have you ever been polygraphed?
How were you able to beat it?
So, I can't tell you if I was able to beat it. I was actually on a TV game show.
Okay. Which side were you, one of the contestants or...
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, which I, that's actually a pretty good idea for a show, but I'm assuming...
To see who the best deceiver is. Sure.
What about you mentioned, you mentioned sales. You mentioned sales there. What are some of the ways that you teach people to become better sales people, more confident as they step into a room where they're nervous, more commanding and likable?
Being vulnerable is a huge one. So, if you feel nervous, just saying that, just allowing people into your head and saying, "Hey, I've never done this before. I'm actually quite nervous right now, but you seem like a great person. And I just want to 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 know if you have somebody who's a great salesperson, but they feel fake to you. "Hey, I got to 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 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 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 just mean you can feel someone next to you. Situational awareness.
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...
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 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 somehow learned this very young, which is if I go up to a restaurant, because 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 realized at 14, I started, I was 13, but at 14 I needed to make money. My folks had gotten divorced, kind of really messy, and we had no money, so 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, go work. And so there was another restaurant magician somewhere else in the city. So I knew that was 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 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 kind of 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 going to 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 going to come back again with friends. Boom. That's what they want to 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 going to open doors. That's what opened doors for me.
Oh, yeah. I saw his book. So funny.
Yeah. Yeah. He's crushed it. So, Eleven Madison Park, of course, with the number one restaurant in the world for a while.
Is it Eleven Madison? Yeah, I think so. Okay. Anyway, he said he was telling me some of the crazy stuff that he'd done. 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 done the marriage thing, but two families bickering, backbiting, power games, all the rest of it. And they had gone for dinner at this place. They'd booked the 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 a little bit. So, 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, you just head upstairs. We've got to thank you for you." 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 thought, 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. Wow.
With the song and they've never... that, what an unbelievable way to reverse, like even cooler story maybe than having the reception that you would have had. And yeah, that is very much what's the emotionality, how much can you sort of penetrate somebody with that, like not just he was able to guess the cards but the cards were also something special to me. It makes it about this person. That's the challenge in life, right? Is to connect with other people because I realize other people are going to be the ones who open your door. Your network and who you are is a huge factor of your success and happiness, right? As you get older, you watch so much more. I heard your Tristan Harris we were talking about earlier where he talks about how much lonelier people are now because you don't engage people in real life anymore. It's all screens and text. And it's so true. It's prevalent for me. It's probably the same for you. I don't know how it is for you, but I just, between family, between work, there's just not as much time. And especially if you're ambitious and driven, I have definitely traded career over friendships at various stages where I can't be at this big event. I can't be at this boys' trip. I just, it's impossible. I travel too much for work.
So when you have that drive and not everyone has that same thing, but at a certain point I think that connecting with people around you and either forming very strong relationships or bonds that go past like give and take relationships are a huge one for me where I feel that as I get older the people around me that are just taking, I don't like that relationship. I try to find ones where you're able to keep giving, giving, giving until the point where you have to take and somebody wants to give at that. Does that make sense? I'm saying it in a poor way, but the people that have stuck around the longest for me are ones where it's a back and forth. It's a constant back and forth and it's not always just take, take, take.
Yeah. What about confidence? A lot of the time people step into a room, they're nervous, they are about to do some big presentation or some pitch. I understand that likability can come from vulnerability. I think that's a cool way to connect 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, but how about getting over the nervousness, feeling more confident, feeling more compelling and prepared when you step in?
Confidence is a funny one because once you become confident you ask yourself why wasn't I confident 5, 10, 20 years ago, right? Experience leads to it. How do you fast track it? 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. It's kind of like a telemarketer call. I'm 14 years old. I walk up to your table. Exactly. Exactly. So, right away, I started to understand that when I walk up to you, if they don't like me or they don't like 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, get away, is to just sit there and not pay attention and look at you awkwardly, which is just brutal. 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. 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 kind of hated them.
Like a comedian chasing the audience.
But I had low-level rage. And I realized, but truly, I can't allow you that power over me. I had this real, and here's why. It was selfish because I go, if I can't keep doing this, I'm not going to be able to buy more tricks. It was very A to B, very linear. And I go, if I can't buy more tricks, how am I going to 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 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 million. You get 60 million." He has somebody who does that for him, 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 reject 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 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 pronounced 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. She didn't like me."
You weren't able to apply the agent model to the romantic.
No, because 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. Yes, I have shoes that are thick, but I don't know what else to do." But if you can find a way to do that, so when you go into that presentation, be prepared. There's no such thing as getting in there being unprepared and saying, "Oh, that's my agent. That's you who screwed up." So, be prepared. Do your homework. Practice. But when you leave, understand that there are two different parts and that you shouldn't assess your self-worth based on if they rejected this little part of you.
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Not great. It's funny because... god damn it, dude. I think that that's funny because it's almost like the chef who goes home, you know, and it's like, you know, exactly. It's ramen. So figure that one out. Three Michelin stars, best restaurant in the world, hitting up Shake Shack afterwards. But I think that 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, like mom said you could do that. Like did she though? Did she? Like full manipulation.
Like my son, this is so funny. He's in like an after-school math program where I know for a fact he's not allowed to use a calculator, but he was so damn convincing. He's going to love when he hears this. My nine-year-old is going to 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." He's like, "Email her." And so he was trying to call my bluff. So I...
He knew that you weren't going to email her.
I freaking 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 calculator." So no, there's no... As if I'm an idiot. Meanwhile, I now get in trouble with my wife for how did you allow him to outwit you, you got outwitted by a 9-year-old. Emailed and now he looked at me because he couldn't believe that he had gotten me to email the teacher. So to answer...
So he wins either way. Either gets to use the calculator or managed to get dad in trouble and look like...
Triple wins because if he hears this podcast, he's going to be in heaven when he hears this.
So yes, it was full manipulation. I can't lie to you and pretend that I am not manipulated either. But again, I have a hyper-specific focus on what I use manipulation for. I am an honest con man, if that makes sense. Our contract is not one of I'm going to talk to your dead aunt and tell you things and you're going to pay me money. I'm providing entertainment and memorable moments in the guise of deception. I tell you from the outset that this is not real.
I had John Lisle on the podcast and he was looking at MK Ultra. He's a great, great historian researcher here at University of Texas and he is doing original research getting into the archives seeing all of the notes of the people that were getting the electroshock therapy trying to do the complete reset on people to make them pliable, Manchurian Candidate type things.
Yeah. Well, they were applying a lot of LSD in an attempt to see if that made people more pliable, more suggestible, more able to. And there was a... Charles Manson wasn't a part of MK Ultra. He wasn't a part of MK Ultra. However, the fascinating thing is the story is people believe Charles Manson was studied in MK Ultra because there was some additional skill he had that made him good at leading a cult. And maybe he'd learned that from the CIA's investigations or there'd been some sort of sharing of information in that. That wasn't the case. He wasn't a part of it. However, Charles Manson was unbelievably good at manipulating people and getting them to become suggestible. So, he didn't learn anything from the CIA, but John's line was the CIA could have learned a lot from him, right, if they'd gone to cult leaders. Danny Trejo, do you know Danny Trejo? Hollywood actor. Yeah. He was in prison with Charlie. Little Charlie, he called him. Charles Manson. And little Charlie was getting beaten up, he was one of the smaller dudes around the block. He's getting beaten up by some of the other prisoners. He had a rope for a belt and maybe he didn't even have a belt. And he gave him a rope. Danny gave him a rope. Danny and his friends had heard that Charles, little Charlie, was able to get you loaded on heroin just through your mind. And they started letting him sleep in their cell because they would protect him in return for him giving them mental heroin. And he did it to three of the guys. Only two of them had ever had heroin before. And apparently if you do heroin, you throw up. You're likely to throw up when you take it. The two guys that had done it threw up. The dude that hadn't didn't because he didn't know what his response to heroin should be. Right. But they were basically painting the picture of Charles Manson, this unbelievable reader, manipulator of people that supposedly might have learned these skills from the CIA, which he didn't. But in fact, if the CIA had really wanted to learn how to control and manipulate people, they could have gone to him and said, "Hey, you've got some really strong skills here." All of the cult leader things that we've seen before. The fact that people are able to bow down, give over their life, their wife, their bank account, their entire sort of spiritual essence to whoever this person is, right? Because they've managed to sort of play this conducting game.
They have. There's a real... I'm fascinated by cult leaders and just everything about how they're able to win trust and it's these incremental changes. I liken it to kind of like a cruise ship or a large tanker that when it just turns one degree, it starts changing one degree. Little changes over time can start pushing you in that direction of especially when you earn trust. So with my craft it's kind of again I kind of guide you in a certain way, not for cult leader, I'm not trying to take anything from you, but I can't do it when you asked me earlier, can you do this with somebody who doesn't want to? No, it can't be done against your will. That's, you ask me what's the core skill? Building trust, building rapport, and connecting with somebody.
Why can't you do it against someone's will, ethically, or they...
They won't just think about it. If you decide you don't want to take part, then you'll say, "No, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that." It's not an against your will type of thing, right? You need to have them... "I'm not going to touch those cards. I'm not going to." You're just going to stop me dead in my tracks. It's not something you can do against your will.
Do you know if the same is true with hypnotism?
Hypnotism is interesting because people have a level of suggestibility and a good hypnotist will check that as they go. So a stage hypnotist does compliance testing out in the audience. They'll do something for everyone. Put your hands together, close them together, close your eyes, imagine they're glued together and they'll see who is the most suggestible and based on that they'll bring you up.
Mhm. You must be familiar with a bunch of tangential skill sets, hypnotism, magicians. Who else is 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?
I would say stand-up comedians 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 plug this now?
So, I don't know when this comes out, but May 2nd, I'm at the Wynn in Las Vegas. June 5th, I'm at the Borgata in Atlantic City. And coming this summer, I'm shooting a Netflix special, which is going to be... I don't know the exact date yet. I don't want to... but it's going to be in July in New York City. Where should people go to find out?
Everything is on my social. You can just click the link, but I'm Oz the Mentalist. So, it's Oz, looks like Oz the Mentalist on everything. Twitter, TikTok, Instagram. Go there, click the link, get tickets, come see this for yourself.
Unreal. I had Dr. David Spiegel on the show and he is Stanford's head of the hypnotism, evidence-based sort of 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 of your life. And I think when you do two or three or four sessions that goes up to 50 to 60%. But again, I would say that, and ask him, is that against somebody's will. So if somebody doesn't 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. 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, that feeling of it now feels disgusting. It feels like if you were to take 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 disgust you. Isn't it funny that the human brain has got these sort of weird keyholes?
You're able to slot into that. Hypnotism is able to slot into that. Comedy is able to slot into. 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, right? 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 byproduct of the light. Are human brains meant to have this? Is it built in for us to be suggestible? Or is it a byproduct 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, ah, 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. Well, why do we dream? That's a... Have you ever lucid dreamed?
A little. A little. Not much. So when I was in high school and 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 this kind of paranormal things which I didn't know if I believed or not, but lucid dreaming is real. And for about 6 months 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 because they go back about 25 years.
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 kind of like the Leonardo DiCaprio Inception where he spins it. I would check my watch every 5 minutes. And you have to start doing this religiously so it becomes a tick. Not a big deal. I 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 hope I'm saying this word correctly, but it's the hypnagogic stage. Hypnagogic. Do you know how to say that word?
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? 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 project. And you'd wake up for a minute in between the dreams. If you want, you can 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 Inception. I'd look away. I look back. The watch is always a different time if you're in a dream. It never has consistency. So, I 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 house turns into a car honking in a dream. Do you know what I mean? Before you wake up. 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 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...
Playing a video game while you're asleep.
It is truly, it's the original virtual reality.
It's better than virtual reality because it's real.
Yeah. It's incredible. It's worth... It's not that hard to do, which is most people don't put in the work. I haven't put in the work. I don't sleep that much anymore. I've got five kids. But like 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. They're not mystical. But why is that? Why is that a skill that I could learn within a week and be able to just take control of my dreams? It's like a back door 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 learn to lucid dream? I think within less than a week, I was able to start doing it somewhat consistently. And then it was 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. Now 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're in the dream, it was so crazy because the dreams are just as real. When was the last dream you remember?
Uh, so I don't remember my dreams that frequently anymore.
I had one last night that I kind of remember.
