Cheap Trick: Debunking the "Magic" of Mentalist Oz Pearlman
5/19/20261 hr 4 min
He's wowed presidents, pro athletes and podcasters. But magicians tell us Oz Pearlman's viral act has crossed an ethical line. Stevie Baskin, after obsessively studying Pearlman's tricks, explains to Pablo how influencers from Charles Barkley to the White House were in on the act — and why he thinks this brand of "mind-reading" amounts to fraud.
• Much more from Stevie Baskin's YouTube video
• Previously on PTFO: The Unwritten Rules of Magic
(Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.)
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsPablo Torre· Host0:00
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
Stevie Baskin· Guest0:06
Where is the person with the balls to just, like, flat out accuse this guy of fraud?
Pablo Torre· Host0:12
Right after this ad. [upbeat music] I do wanna make clear that I am a guy who becomes obsessed with characters that confuse me, that I find, on some level, unsolvable. And when I unilaterally bring up the name Oz Pearlman, Oz the Mentalist, there are two sort of reactions. One is, "Who the [beep] is that?" The other is, we're about to have perhaps a five-hour conversation about this guy. And Stevie Baskin, as the preeminent authority on Oz the Mentalist and the decoding of what makes him so irresistible, how would you explain Oz to the first group that has no idea who he is, has never seen him, has no sense of why I would even care?
Stevie Baskin· Guest1:06
Well, maybe, maybe there's an argument to say that the most useful way to introduce him is that he's sort of someone who has mastered the art form of mentalism. Uh, which I think then would be immediately followed by the question of, well, what is mentalism?
Unknown speaker1:28
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