#2332 - Oz Pearlman
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Joe Rogan podcast checking out the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast oh yep surreal dude you've only been here for 20 minutes you already freaked me out just freaked out and I'm freaked out with the fact you're the first guy that's ever come here that ran a marathon yeah before you got here you know wanted to clear my mind it's a big day

How long did it take you to run it? You got to check online. I don't know. I think it was like three hours, 25 minutes, 3.30, something like that. Wow, that's a good time for a casual. Went kind of southeast, thunderstorming in Austin, Texas, and then looped around, went back, got some work done. I always do phone calls while I'm running. How often do you run? You said you ran 27 miles this morning? I think so. I don't know. I just, I turned around. I got it done. I need to get ready for this shower, but yeah. Is that a normal thing for you to do? Very normal. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah.

That's a lot of distance, man. You know, there was like a sweet spot pre having as many kids and more family constraints and work and now life is busy. But where I do 20 miles every day. That's crazy. Like what's the longest you've run? 153 miles. How long did it take you to do that? 33 hours. Spartathlon in Greece. Epic. It's in Greece? Oh, it's crazy, man. You run from Athens to Sparta.

This race is amazing. You ever seen the movie 300 with Gerard Butler? Sure. So that's the story. A couple of crazy dudes in the 80s decided that they're going to recreate where he ran, Pheidippides, to deliver the message. Because in that movie, you remember 300 Spartans defended against the Persian masses, and they frame it as the difference between us having civilization and not. Had those 300 guys not died while they assembled an army and he delivered that message to King Leonidas? No.

So when you finish this race, if you finish, it's one of the hardest races in the world. Like there's bad water, you know, Goggins, mutual buddy of ours. But there's races they say are the hardest. This one kicked my butt. First year. Because of the elevation. What is it? It's because Europe does not believe in ice. So there's nothing cold for the first 50 miles.

You're hot. And then the cutoffs are much stricter. So at 50 miles, you have to be done. You got to fact check this, but nine or 10 hours. So you have to finish 153 miles in under 36 hours. You need to be running at all times. You can't walk for two hours and start throwing up. I was puking for eight hours straight the first time I did it. Still excuses. This is me just bitching. I should have finished that year. I wasn't mentally tough.

but 100% that year I just didn't have it mentally and the next year I came back ready to die I was like I'm gonna finish this race yeah there was a guy in the middle of the night I won't kid you who looked at me and he says to me there it is he goes to me with like crazy eyes and I've already given up in my mind you know like they call it DNFing did not finish in ultras I already wrote the speech of like I'm gonna tell my friends I learned from the you know

All that stuff of like, I already gave up in my mind. And I saw this guy at mile, I don't know, 72, middle of the night, who looks at me with these crazy eyes. I'll never forget his looks. Crazy eyes. Like that, but a hundred times more. And goes, you're going to give up? He goes, if you can't run, you walk.

You can't walk. You crawl. You never, ever. And I was like, yo, man, this guy needs to chill out right now because I've already quit in my mind. But I channeled that guy when I came back the next year. And it was that it was I'm going to the hospital and you're not putting IV. I'm going to finish this race. And I came back the next year mentally like there's no way I'm not finishing. Did you do anything different in preparation?

Listen, it's all mental. Anyone who tells you otherwise physical is meaningless at that point. Physical is meaningless in most points, to be honest. There were guys who I saw when I quit, it was, you know, 2am who were slower than me. They

They were older than me. Every objective measure, I should have beat them, but they mentally finished. The next morning, I got a night's sleep, woke up, watched them, ate lunch, and saw them finish. I was like, I was crying. I couldn't believe the emotions of this guy finished who was two hours behind me when I quit. And I learned that day, it's mental, 100%. The mindset is when you get there, you know if you're finishing at the start.

So did it haunt you that you didn't finish? Oh, haunted me every day. Isn't that crazy? Haunted. Like what you did was really hard, but you didn't. No, that's bullshit hard. It was, I should have finished. How far did you get? I got halfway. So that's pretty hard. No, I got 75 miles. This, I quit when it was convenient. Cause I got to an aid station and I'm like, Oh, you know, I got 30 minutes on the, I already decided in my mind I was quitting.

But hold on. I got to pause because I walked in here and I told you, before we start, I have something for you. Right. People always say, can I read minds? I can't read minds. I read people. Okay. This envelope, if they can't see it and they're listening, your logo sealed. Right. This is your future. My future? This is your future. I'm not psychic. I'm not supernatural. But I assure you, I want you to hold this from now on.

Until the end of the episode. Okay, that's when we open it. I don't even know if I want to know my future No, no, this is all good stuff live to 120 Joe's gonna be a two-term president, you know You take it before we even start and at the end we open it so nobody skips this episode you buckle up for the ending I'm here people would just fast forward. No fast forward. They'll miss all the good stuff in the middle the quitters quitters the people who did not finish Spartathlon

So that's insanely impressive, though, that you run that much. When did you start doing this? My sister ran a marathon. Shout out to my older sister. And there's a little bit of sibling rivalry. She's eight years older. I have twin sisters. And do you remember when marathoning became, like, commonplace? Before you say anything, I have to shout out to my sister because she got upset that I didn't shout her out before because she ran Bert Kreischer's 5K. She's like, I can't believe you didn't shout me out. Sorry, sweetie. Love you. Love you.

Yeah, she's the best. They all are, right? So my sister ran it, and everyone at a certain point, marathoning became like a thing. Do you remember when Oprah ran one, and then everyone's like, I'm running a marathon? I didn't pay attention. Yeah, but there was like a moment where the zeitgeist, everyone started running marathons. This was before that. I believe you. Yeah. But I wasn't tuned into that frequency. When my sister said she's running 26.2 miles, if she had told me, this is not that she's not fit. She was like a collegiate D1 athlete, swimmer.

I'm like, what do you, if she had said, I'm going to the moon, it would have been equal of like, what do you mean you're running a marathon? And so when she did it, I immediately that day signed up for a marathon just to be like, no, screw that. I'm not, I'm not, not doing this. Right. And I was working on wall street. I was kind of getting fat and lazy, happy hours. And I go, this is all there is like, I'm just going to keep, I'm making money. Don't get me wrong. I'm blessed, but I got, I got to have something that fires me up. That's my instinct. And so I signed up for a marathon. What year was this?

2004. Okay. And then I did one Philly marathon, you know, the Rocky, the whole thing. And at mile 23, I start, I stop and I I'm like crying. I, again, this is a common theme. I've cried like twice in my life. My wife will ask and say, but I was wrecked. I was going to quit. I see two dudes walking because I'm going decently fast at this point. I've trained,

terribly I see two dudes walking about 100 yards ahead of me and I go misery loves company I'm gonna walk up and I'm gonna catch them but they're walking the same speed as me so I decide screw it I'm gonna run to them I run I get about halfway there do you know what they do they looked at each other and they started running

And I literally screamed at them. I go, fuck you. And I got fired up. And I learned that day anger is a great incentive. It's like something to fire up. And I got so pissed off that my blood pressure, I ran the rest of the race. You know Goggins takes all of his haters' comments and he records them and then plays it back to him while he runs? Oh, I know David well. I've known David going on like 15 years, man, before Goggins became Goggins. I've seen the whole come up. How'd you meet him? So we trained for ultramarathons together.

He used to live in New York City. Wow. And we'd go out there and, you know, he's shirtless. And this is before now, man, he can't go anywhere. He's just, it's like next level. He still runs on the street. He runs, but man, he's like, that's such a fame that's, you know, we've talked about, but it's, he's, I mean, he's inspired countless millions. Oh, for sure. But you see-

I don't know what your version is, but like somebody sees me, I just get like, oh, hey, love what you do. That's it. You know, maybe a selfie. That's right. Occasionally some drunk ass was like, read my mind right now. And I'm like, all right, buddy, I'll do it. I'll do it. You know, I don't want to leave somebody behind. But his is someone comes up and you have to you change my life. Like I didn't kill myself or my brother. Like that's that's a religious level fervor. Yeah, no, for sure. I've been around him when I've seen it happen. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, he runs on the street. He was running on the street in Vegas. My wife, it was in the car. She rolled down the window and yelled out, stay hard. Second time he's ever heard that, right? Who's going to carry the boats? That's all he hears all day long is people yelling, stay hard. Stay hard.

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The memes that people have put together are just those videos. And he's got a great sense of humor, which people don't realize. He's got a great sense of humor. He's a fun dude. He's a really fun guy, man. Love that guy. Yeah, he's a fun dude. He's just very fucking serious about pushing himself.

Did you see the video of him and Israel Adesanya? Yeah. Yeah, it was crazy. Israel Adesanya, world-class athlete, world championship fighter. Yeah. Can't keep up with this 50-year-old man. Who was the other one? Was it John Jones? Who was the other one he trained? Tony Ferguson. Tony, Tony, who's like cardio is through the roof. I mean, Tony was like, that guy five rounds, it's just insane. Never, never gases out. Yep. Yeah.

He might have over-trained. He might have. Goggins ran through the washer right there. Well, it would have been interesting if he got a hold of Tony when Tony was in his prime. You know, he got a hold of Tony when Tony was at the end of his career, essentially. Yeah. You know.

Well, I mean, that's always it, right? Judge a fighter at the prime. Well, yeah, absolutely. And with fighters, there's just, especially natural fighters that aren't taking any steroids or anything, when it gets to a certain point in time, the game is over. That's just how it is. Right? Time is undefeated. Time is undefeated. But fucking Gargan's...

Almost 50 still out there doing it. It has been injured so many times. Not just injured. People need to understand the mental strength. And we've talked about on the podcast where we showed his x-rays. Yep. The work that he's had done on his knees. I mean, it's all insane. It's insane. They do experimental stuff on his knees. Right. His knees are destroyed. I mean, they must be. Yeah, they're destroyed. They're complete bone on bone. And he just keeps running on them.

Okay. He cross trains, though. I mean, the dude, like, the pull-up record, his hands. Cam Haineson, right? Truett. I just saw that. Man, what a stud that kid is. I've been watching. Chip off the old block. I follow him. He is... I never met him, but man, he's... He's great. That consistency and that putting that together and, yeah, very impressive. I don't know. Like, I... I've known him since he was a kid, so to me it's fun to watch him become a man and then become this beast. Beast. Yeah. It's amazing. I mean, he did...

I think it was, was it 9,000 chin-ups in 24 hours or 10,000? I think it was more. 9,000 was the record. I think he stopped at 10,001 and I'm good. 9,000 was the record and he got to 10,000. So he broke the record first, then some cat in Australia broke the record, beat his record, and then he just demolished that guy's record. And then I saw his thing, which was a flex, which reminded me of something I did, which was like one of the highlight moments of my running career, which is he goes, I got another personal best in the same week at a marathon. Yeah.

So he ran. So I one time did two marathons a week apart, like six days apart in New Jersey marathon. I won it.

And then the next week I did Long Island Marathon and I got clipped by some college runner who beat me in the last like quarter of a mile. Damn, you won a marathon? I won that one four times in a row. Yeah. That's insane. What's the time? My fast times are 223. Two hours and 23 minutes for a fucking marathon? Yeah. I love Goggins, but every race we've run against each other, I beat him. Well, you have two knees.

That's insane. That's world class, man. I mean, it's like a fast for a weekend warrior. Two hours and 23 minutes? One year at the New York City Marathon. I want to remember this. I got 30th place, but at my shows, I tell people I was the fastest Jew. That's all that mattered. That's all. Fastest Jew. All that mattered. That's crazy.

That's super impressive that you win marathons.

Bro, that's not my personal best this week. And it was just the most fulfilling thing to say for not having won. But I'd run literally a week earlier faster. So that was a great moment. Yeah, but he beat you. He did beat me. True. First loser. That's a weird flex. Yeah. That's a weird flex. So you were a stockbroker? I wasn't technically a stockbroker. I worked on Wall Street. What did you do on Wall Street? So I went to school for electrical engineering.

And then worked like, I don't know, the tech guys who supported the iBankers. Okay. And then how did you get involved in this mentalist thing? This mentalist thing, right? What a weird thing. So when I was a teenager, I started doing magic tricks.

So I saw a guy on a cruise ship and I'd never seen really a magician. I wasn't into it, didn't know about it, didn't have a kid's party magician when I was a kid. And I was obsessed. Literally, I was on a cruise. I followed this guy around the cruise ship. It was a little bit stalker-esque. And there's not that many places to hide if you're a grown man. So I was finding this guy everywhere.

to just see more tricks. And I got back home and I bought every book I could at Borders. I went to the library. I was obsessive. I'm kind of those types of people who I don't do anything 80%, 90% given the running today. It's like 120%. Wow. And that was the thing for about...

I don't know, 20 years. There was more. I was doing magic. I was always doing magic on the side. I paid for college doing magic. Really? I run a couple of businesses. Yeah. What did you do? Like do shows? So I graduated high school when I was 16. I like skipped a grade, all this. And then my folks got divorced, long story. And they moved back to Israel. I was born in Israel. So separately moved back to Israel. So I was a bit of a, I guess,

I don't know, an adult? Like I had nobody supporting me. So when I went to college, I turned 17, I had to pay all the bills. Whoa. Yeah. So I was doing magic at restaurants. I've been doing magic at restaurants for like 30 years. And that's where I learned how to read people, just how to go up to a table of people who were like,

Who's this twerp like who's this nerdy kid with braces like what are you doing here get out of here? And how do you win them over quickly and that's honestly the biggest skill is how do you in sales read people effectively? Right that that's what I'm selling. I'm selling the thought of reading your mind now Did you learn the techniques from books did you take classes like no classes books and videos? Did magic and so mentalism is kind of a field

Like you had David Blaine in here, right? Legend. Yeah. Man, growing up, like, icon. So magic tricks are different because magic is there's a sleight of hand, right? So you're deceiving your eye by making you look at the wrong place at the right time when I do a move. And I can practice that move over and over and over until I get it perfect so that when I perform for you, it works, right? Okay. Stand-up comedy...

The most pure art form, right? You and a mic. That's it. Mine is the closest. Magic, you have props. Mentalism, there's no props. Like, I don't need you to pick a card anymore. I don't need it. Right. I can just tell you, think of a card. And that's where I go with it. So now you start knowing how people think. And you, in essence, reverse engineer the human mind. It's kind of like magic art.

Of the mind. And so that's where it kind of went from magic. And I kept doing more of the mentalism, more of it. But mentalism has a very steep learning curve. If you go to an open mic and you suck, how many people get to the level of getting better, getting better, putting in the work takes 10 years to be funny for most people. Right. There's a couple of phenoms, but that's a different story. So most mentalists, they drop off because I'm just going to go back to magic tricks. This works every time. Hmm.

So it's more difficult to learn? Way more difficult. Is it sheltered? Like, is the material on it difficult to find? I think it's more that people don't have the thick skin. Like, the same way you said the quitting mentality where I came back the year later, most people won't improve because you can't practice mentalism in front of a mirror. You can practice magic. So when I do the trick on you, and it's a card trick, no offense to magic, it's great, but what we're talking about is a much higher level.

I can't get it right. And the first few times you do it, the first hundred times you eat, you know, you eat shit like you're going to get it wrong. And most people don't want to do that. Watch. Watch. Let's try something fun. OK. OK. How about this? If I were to ask you, how long you been married? 16 years. Nailed that question. Well, well played. Thank you. You got your sister's happy. Your wife's happy. If I asked you, would your wife know your Social Security number? No, she doesn't know it.

No. So is there any way in the world I could know your social security number? I don't think so. Right. You say I'm a stalker. Who knows? Yeah. You could get the information. Maybe. Online. Agreed. Agreed. I'm skeptical. You're skeptical. Especially someone famous. Yeah. Fully. Plus you can't change that. So I'm not going to do that to you. Data dumps. Yeah. If I told you right now to make up a random number, I'd say get out your calculator. I'd love that. And you add it up and you do a random number. You know, screw calculator. I want it to be spontaneous. Would your wife know your ATM pin code? No. No.

Lie to me. Do not tell me your real ATM pin code. Okay. Obviously, unless you want to. Make up a fake four-digit number off the top of your head, what feels to you utterly spontaneous. When I say go, one, two, three, four-digit code, random, go. Okay. Say it. 2020. 2020, okay. So you ask me how do I do what I do. I'm going to write down 2020. Okay. Okay.

It's weird, but statistically, men will lie bigger, women smaller. Men like to lie by saying things are bigger, right? No shocker. So I don't think I would tell you right off the jump for me that that means that your first number, you don't have to say anything yet, Iowa 2020, is smaller. That's what most people do when they're rushed. If I had given you five minutes, you would have done this different. No, I wouldn't have. No, you would have. Try it.

Why would I? Because you would have thought about it and then people go down a different path. Nope. No? Nope. Okay. Worked out for me either way. You'll be honest if I'm right. Okay. I got a hit, which means it's a zero or one. I think the first number of your code is a one, isn't it? Your real pin code. My ATM pin code? ATM pin code.

Why would I tell you that on the air? Should I only show this to you? Sure. Only show it to you? Yeah. Can we acquiesce that the first number I got was correct? Yes. Okay. Now, you did repetition. So I like the fact when people always say to me it's fake when they watch the videos, they're like, you must have set up. Joe doesn't even want this to happen right now. He had no idea this was going to happen. You used two numbers in repeat. What that means is you probably did the same thing. You also didn't use any of the same numbers. I know there's not a two, a zero, or a two in it. I don't think so either. Mm-hmm.

And I'm watching you while I say it. You put the hand up. You might as well have said yes to me out loud. So now I know. Think of the second number, third number, fourth number. Every time you did it, it's a data point. Okay. I'm only going to ask you one more question. I'm not looking for answers. The last number is the biggest, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I'm showing this to you. Is there a camera behind me? I don't want to make sure. I'm only going to show it to you. It's not 2020. How'd I do, Joe? Is that your ATM pin code? Yeah. That's weird. Okay.

I'm skeptical because I've got that pin code in the mail. You know?

He's calling his bank right now and be like, yo, do you know this? Has this guy been playing the long game? Yeah, I don't like that. It's not 1950 anymore, people. We know our food is different. Highly processed and less nutritious. Industrial farming practices often strip nutrients from the soil and can deplete the nutrients available for us from food. Even the healthiest diets can have nutrient gaps. But AG1 NextGen helps fill those gaps.

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Have you ever done that to people and then withdrawed money? No comment. Interesting. Interesting. I'm trying to avoid criminal. Yeah. So I want everyone to know that was correct, right? That is, you went 2020. Yeah, that was correct. Your wife of 16 years doesn't know it. Now I do. But it's only, it's 2020 not, it's just because that's the year I moved here. It wasn't like. I think, I know you think that's the case. No, that's 100% the case. That's exactly what it is. What do you mean? You know, I think that's the case. Yeah.

You said a four-digit number, and I was like, oh, the date I moved here. Right. 2020, perfect. I hear you. You don't believe me. It's not that I don't believe you. It's that we got layers. So, like, we're peeling through, and I know why you think you picked it. And I know that you think you gave me no information. Okay. But I'm telling you that...

Good luck finding out how in the world could I have found out your ATM PIN code. You said nobody knows this. That informed what I did. So had you thought of a different number of your social security, you wouldn't have said 2020. But that ATM PIN code is one that was assigned to me by the bank and I never changed it. Right.

It's not, I didn't pick it. That's even better, isn't it? Had you picked it, I could have looked this up. That's actually, to me, more of a gold standard. No, because you could get it from the bank, because the bank is the one that fucking sent it to me. I guess, man, if I have broken into your bank account, there are bigger things at play than this podcast, I feel. I don't keep a lot of money in that account. Watch this. Watch this. How many UFC fights do you think you've seen in person or commentated? Boy, I don't even know. I really don't know.

What UFC number are we on? UFC 200, what is it? 200 and 234 or something. What is it at now? 235 is the next one. But each fight has an undercard. You've got the title fight. Sometimes as many as 15 fights. Or as few. Three. Three. 316. What is it? 316.

UFC 316 is now? Coming up on June 7th. What did I say, two? Yeah, I was thinking two for a second. Didn't we have 300 already? Oh, you know what I'm thinking? I'm confusing podcast numbers. We're in the 2000s. Oh, yeah, you're a lot of podcasts. UFC, yeah. So it's UFC 3 what? 316. 316. With 10 fights per. So I haven't been on all those cards, but I started...

Commentary wise in 2021 and just as a post fight interviewer in 97. So 97, I did it for two years, not as many shows. And then from 2001, I used to do 20 a year. I used to do a lot. I was doing most of them.

I would say thousands of fights. Thousands, right? Probably. Watch this, because I love that. I like the way you think, and I like that you're skeptical, because I'm a huge skeptic. I'm always the one calling BS on this. That's how I started doing it. If you think through all your fights, and you go back in time, and they need to know this is spontaneous. This is impulsive. You have not thought of this before this moment, have you? Right. I want you to stop and start thinking of different fighters.

Past or present. Could be somebody huge. Could be a legendary figure. Could be somebody more under the radar. Okay. Maybe you've had them on the podcast. Maybe you haven't. Watch. Make sure you think I'm not guiding you. The same way you said 2020, I said that. I would have said that no matter what. Let someone jump into your mind right now that you've definitely seen one of his, I guess, or her fights. Okay. Bam. I'm not guessing it. I don't care. Tell us.

Was it a specific fight you saw this person in or are you just seeing the fighter? Just seeing the fighter. No, no. Go to a specific fight of that person. Try to like contextualize it or change to a different fighter right now if you feel like you need to. Maybe. Let me think. Let me think. See, Joe's not going to want to change. Now that I said that. I'm trying to get it crafty. Yeah, get crafty. I'm trying to move along here. Are you going to come up with a name of the guy? I'm not coming up with anything. I want to see how your mind worked. I'm only doing this because you told me I would have said 2020 no matter what.

You think that you had the thought regardless of what I did. And I want you to see that there's causality. Boom. Do it now. Who just came into your head? Okay. Tell us. I'm not guessing. Anderson Silva. Anderson Silva. Legendary, right? Yes. Did he win or lose that fight? He won. He won that fight? Yes. How many people did you go to? So funny you said Anderson Silva. Legendary guy.

How many people did you think of before you landed on him? Oh, I don't know. I would scroll the Rolodex. They just all went flying through my mind. Just give me a guess. How many times dozens? Yeah. They just all went flying through my head. Dozens. Yeah. If you had to put a number on it and you actually count them, how many do you think you went through? Yes. Yeah.

Mean let's be conservative and save like 14 looks like not even say dozens He was the 14th fighter that popped in you know, no he was in there. He was in the mix He was in the mix. I was just trying to figure out which one to pick I was gonna get one with a crafty Russian name should have Yeah, all right no 14 people went through had Anderson Silva It's do you think that at some point in this week? You heard something

That got that in the back of your head that made you say that now? Do you think there's any way that that could have happened? No, I don't believe so. You don't, right? No, I don't believe so. I've just been a huge fan of his forever. I don't think something popped up that made me think about him. All right. I'm just curious. Okay. No trick. I'm just curious why that happened. Yeah. Where do we go from here? Where are you going with this? Where are you going with this? I don't know where I'm going. You don't know? I do. Okay. But I'm not telling you yet. Oh, okay. Yeah.

No, Joe's flummoxed. He's like, where do we go? No, I mean, like, I don't know why you asked me the question if you don't have a resolution. Oh, I'm not guessing it. I wanted to see where you thought of why it came to your mind. There'll be a reason. I don't want to explain it yet, but you'll see. Okay. Yeah. There'll be a reason why it came into my mind? I think so. I think there is. Yeah. What's the reason? Well, I don't want to tell you yet. Why? I'm selling the sizzle, not the steak. Okay.

So these techniques that you use, are these ones that you've invented? A lot of them. A lot of them. Yeah. And how did you invent them?

You know what? I think my favorite form of entertainment by far is stand-up comedy. Like straight up, I'm a fanboy of comedians. Like not the people that do what I do because that's – I just love watching how you can take any premise and stuff that's not funny, right? The people that really go – like Andrew Schultz. Life, did you watch his? Yeah.

Haven't seen it. You haven't seen it No, so how do you take infertility right and just it's not really a very funny subject and making credit is incredible He's so good so good. And so I like the fact that how you invent that so I design with an end in sight I say what do I want people to remember about what I do? Because I'm not really in the business of fooling you honestly and like entertaining you all of those are side effects and

What do I think I do for a living? I create memorable moments, which is very definable because if you go see a movie, let's say you see a popcorn flick. You walk out of the movie theater, 10 minutes, like what happened in the movie? I don't know. It was fun. I don't know. That to me is 100% like the death of my show. You leave and you will remember things hopefully for years to come.

And that's because I can rework your memory. That's really a lot of the techniques I do. People think that your memory is infallible, that what you see is some sort of blueprint, like a video. And it's not. It has to do with how you feel in the moment, the emotions, the things you can position the same way hypnosis works. So I can kind of engineer memories in a certain way, the way people remember things, the way they think and create those moments that people talk about, hopefully for years. And that's what's been.

you know, I guess that's what's been the driver of my business and what's helped lead to my success. Engineering memories. And when you first started getting into mentalism, is that the word to use for it? Mentalism? Yeah. You're a mentalist, but do you call it mentalism? I guess so, yeah, mentalism. Did you know that or is it something that...

I learned it. You know what? I learned certain things and I observed them and I didn't understand why they happened. You ever have that? You ever have a moment in a set where you say it's something that you didn't think was funny but got a huge laugh? Mm-hmm. Do you have that or do you always know? Yeah, yeah. Because it's usually not the punch. It's like, I didn't know that would be funny right then. Oftentimes with a new bit, yeah. Right? You don't exactly know where it's funny. Where the beats are, what was the word I said in this way, what was that inflection point? So when I was doing restaurants...

I had this trick where I would have somebody pick a card out of a deck of cards, right? They would put the card back in the deck. They sign it with their name. And I used to do this at a bunch of restaurants. They would shuffle up the deck. I give them a rubber band. I say, rubber band that bad boy. And I would take the deck and I would throw it at the ceiling. It's kind of a famous trick. And then, boom, the ceilings were really high at all the restaurants I worked at. So nobody could peel. Their card would stay stuck to the ceiling.

And this was great for multiple ways. One, everybody talks about it. And they're like, dude, this guy stuck my car to the ceiling. How the hell did he do that? They would also bring people back to the restaurant. You write cha-ching, cha-ching. The managers loved me because we'd bring more people back to

to see it and point at where their card was, right? Business 101. And so I create a great value proposition to the manager. Why am I there? I'm getting you guys more customers. But one time I'm listening to people that came back in and they're talking about the trick and they go, yo man, I picked a card. I put it back in the deck and I shuffled it up. And next thing I know, I look at the ceiling and my card's on the ceiling. And I'm like, yo, that's not what happened. I threw the deck up, the deck fell down and then the card was on the ceiling. Right.

So I go, why did that guy misremember it? Right. Maybe he's just drunk, maybe whatever. But I'm trying to understand why did he have a different memory of the same event? And what I realized is that people observe what you have them focus on.

Tony Robbins has a great bit where he goes, right now, close your eyes. Tell me everything that's green in this room. And you're like, green? I don't know. But then when you open your eyes, I see that the UFO lights are green instantly. But I say, close your eyes again. What's purple in this room? I'm like, I didn't look for purple. You find what you're looking for. So if I didn't say... It took me a while to iterate and figure it out. But if I don't look up when I throw the cards, when I would throw the cards up and let them fall back down on my hand and not look up...

The percentage would go 80-90% that afterwards people when they told the story, they edited, they clipped out the part of me throwing the deck and now it becomes a miracle. How the hell is that card on the ceiling stuck? You mean you shuffled it, it was signed, it's on the ceiling? That went from being a good trick to a miracle. And I kind of learned that at about age 15 and I started to realize how do I do that with everything I do? Because that's a life hack for everything you do. That's not magic.

That's life. How do you get people to remember what you want and forget the things you don't want? That's how you achieve success. You start to highlight your strengths. You find ways. And that's a learnable skill. That's not something for magic. That's something in all of life. And what is it like when you're thinking this, when you're thinking, I'm going to get people to remember something. How do you how are you doing this? What's your intention when you're trying to devise like what to what to do?

Well, I guess my intention, at the end of the day, I'm a competitive SOB. I want to be the best in the world at what I do. I'm driven by that. It's like Olympic gold medalists. I want to do the best things possible. Most people don't know what a mentalist is. You go on the street, 100 people, how many people are going to say yeah? I have a second.

ATM card. Leave that for the end, huh? You want to try it again? Not yet. I don't like to do the same thing. I got to do better stuff. I want to see it again, though. I want to see if you could do it again. All right, before we go, how about that? Not right now. We're in flow. Okay, okay. I'm trying to throw you off. You could. Listen, I don't get it right every time. That's the other part. A magic trick works every time. This doesn't.

I've eaten it on live national TV. Really? With millions of people watching. Yeah, man, there's no safety net. Like, it's not a trick. There's not a card trick where you put it in, I find it. There's not like that. So how are you doing it? Well, I mean, I'm telling you, I don't read minds. I read people. I've got a whole host of different skills, algorithms, you name it, like misdirection. It's all a wheelhouse of skills that I'm using to create the impression that I can read your mind. But this has got to be a weird thing to know how to do.

Like in a bad way or a good way? Definitely a good way. Yeah. But weird to like you have like an extra frequency. I agree. That you're tuning into with humans. Like you're experiencing life in a different way because you're experiencing life through this understanding of like thought patterns. You know what the best way? Do you remember in Born Identity? The first scene, like one of the scenes where he loses memory and he walks in the restaurant. You remember that scene? And he's sitting at a diner. Do you remember that one? I don't.

He sits there and he turns and he goes, he doesn't remember who he is. And he goes, why do I know? And I'm going to massacre this quote. But why do I know that that guy's 250 can handle himself in a fight? Why do I know this? Why do I know that right now I could run for two and a half miles before my core temperature goes down to this? Like he it's like this amazing superhero spy moment of like, how the hell does he know all that stuff? So he's observing life at a much more.

hyper focused level than most people are. Most people are dialed in at autopilot. If you could set a speaker to autopilot and here's what you're observing. I don't do it in my day to day life. It requires focus. It's not the same. It's kind of like, I guess, I don't know. I don't lift weights. I just run. But how much focus is required to try to do, you know, the largest bench press you've ever done? I assume that you have to get psyched up. You have to focus. You do everything right for that to work. Just an analogy. But

For me, when I'm performing, you asked me why I run 27 miles this morning. That dials in my mind. Like I'm focused where I thought through everything I'm going to do today. I'm it's, it's a laser focus that got me kind of in tune. I could also have not run, but that that's, that's, I'm also away from home. So that was like my joy.

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So for my day to day living, which is I do a lot of like really big corporate events and then I do, you know, I guess a lot of private parties, things that sort performances like live performances. Typically, I structure it the same way I think anybody would. I want to go out the gate very strong. I want to very instantly establish credibility. Who am I? What do I do? Am I any good at it?

And why should you be paying attention to me? Because all those questions off the jump is like who the hell cares? I always go in with who cares what you can do. You're special. I don't care. I like the thought of I'm gonna prove to you that this is something incredible and

And that it's something you're interested in emotionally. Right? If I told you just make a random number up, who cares? But now it's going to haunt you that that's your freaking ATM pin code. So I prefer that. So I do something very quick that freaks you out. And then every single thing needs to have a very clear premise. Like I call it clarity of effect.

I don't like a trick where I'm like, "Get a book, get a Rubik's Cube, get the..." Like, it's too confusing. You need to be able to explain to a six-year-old what I did in one sentence for it to be memorable. That's the key. The best things you've ever seen are typically stuff you can describe in one, max two sentences. And for TV, for TV it's the same exact thing, but I always like to do new stuff. So I've done a lot of TV appearances, and I always structure it based on who's watching.

So rather than it being about me and me saying, oh, look what I can do and look how cool this is. Right. You do a card trick. Again, I'm not saying that's not amazing, but the card tricks about you. Typically, if I'm on ESPN and I've done hundreds of millions of views doing stuff for football players, you're watching this. You're a football fan. You're like, who cares about this guy? I'm going to do stuff about football players and about what interests you if you're a fan.

I don't know if you've ever seen, I did a clip with Joe Burrow from the Bengals where I said, Joe, I ever spoken to you a word in my life? He goes, no. Like I honestly, the funny thing about that is I wasn't even supposed to use him in the show. They told me he's shy. You don't want to like, don't use him in the show. And they said, if you can't avoid him and I got in there, I tried to rile up the gang, you know, kind of peer pressure. And I'm like, should we get Joe in here? And they're like, yeah, get him up. Haven't spoken a word to this guy in my life. There's no access. I went in with ESPN, shout out to Adam Schefter, who I love, who set all these wheels in motion.

But Joe stands up, doesn't know me from anyone, and I say, every wide receiver and tight end in the room stand up. And I go, what if...

I could tell you who you're going to throw that ball to. What's that worth? Right? That's the Holy grail. If you're in football, I go catch the ball quarterback. I go look at everyone in this room and I'll look at me. And I wrote on a huge, huge thing, showed the camera, throw it to anybody you want, throws it, got the first one, right? I go, let's do it again. I go throw it to anyone you want. It was anyone. I go, anyone throws it, got the second one, right? Everyone's freaking out. I go one last play. One last two is luck.

And I write, fakes to Jamar. You can watch the clip. It's the most viral thing I've ever done. And he fakes it to Jamar, turns around, throws it to another guy. Nailed it exactly. Just, and you just see his face. And so I was thinking about how I would do that for two years. Two years of thinking of every single way that could work, not work, go wrong. Everything about it was, you know, he thought I went in the room. It's so simple. That was two years of me thinking about it during every run.

So for two years, you knew you were going to do this or you knew that you were? I started with the end. You asked me the same way. I don't know how you form a set, but you asked me, how do I design? I was designing with the story people would tell. And so people that don't know who I am, don't know anything, go, yo, we saw this guy. Did you see this guy? He told Joe Burrow to throw the ball to any people. Throws it, gets it right. The story is I told the quarterback anybody he would throw the ball to. So it was any quarterback. It wasn't Joe Burrow.

In your head. Well, I didn't know who it would be. But he said you could do it for two years. So for two years, you thought you were going to be on ESPN and with a quarterback? Well, no. So he was the second season. So when I first started it, I start brainstorming. I'm like, I can't control what thoughts come in. I'm constantly thinking about what I'm going to do. And I just do notes apps. I write stuff down in the shower. Like when I run is when I come up with stuff and in the shower. Sometimes on airplanes, but I sleep on planes. But that's when it hits me. Hmm.

Like where are your bursts? You must have like, where are you getting material? Mostly late at night on the right. Yeah. But sometimes driving. Driving? You don't do phone calls or anything? Yeah, driving with...

I mean, phone calls, I'm usually concentrated on talking to people. They're not the times where ideas come to me. A lot of times it's driving with no music on. Wow. Yeah. I'm never in the car by myself ever. Oh, really? Mm-mm. Family. Five kids. Oh, wow. Yeah. Driving to work. Yep.

Usually that's when it comes to me. Yeah, and I'm in New York City So there's no sauna sauna is good because you can't be on electronics, right? Yeah, yeah, the phones are a killer the phones like you zap any creativity or boredom you need yeah, you do need boredom Yeah, you need boredom for ideas to come to you for sure. Yep. Yeah, that's the problem Essentially with social media. It's like it's a boredom it you are still bored, but you are occupied right? You don't get to sit with it. Yeah, and

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I think is key because that's when they kind of fire off. Yep. And I think that's, you know, not to get into it, but like so many kids now have no way to deal with boredom. Yep. It's like panic. I got to get my phone. I got to, you know, that whole feeling of I wish there was a way to do that. They're just completely unaccustomed to not being constantly entertained. Right. And even entertained by nonsense. It's not even really entertaining. It's just distracting. Yeah. Which is a big part of it.

Yeah, yeah. So you sat out for two years prepping this thing. No, I didn't sit out. I was just always thinking. It's like, I mean, but you know, you set out, I should say, set out in your mind. You had this idea in your head for two years. How do I do it? Yeah. How do you do it? How do you do it? That's that, that, that was the question. Cause I didn't know how to do it at first. How did you do it? Million dollar question, right? I wouldn't be in business if everybody knew that's kind of, well, okay. Even better. How did you learn how to do this kind of thing?

So I started with books and then there's some videos, but it's a very esoteric. What do the books tell you that's applicable? They give you a series of foundational things. Like, right. Almost everybody who becomes a mentalist stars, a magician. It's kind of like if you're a doctor, you gotta be a doctor before you become a plastic surgeon. So there's this core set of skills that you utilize to,

To know how to fool people, right? To know how people think. Okay. Right? Think about it. If I taught you a card trick right now, there's always a level of deception. Oh, that's... Sleight of hand. Well, there's tricks called self-working tricks where you don't need to do any sleight of hand. Okay. They work by themselves as long as you follow the instructions, like IKEA furniture, like step one, step two, step three. Got it. As long as you can...

Work people in a certain way to do the right thing as versus something. I'm not doing that You're like, oh shit. What do I do right now? Right? You have to know how to finesse people you have to influence people effectively and so That same stuff within magic almost always applies to props. You need a thing to do the trick Now it could be a regular deck of cards in which case you're learning slights, but also there's gimmicks, right? There's tricks you can buy at stores, which when I was a kid, I'm like, oh teenager I'm like get me the next gimmick

But then to get better, you start being able to do stuff impromptu, right? That's when you kind of hit another level where I don't need stuff. I can do stuff with anything. You know, I could do stuff. It's like a good story for my book that I'm writing right now. But it's like where I just needed anything around. I was like, I end up in jail for a weekend. It's a long story. But like in jail, one weekend, stupid weekend. But I walk in there by myself and

And I should have been out that day. But anyway, I got stuck all weekend. And I watched them with cards. And it was like I had trained my whole life for this moment where I walked up record scratch to like 40 dudes. And I go, can I see those cards? And it was like everyone looked at me like, what's this guy about to do? And I just did card tricks for the next eight hours. When I went to take a shower, I'm like thinking of the show Oz. I'm like, oh, my God, right now. I had protection. I went to the shower, Mecosta County Jail in Michigan. And literally I had people being like, go take a shower. We got you, bro.

What did you go to jail for? Oh, so stupid. So we had... This is so dumb. This almost derailed my whole career.

Drunken idiots. I go up to visit a buddy in college and we steal from a Papa John's. Don't ask me why. A broken phone at a college Papa John's. Just being idiots. I paid for the pizza. But there was a broken phone on the counter. And, you know, this is like me sleight of hand style. I'm like, I'm stealing this thing. It's just gone. And it was in my jacket. And then I told my buddies, you guys got to get something too. So they go in the bathroom, which doubles up as the employee locker room. And.

And they take three dirty shirts, dirty shirts from a laundry bin. And we bring them back to my buddy's house like idiots. We wear them. And we at the party. I barely remember this. I was like blackout drunk are like Papa John's. Who wants a pizza? Who wants a pizza? I end up going to sleep on his futon right at like 2 a.m. And at 4 a.m. someone comes in and like, yo, the cops are here.

I'm like, dude, it's not my house. What do you want from me? Did you guys post the videos? No, this is pre-social media, man. No, no. Somebody ratted us out. Somebody's roommate. I found this out way later. Oh.

Call and goes, yo, bro, there's a bunch of dudes here with a broken phone from Papa John's. I didn't know any of this. But somebody comes in. They're like, yo, the cops are here. I'm like, they're here for you. And I'm like, here for me? What do you mean they're here for me? I don't live here. And cops come in the room. And I'm wearing, like, aggressively small underwear at this point. This is like tighty-whities. This couldn't have been more of, like, a bad perp walk. And they go, yo, you're under arrest. And I'm like, for what? And they're like, for stealing from Papa John's. And what am I going to say? I'm wearing the shirt. What?

Oh my God. This is on a Friday night. How old are you? I was 20 years old and I was just about to get an internship for Merrill Lynch. And while this story is hilarious now, it's like a funny chapter in my book. It was like, God help me. Did I avoid everything? And then when I went to jail, yo, scariest, one of the scariest days of my life. Cause it's, it's, how'd you get out of everything?

So I got out everything because I had a clean record. I was a pretty upstanding citizen. And, you know, not to get in the weeds, there's something called Holmes Youthful Trainee Act. I wonder if they still have it. It was expunged from my record. Didn't have to report it to, like, the Wall Street firm. And they also said they were charging me. They put us in, like, a drunk tank, me and two buddies. And they said they're charging us with felony larceny. And I've seen some...

like law and order. I'm like felony. What is this? Like, what do we steal? Like 20 bucks worth of stuff. They go, but you stole things. They don't sell. Had you stolen $999 of pizza, uh,

it would have been a misdemeanor. And I know they're lying to me. I'm not a mentalist then. And I'm inebriated, but I can read the room. Didn't say a word, knew this was BS. And then they separate us when we went to general population. And it's not like the movies, you know, it's like, it was, it was wild. It was wild when I went in there and I just knew this is my cheat code. It was like everything in life had prepared me for this moment.

And the jail was also, again, I didn't know this, but it was very segregated. Like the white dudes are here. The black dudes are here. And I didn't know what, what do you do when you go in? Like, what do you do? I'm five foot nothing. I'm like a buck 40 dripping wet. What do I do? How do you make friends right now? And I see the black guys playing spades and I just walk up and it's like, you make your move. And I'm like, let me see those cards. And it was just, it's like a moment I have never,

And I didn't stop for hours. And I didn't repeat a trick. Like, I know tricks encyclopedically. I just go all day. Wow. Yeah. What an experience. It was crazy. That's wild. And then it was all thrown out and cost me some money. It was definitely a very, very stressful few weeks. And I never stole anything since. Honestly, that was scared straight. That was very, very smart. Like, I...

You prefer to learn a lesson like that, for my kids especially, without being stupid. But so many of us have to be stupid to internalize a lesson of touching the stove. And I had to burn my hands. Did you always talk this way, the way you talk? You talk very fast with a lot of energy. Is this your whole life? I think so. Even though, man, anyone on 1.5x the way I listen to podcasts is going to be miserable with me. Maybe that's it. Like you're listening to podcasts at that speed. You're communicating at that speed. It's like you're on. I'm on.

And you ran 27 fucking miles. That's true. No caffeine. So I'm not a caffeine guy. You don't drink caffeine at all? I try to avoid it. I'm not a coffee guy. I missed the boat on coffee. I honestly wish I did. It probably wouldn't be good for me given how dialed in I am. But like I just never started drinking caffeine so I never got into it. Do you ever mess with any stimulants?

Not really. No, not really? What does that mean? Like, what do you mean by stimp- Like, I'll have- Like anything. If I don't sleep- Yeah. And that happens a lot. So if I'm not, like, getting enough sleep and I've done a red eye and I'm this and that, I will occasionally do, like, a Celsius or a Red Bull, but I don't really like it. I do it kind of as medicine because I have to be alive and functioning, but I really try to avoid it. What is it like when you get hit with a Celsius and you haven't been drinking any caffeine? So I only drink about a third of it and then I pour it out.

And and my kids are always like why you pouring that out and they call everything a brew ski Which is a weird thing they call just before I always like it was always like a brew ski is what they've Extrapolated to every beverage in a can being a brew ski. That's hilarious. That's funny And so one third just like must I can't do more than that. Yeah. Yeah, like if you drank a four loco, I

I did four loco's. Does four loco's have booze in it? Yo, four loco's are like... Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. But it has like caffeine too, right? That's like bad decisions in a can right there. Yeah, like what am I thinking of? Oh, a red line. Is that the one? No, I think it's four loco. It's caffeine mixed with alcohol. There's one that's like was just caffeine. It was fucking crazy. Oh, that was the stuff to take like pre-workout that was fucking people up. Was that a red line? Something like that. Oh, there was that one. That was the other one. That was Rip Fuel.

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This episode is brought to you by Netflix. So, my brother Shane Gillis, one of the funniest human beings that's ever lived, has a show. It's called Tires, and it's returning for season two, launching June 5th on Netflix. It's a show that's going to be

It's a fucking hilarious show by, again, one of the funniest guys ever. Season 2 sees Will and Shane rush to grow personally and professionally after the unexpected success of their big marketing idea without fully realizing the cost of doing business. Watch Tire Season 2 on Netflix on June 5th, 2025. Yeah. Yeah. So you've always been like this. I guess my wife. I think so.

Well, I'm more on now because we're doing something. But if I go on certain platforms or TV and I know I want to be slow, then I'll just calibrate down. But I'm getting fired up. Do you when you plan out a show, whether it's a corporate show or a television show, do you have like a whiteboard? Do you like put your ideas on? Like, how do you how do you do it?

So I take meticulous notes about everything. Everyone I meet, everything at the end of a show, immediately, as quickly as I can afterwards, probably some people record shows. I hate rewatching myself on corporate shows and like live shows. Sure. I don't mind TV stuff. But for some reason, those if I've repeated material because, you know, it's like muscle memory. You've done this before. It irks me to watch again.

but I write down everything that happened every nuance like paragraphs about everything that happened which is a useful life hack because I remember it all but also I get repeat bookings a lot so if somebody brings me back now it's like a real magic trick where I know everything about what happened and if you even just recount stuff from two years ago

People think you have superhuman memory or what are they like people's number one subjects are themselves their family and their friends The more you can do that and give them back stuff about them the more they're like Wow What a caring individual right being a good listener a lot of times just repeating back to people what they just said right? Right when you do these corporate shows and you do these television shows

When it goes great, do you have this idea in your head like now I've got to ramp it up? Now I've got to push it even further. Now I've got to make it even more difficult for me. For sure. For TV more than corporate because corporate's not as big of a deal because –

what does somebody want there? They want a defined quantity, right? They don't want somebody, you don't want to work out new material if you're being paid a lot. It's just, it's at a stadium. Are you doing new ones? Like you're going to do your hour. You're going to do what's solid. So I do a lot of that. And the problem is I don't really have a lot of places where I can do new material because I'm,

I'm just so busy. So I have so many events that I don't really have anything that I can... Yeah, there are open mics for mentalists where you can go and practice. There might have been in the past, but right now it's not... It's just not where I'm at. So you just practice on friends sometimes? Everything's in my head. Everything. Yeah, so I...

A lot of things I'll do on TV I've never done before ever. Really? Yeah. So I'm just thinking through everything that could go wrong and I go through kind of like a list of what could go wrong here, what could go wrong here, what if they think this right there, what if we change this? I have like plan A, B, C, D, E. I have just a long list of what everything will go, like a pick your own adventure. And typically I know where to go with it and then control.

controlling your body and your tension is everything, right? So you're a hunter. You step on a branch, animal hears it. What happens, right? Gone, right? It's a sense that we can feel. We have the same thing. We're animals. If I get tense when something's going wrong,

You can sense it. Even if you don't know it on a conscious level, you can sense it. And now we have a cascade. So my job is based upon me being somewhere the alpha and being in control of the situation. And so if I think about it, if I just said, think of your pin code, I don't want to. Right. I don't want to. I'm gonna do this instead. I'm gonna do this instead. Right. How did you.

I acquiesce to my will. You did what I wanted in essence, right? We could manipulate any way, but at the end of the day, you did what I wanted. Right. And in my show, I'm the one pointing the camera. I'm always the director. You don't get to point where you want. I kind of in charge. And even if I let you think you're in charge, I'm still in charge at the end of the day.

Right. I come to my kids. I want them to eat veggies. I don't say you got to eat your veggies. They'll say no. I go, you're so lucky right now. Carrots, cucumbers or peppers. Which one? You're so lucky you get to choose first before your brother or sister. Now I've framed it differently. Right. Anybody who has toddlers knows that's the best way to do it. Don't go straight on. That's not going to work. Right. So the same thing applies. Power dynamics in relationships with people.

So I got lost in my train of thought. But in essence, if I am messing up and you know it, it's going to go downhill really fast. And so on TV, some of my biggest mess ups, you don't know. But I am shitting my pants flop sweat like fully. And I can't let you see that. I need to be so calm because if I am not calm.

You can actually tell. And it's going to keep going worse. And I can't get you to go back to what I want. And I've lost control of the situation. So years and years were spent doing that. I would say it's very akin to a sniper. I'm not a sniper. Don't get me wrong. I'm not military. But how do you calm your heart rate? How do you stay calm even when you're not? And I could have an HRM on me. I'm close.

Calm when things are going wrong. That must help the running must help for that I think so control your heart rate low heart rate just in control of it as well, right? Like your your heart muscles very finely tuned

Yeah. I think it helps. I mean, it can't hurt. Yeah. My friend Cam Haynes, who also runs these crazy ultra marathons, he's also the best bow hunter in the world. And bow hunting is a lot of it is controlling your anxiety at the moment of the shot execution. And I would imagine for him, his heart rate is completely under control all the time because he's always like very low. Yeah. Because he does so many miles, like everything. He can stay calm.

It's probably a really great tool just for staying calm, right? I think so. I mean, the way I describe the ultra marathons, because they're silly, right? He just ran, I love Cam, ran 250 miles. Do you see that thing? Amazing. That's a crazy thing to do. That's not healthy. And I'm a nutcase who can say that. And for most people, they're like, I don't want to do that. And you don't need to. But what is that? What is that really? When you do that, everything else in life becomes easier. Yeah.

The lows that you experience when you do something like that is a way you cannot fake in any other way. You cannot test who you really are.

than putting yourself you could be on the couch saying what would i do and be tough guy and you're pretend to be goggins or haynes but until you get in that level where you're miserable you haven't slept in a day you have all that there might be another way to push yourself but that's where you learn who am i really at my core and then when you go back to normal life everything else the volume is turned down and when i come back from those races all i do is get a mirror to put up to see who am i really when things are at their lowest and when i want to quit and i don't

Hmm. Yeah. I think that's a very strong statement. I think one of the things that you just said there, I've said a bunch of times, is that if you can work out really hard and push your body and push your mind, it makes other forms of adversity that you face during the day much easier. And I think that's one of the reasons why so many people are so filled with anxiety. It seems like that's such a simple solution that most people don't want to accept it. Like, oh, there's more to that. There's a mental imbalance. There's a this, there's that. Like,

Perhaps, but everybody that I know that does what I'm talking about, everybody I know that pushes themselves very hard in the gym or running or doing yoga or whatever, they're the most happy and the most relaxed and they're able to face adversity throughout the day much easier than people that don't take care of their body, that don't eat well, that don't exercise and don't experience any voluntary physical discomfort.

Couldn't agree more. I think it's mandatory, you know, and it doesn't have to be what I do or it doesn't have to be what you do. It's go find, do pickleball, okay? Go play some other sport, tennis. Do something that's fun. Jiu-jitsu is a great one. Yeah. It's fun to do and then you learn how to do something while you're working out. Muay Thai is another one like that. You know, there's a lot of stuff that you can do that's fun, that's exercise, but man, you should exercise.

You know, you got to move your body. You got to move your body again. I don't speak out a turn like medical, but they've shown over and over that exercise is just it's almost as effective in certain regards and like like just being a certain level of healthiness than antidepressants. No more. Yeah. More effective. It's unbelievable. Statistically, clinically more effect, more effective. Yeah. Because it's of course it is.

Of course it is. Like, this is the reason why people are so filled with anxieties, because your body has certain physical requirements. Right. Your body was designed to fight off predators and to run away from enemies and to hunt and gather food. That's the same DNA as people that lived tens of thousands of years ago. Courses through your body. That's the fabric of your body. That's you. Right. You can't deny that. And there's a reason why this sedentary...

sort of generation that we're experiencing right now because of phones and tablets and all the sitting in front of screens all the time. It's the most depressed, right? No, for sure. Anxious to Jonathan hate on like it's, it's, it's, it's wild. The correlation and it's just so clear cut. But yeah, social media is very, uh,

It's one of those things, there's some benefits, but man, oh man, you can't put that genie back in the bottle. You've got to find the right way to do it. There's some benefits in that there's a lot of inspiration. I agree. You know, and also information. You know, I'm not completely off of social media.

I tap anywhere, but I've radically reduced it over the last month or so. And in doing that, it's really been much, much nicer. Like life is way easier, but occasionally I'll find something really interesting on social media. So it's like, boy, I don't want to not know that. I don't want to not like find out about some new scientific breakthrough or some new thing that's going on. One of the things that I've found that, um,

Helps me though, instead of social media, I just have a bunch of stuff that I curate in my Google News app.

And so I'll just like find like any sort of scientific breakthrough or some weird discovery or a lot of really interesting things about ancient civilizations. I just have that stuff curated. So it just shows up on my feed. Where do you get that on your phone? Yeah, it's just the Google News app. It's great because it's like that way I can find stuff out without having to go and just hopefully randomly run into it on X or on Instagram. Right. You know.

That helps a lot. I'm terrible with X. A lot of my friends get news on X. I'm just like, oh. It's too much negativity. It's a lot of negativity. And for Instagram, for years, I started realizing that it just –

Like a compare and despair is one of the, you know, that like where I'm like, why am I getting off of this and feeling worse than I did getting on it? And so I really had to flip a switch in my brain to, to, to, I got rid of that. Anything that I don't like, I don't show. And I stopped focusing on what I don't have and what I focus on what I do have.

And so it... So did you, like, used to go to it and you see someone with a giant house and a Lamborghini or something like that? Was it material possessions? It wasn't material. It was, I need to use... I don't look at people and hope...

poorly upon them, I look more at it and say, I'm not doing enough. So it's like a inferior. You're always going to be lesser than, right? You're always going to be, someone's going to be younger, richer, smarter, like every er. But in my case, it was more of, I wanted to achieve a level of success and just seeing other people in my field or other fields. And I felt like I'm not doing enough. I'm trying,

somewhat driven ambitious. So I'm like, I'm just not doing enough right now. And it's that constant feeling of I'm not doing enough. It doesn't drive you. It would be better to see, look at them. I'm so happy for them. I'm going to do that too. Like I, it should be a positive uplifting thing. And it's a flip in your brain. It's like multiplying negative one times negative one and much more of a inflection point of gratitude. Like I, I, you know, Jay Shetty,

Jay, I don't know, podcaster, really good dude. I've definitely heard of him. Met him last year, and he told me something very stuck with me for the last year, which is a million thoughts a day. We're on social media. We're all this, that. He goes, the only two thoughts. You can't control them all, but try to control two thoughts each day. The first one when you wake up and the last one when you go to sleep. It's that easy. Those two. Just try to have the first thing you wake up be one, and before you go to bed, just have one last thought.

Okay. And I, they're always, for me, it's like, yo, I'm every day alive is a blessing. Like I, I literally, I believe that in my core. You, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Like,

A parent in my school just passed away recently. Shattered. Like, young kids, cancer. I've known a few people. And you see that and you're like, no, that's for real though. You don't know what will happen tomorrow. So I've hit the lottery. Like, I'm blessed beyond measure. Wife, way out of my league. Smart, gorgeous, sharp as a whip. Five beautiful kids. Like, I try to focus on everything I have and never on what I don't have. I get to do what I love for a living. Like, my mindset is completely evolved of why would I think of what people don't. And everybody...

If you're alive, you should be happy. You do not know what tomorrow will be. And I know that's all like new agey, whatever, but that's, you don't know when your, your, your clock's up. We were just talking about that in the green room last night at the comedy club about gravity. The problem with gratitude is that too many people have co-opted it. Right. And really annoying people. Annoying. Annoying, like wooden beads types, you know, like gratitude, but gratitude is really important.

But no, it's actually what you think because your thoughts create a lot of your reality. Yeah. The same way I said looking around the room. So if your mindset starts to become one more of rather than you see someone, you're like, screw that guy. He's rich, right? That's how the mindset, that's easy for you to say they're rich. You see that in comments all the time. Yep. I'm like, I think that person worked their butt off to get to where they are. Yeah.

And what did they do? And you know what? That's inspirational to me. What can I learn from that? And so that's just a mindset of I don't see it as a zero-sum game. Well, it's one thing that those people that post things like that have in common. When you go to their page, they're all very boring. Right. It's really interesting. You see like the expression of their dull mind. That's like, fuck them. They got money. Right.

I don't have money. They got money. It's a dull brain. And I always wonder, like, what is it like to be that person? Is that person, is that a biological hitch or is it just learned behavior? Like, what is it that makes them that stupid? I don't know if it's stupid. I mean, I don't know if I judge, but I think you project your insecurities. It's a little bit of that, but it's clearly a stupid way to think. Right. You know, it's totally not empowering, like, to complain about someone else's success or be angry about someone else's

else's success is not empowering in any way, shape or form. And so that's inherently stupid. But you find the excuses because you're like, if I had that, if I had that and rather than be nice, well, exactly. Must be nice. Rather than saying, how do I do this for myself? Exactly. It's much easier, especially if you've given up on certain things. Yeah. Now, once you've given up, it's better to make excuses and bring someone else down to try to bring you up. Well, here's what's dumb about it. And this is why I said it's stupid.

It doesn't get any better when you think like that. Instead, if you can shift your focus and see someone doing something, recognize that these tinges of jealousy that you feel are completely natural. But realize that to get the most out of this, you have to switch that in your mind to inspiration.

And that person's success that's kind of freaking you out now becomes fuel. Right. Now becomes fuel and you can motivate yourself. But you have to avoid the fuck that guy and fuck this, fuck that. That doesn't help you at all. That does zero good for you. And in fact, it occupies all of your precious time with...

with complaining when instead, if you can manage it and it can be managed, you can turn that into inspiration and then go out and try to do something. Either focus more on what you're doing, realize maybe I'm doing this where it's not as efficient or maybe I can have more energy. Maybe I just need to do it more. Maybe I need to be a little bit more disciplined in my approach, whatever it is. But those little shifts will have measurable changes in the outcomes.

Huge huge changes major down the line, especially the big one change jealousy to inspiration Love that you have to be able to do it, right? It's it's a giant key You know, I remember when I was 21 years old there was a guy who was going on stage and I was hoping that he bombed Right. I remember thinking that I was hoping that he bombed and the reason I've recognized it I was realizing that I was recognized and he was talented and

And then he was really funny, and it bothered me that maybe I wasn't as talented as him or I wasn't as funny as him. So instead of seeing him going, what is he doing? Like, wow, this is great. Instead, now all of a sudden I was hoping that he failed. Right. And then I realized, oh, here's the problem. First of all, that's just general bitch thinking that can enter into your head, and you've got to figure out how to stop that.

Yeah, but I also realized that I was getting to this weird precarious position Which happens to a lot of artists where you get into something whether it's music or stand-up comedy because you love it as a fan You love watching it like I loved comedy, but then I when I became a comedian I stopped loving comedy now

now I was comparing everyone to myself. Right. That's brutal, right? Yeah. And it's not good for you. And I was like, no, no, no. You got to go back to laughing at stuff that's good and not connecting it to you at all. It has nothing to do with you. So when someone's really good, that should be great. Right. And then you should be laughing

Even if you don't like that person, you should be laughing. Right. Just you, even if you hate someone and they're funny, you should be laughing because it's good for you. Yeah. And it's, I find that it's over time. It's, it's, it's almost, it's selfish, but it's selfless at the same time is I like to show love to people coming up as much as possible and try to highlight them and try to kind of

Pay it forward in a way. Yeah. That's for the new people that are kind of doing what I do or doing different things. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel good to do good for others. It's selfish to help people. Isn't that funny? I say that too. It's very funny. We think the same.

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Save up to 40% your first year, call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use the promo code JRE or go to lifelock.com slash JRE for 40% off. Terms apply. Yeah, I think exactly the same way. It's kind of selfish, but it's also it's...

That's what community is supposed to be about. It's supposed to be not just about you. And that's the difference between community and a cult. Right. A cult is like, then you have the cult leader. He starts banging everybody's wife and he wants everybody's money. There's always an inflection point where you're starting to bang wives. That's always, where is that in the cult? There's always a message from God. Right. That tells you you need more pussy. And you're like, those two right there. I don't know why. He didn't, I didn't say it. I didn't say it for the record.

Yeah, said it God said it and then always the part else is there's always some sort of a Endpoint like the world's gonna end but it didn't because we prayed so hard. So we're back baby Yeah, those guys are great There was a billboard in Los Angeles a while back that had the date of the end of the world right and you drive by and I was like I can't wait to show up here and take a selfie in front of it the day after this fucking stupid date, right and

Because those guys are never right. Never right. That's weird. They're the worst mentalists. The cult leaders? Yeah, cult leaders. They just never see the writing on the wall. The cult leader has a very unique... Again, there's a fine line between if you looked at a path in my life... Again, I don't see myself cult leader, but a con man is very similar in many regards to what I do because that's using these skills in what I would describe as a...

an unethical way, right? Don't you think they're the same thing? A cult leader is a type of con man. Oh, I was saying what I do is like a con man. Yeah, but you are a con man for entertainment purposes. Right, exactly. It's different. You have an understanding of the human mind, but instead of using it in a...

You do it for entertainment, which is like a good way to use it. For sure. Where everybody gets happiness out of it. It's happiness, and you're not lying about the premise, which is the premise is I'm starting from the jump. I'm not psychic. I'm not supernatural. People ask me, is this like a talent, or is it a gift? And I think it's similar. Well,

Yeah, I mean, you've got to have some sort of thing in you to be a good comedian or a good musician or anything like that. You can work on it and get better, but I'm never going to the NBA. You know what I'm saying? That's not happening. You have to have some attributes. Right. There's like a personality trait that just is embedded in you from the time you're young for whatever the thing is that you love to do. Maybe it was like watching my folks. Maybe there was a lot of weird stuff. I was very good at math as a kid, like unusually good at math.

And I would do weird stuff. Like I'd count steps every time. I knew every step and every place I ever went to, like some Rain Man stuff. And when I would go, this is from the time I was like six. We go to Little Caesars. I'll never forget. I lived in Metro Detroit. And before they rang up the food, I knew the percentage tax it would be. So when they did it, I would instantly say before I'd look and I'd know what my mom was going to take out. You're going to get $16.18. She's like, how did you know that and change? And it was like a weird...

That's crazy. And it was like a weird thing that I got very good at. And I think, boom, dopamine hit, dopamine hit. They would like that. And so it's ingrained where I was good at, again, people become the joker because there's some sort of dark thing in their, not everybody, but typically there's some, I don't want to say trauma, but there's some sort of

But you're not going to be funny or amazing unless something happened in your life where you have a reason to be entertaining. Right. And so I think there's points in time where I could take people's minds off things. And this was a great way to do it. And also magic. People don't get to know you.

They get to know the character, the performer. So you get that nice little separation, which I learned at a young age was really like how to make rejection, fear of rejection, fear of failure. Most people, that's their number one fear. And I learned at 14 how to make that gone, like eliminate that entirely. Interesting. That's interesting. It's also the dynamic of you being in control, which I think you, you know, you talked about earlier, I think is for whatever reason imperative where you're speaking to people.

You have to be in control for them to let you kind of guide everything. You don't want other people. You don't want to ask questions and have everybody like free to talk and. No, I don't mind that. Now, I don't mind that. But if they do it when I want them to. Right. It's like, again, so the best salespeople in the world aren't the used car sales. Buy this, buy this. That's nobody does well. The number one salesperson organization is the one.

who gets you to sell yourself. They're bending over backwards to be like, I gotta do business with you, right? You get someone to the point where at the end, you don't have to hard close. Every organization I work for, and I go in there and show you how to do sales training one-on-one, it's going to be the person who gets the other person to sell themselves. That's what you do. You lay the breadcrumbs into the trap. The trap is not a bad thing, but the same thing happens in my show. I am leading you in a certain direction. Hmm.

Watch, I'll show you something. How often is Jamie... Jamie, when I walked in, I talked to him for like two minutes, said he loves magic. He does. Is that true? Is Jamie off mic? Yeah, what's up? He didn't know I was going to do this. You have daughters, correct? Yes. So it's hard. I have three girls, two boys, and I found when I named our girls, well, we named them together, obviously, the naming of the girls was far harder than the boys. When you named your daughters...

Was it agreed upon? Were you like shortlisted? How did it go about? Well, I feel like my wife did way more work than I did. Yeah, for sure. So she carries the baby in her body. And I said, listen, I would just want veto power. Veto. Where you can't name the kid applesauce or something fucking stupid. I go, I don't think it's a fair proposition. Yeah.

That's literally what I said. And I don't give a fuck about names. And they've got your name for last name, which is still not fair. Right. It's right. And so does she. But my name is Joe. It's a boring-ass stupid name. It doesn't bother me at all that I have the same name as a billion people. So for me, names don't mean anything. And it meant something for her. So I said, you decide. Okay.

So watch this. What are the, do you know what the most common names are right now? I know this recently, we have like a two week old, but the most common names right now are not the same as when you were naming your daughters is my guess. If they're teenagers, what do you know what the most common name right now in, in America? I think it's six years running. Mom, this up. No, no. For girls.

For girls. What is it? No. Olivia. Check it, Jamie. Can you look up top 10? That's a beautiful name. Look up. It just came out. Social Security. I know this because, like I said, we were trying to figure out names. Am I right? It should be Olivia's number one. I don't know what side to go to. I don't know. Google top 10. Who do you think of when you think of Olivia? I thought initially of Olivia Wilde. Who's Olivia Wilde? Movie star?

Do you know who she is? Oh, that lady. Yeah. Oh, she's great. Yeah. I thought of Olivia Newton-John. Yeah, that's second. That would have been second. I've performed for Olivia Wilde, never Olivia Newton-John. What did you get? Did you find out? Yeah, do you want me to show you the list? Oh, yeah. It's not a trick. I just want to see. Olivia's number one. Emma...

Emma, Amelia, Charlotte, Mia, Sophia, Isabel, Evelyn. That's interesting. Eight? I would have never imagined that. Right? Ava, nine. You did not hear those names when you were growing up. There were probably no girls named Ava when you were a child. No, none of any of these names. Maybe Olivia after Olivia Newton-John, but that's crazy. Sophia's number 10? That's interesting. And Sophia's spelled two different ways, so it's technically number one. Jamie. Oh, really? If I ask you.

Okay. Oh, that's right. It is. It's spelled P-H-N-F. Wow. Interesting that Sophia is number one, really. Huh. Harper? What's Harper? 11? 12? Camila? Camila, number 11? That's nuts. Eleanor? Older names are coming back. Really older names. Yeah, that's like Eleanor. It's like my friend Eleanor Kerrigan. She's in her 50s. Ileana?

Ileana's number 18? That's crazy. What are the odds? Right? What are the odds? If you told me, is Ileana in the top 20 of names, I'd be like, shut the fuck up. Whose name's your kid, that? I think someone I know does. It's a beautiful name. Love that name. It's not a bad name. It's a beautiful name. But it's like, I would have never thought it was that common. So when you think of how this is happening, watch this. Jamie, I ask you,

To come up with somebody absolutely random from your past. Absolutely random. I dug deep. Okay. You already got it? Yeah. You know what? How do you know this person? Oh, you shouldn't have said that. Oh, sorry. Oh, you shouldn't have said a word. You know what? Right away. What did you say? It's from preschool. Preschool? Somebody in preschool? Yeah. You still keep in touch? Before I met him. No. She said to him. Why do you say him and then her? Sorry, I met them is what I guess I was trying to say. This guy's playing the pronoun game. What's going on here? You know what?

No, no, there's too many giveaways. Just said it wasn't on the list, doesn't it? Let me ask you a question. Want to try again? No, no, I'm going to do something better. We'll switch. This is a glitch in the matrix. Jamie, close your eyes. Close your eyes. I have to look at the screen. You've got to look? Okay, so pretend you're closing your eyes. I'm going to put you on the spot. Okay. It's not the preschool girl. I want you to close your eyes, go back in time, and try to picture the face. I always call this the one that got your first big crush. Okay.

Can you visualize her face or you can't see her clearly? You asked me this before. It's a tough question because the way you started wording it was like, is this a first crush? For me, it was like the first person I knew. There was like TV people and stuff like that. Oh, is it a TV person? That's what it would have been technically, I guess. Yeah. Your first crush was a TV person? Sure. Yeah. Someone I saw on TV. Is that right? I think so. Okay. Okay.

I guess. Well, I don't know. I don't know. If I were to ask you to look up how popular this name is, well, no, I'm not going to do it again. It's not top 10. Is that correct? Right, it wasn't. Okay, hold on. Look this way at me. I want you, without using your fingers, to count the number of letters in this person's name. The real name or the character's name?

I don't know if that matters. I don't know. I've never had a fictional character as my first crush. This guy got weird. I don't know. Whatever name you went with. Don't say it out loud. I'll go with the fictional character's name. Don't say it. No, no. To me, they weren't a real person then. Well, I don't know. Oh, don't say it. Oh, no, no. Don't tell. Oh, man. Don't tell me. Don't give me any more clues. You're not going to figure it out. Good. All right.

You know what? Do this. Joe, I want you to see this. Should we get a piece of paper right down? There's mics everywhere. Screw it. Don't even write down. Don't even write down. No, no, not you. I was going to have him write it down. Okay. Eight or nine. Do me a favor. Sure. Count again, but to yourself. Don't do it out loud. Count to yourself. What? The letters? Yeah. Don't do it out loud. Oh, the eight or nine wasn't the letters, but go ahead. Yeah. I'm so confused. All right. Good. This got all over the place. Jamie wants this to go wrong. He does, right? He does.

I don't know if this is the real name or the fake name anymore, but before today and me asking you to think of this person, be honest. Would it have been days, months, or literally years before today since this person even crossed your thoughts? Honestly, this would have been a couple months. A couple months. A couple months. Could Joe know it? No. All right. Mix up the letters and stop like Scrabble tiles. Freeze and grab out a letter somewhere in the name. Maybe grab one out of the middle. Okay. You got it? Sure.

He did too when he switched. I was trying to look to you. No, no, you did shifty eyes. He did this one and then this one. You didn't do a vowel, did you? I don't know. Well, you can tell me. Yes, I did. You did a vowel after all that? A-E-I-O-U, look at me. That's the first one I picked. And you went to the end. Do you think the last letter? No. The last letter is a vowel though, isn't it? Sometimes. It is. Here we go. Sometimes why? Yeah, that's the only way. A-E-I-O-U and sometimes why. Take a look. Don't say it, don't say it. Okay.

I don't know. This is, who knows? Was it nine letters? The name is nine letters long, isn't it? The real person's name is nine letters, I think. Yeah, yeah, the real, and he hadn't thought of this person in months. And it doesn't in a vowel. Yeah, it does, I know. I saw it, and you switched to one. And I wrote this down. Joe, you see it, right? I can't change it. No trick here, no BS. What's her name, this first crush? Saw her on TV. Her real name is Christine. Christine is what I wrote down. Christine is what I wrote down. Her fake name's Melody from Hey Dude. You don't have to tell me, I know. I know, I know.

Christine Taylor. How did you know? Wait, wait, hold on. Right now, right now, I want to try this. Here's what I want to try. Joe, how many people? What the fuck just happened? Wait, where did I put this? Are you an alien? Hold on. Do you work for the CIA? I got to take a leak like crazy, too. You do? Where's the bag? Dude, I drank like two Gators before I got in here after the run. That was a mistake. What bag? There's a bag. Oh, I didn't bring it. You didn't bring it? Why don't you go pee and get your bag? No, no, I've got it. I've got it. I've got it. Look, I want you to do this.

I put together, this is for you, Joe. Take these. Okay. 50 people, chat GPT. Okay. Look through that list. Okay.

And these are all people, I didn't make this up, I just wrote them down, who have been on the show multiple times. How would I describe this? My guess is you have a personal connection. You know these people. Is that a fair assessment? Rattle off, if there's anybody in there that you feel is not, fits the bill, or you don't talk to them anymore, throw it away. I don't care. Okay. Yeah, I know all these people. You know these people? Mm-hmm. Okay. Sure.

Not a trick. I'm not going to guess who it is. I wrote the list. I know who they all are. Got it. I don't care. You want to mix them? You want to do something? I don't care whatever you want to do. Okay. Once you mix them up or whatever you want to do, put them in front of you, please. Like a pile. Okay. Turn kind of... Oh, you're not going to look because I want them to be like random. Okay. Kind of put them in front of you. Okay. Turn them sideways. Turn them sideways? Well, I want to see what you're doing. Okay. Okay.

And I think we're going to do this together. I don't know if I'm going to reach over or not. Okay. Here's what I want you to do. Okay. I want you to take, I'm going to do it with you, is I want you to lift off like a chunk. A chunk. Yeah, like a chunk and put the chunk over. Over here? No, no, no. Like next to you. Okay. Like, I don't know. How do I, can I move over with the mic or no? Yeah, just come over here. Yeah. Take the headphones off. Should I take them off or leave them on? Take them off.

Take this. Take this. Okay. Well, take the piece. And I want you to take, and the same way that I'm making a bunch of chunks like this, I want you to take, and I want you to be in charge of this. So take these ones. Okay. And would you agree that's pretty randomized? Very randomized. Okay. And I want to assess right now, there's five of them. Okay. Is take one of the piles. Okay. And put it like, which other pile are you going with?

Another pile? Like point to another one. Okay, this one? How about this one? Yeah, perfect. And I want you, don't show me. Okay. I want you, like, grab that one. All right. The card. The card on top? Whatever you want. Take it, grab it, and look at that person's name. Okay. And don't let me see it. How likely, if you were to text this person, do you think would they answer? 100%. Oh, you sure? Yeah, 100%.

Most of the list was guys. Is it a guy? Yeah. Not judging. A lot of dudes on the show. Put them all back together. Okay. Let's assess this. I don't want to know who it is. I don't care who it is. As long as I want to see, and if they're not going to answer, I would tell you to text somebody new. Text this person in your own words and say, I don't know, got a minute, need a favor, and see if he texts back. If he doesn't, we go to somebody new. We'll give it like, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes. Okay. Can I tell them what's going on?

I would hedge and not say yet because I want to see where he goes with it. Because if you tell him, like, I don't care, but I want to keep this very, I don't want him to know where we're going yet. Okay. Should I tell him to text me back? Yeah, I guess text me back. That works. Hey, brother, do me a favor and text me back as soon as you get this. It's going to sound like someone's dying, but okay. The world depends on it. Okay. All right. And put it down. We'll revisit later.

Let's see. Let's check back in a few minutes. Okay. Will it vibrate if you did? No, I have it on do not disturb, but I'll take it off. There we go. Okay.

He's very busy, so he might not be in front of his phone. No worries. If it doesn't go, we'll give it some time, and if not, we'll switch gears. Okay. But turn your phone face down so you don't think I can see it. I don't want to know who, what, where. All righty. We'll revisit. We'll come back. I'll put it on my lap so I feel it when it vibrates. I'll pee later. I'm holding it in, though. I knew the Joe Rogan effect. Okay.

We're just going to sit here and wait for him to text me? No, no, no. We'll check back in later. That seems ridiculous. Is it? Yeah, because he could be working out. He could be doing anything. So if we get it, it's meant to be. We'll see. Okay. It's not pressing. You have an idea who it is? I don't know. I can look through the list again. It's not Cam Haines, is it, after you said all that? Is someone popping into your head? I'm not going to guess who it is. Not at all? No, because here's the reason why. If we reveal stuff, I don't want you to. If I guess something very specific about this person that will...

He might not want everyone to know his ATM PIN code or social security number. Oh, you're going to guess. I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I don't want, you could tip it, but he's going to be pretty pissed if everybody finds out something. So I prefer if nobody knows yet, but if we want to, you'll see. Okay.

Okay. Take it to the next level. Jamie's in the room. Right. But what if we could just get anyone who you could have picked? Anybody you know. Right. Now it's different. Right. Now it's never been done before. Right. You ask me, what do I wake up with thinking about? How could I do this? Yeah. How are you going to do this? I don't know. Let's see if it works. Let's see if it works. So, okay. Oh, he got me. He did? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Here's the thing. I think that if I were you, I'd say later, well, texting, what if somebody saw something? No, no, no. I haven't. I don't give any clues yet. If you're there's microphones everywhere. We just asked him to think of his first crush, but he did like someone fictional and like that. Can I tell him I'm in the middle of a show? Maybe Sam in the middle of the show. OK. OK. And say we're doing a bit.

I do you want to call him because if you're texting this, do you want to call him or do you want to text him? Well, if I call him, people are going to hear his voice. No, but what if you call him and you just go over there? Which one's better? Which one's more impossible? Where later you go, there's just no freaking way. Is it better if he texts you or is it better if he calls you? What do you think is just more impossible?

I could have him call me. Yeah. Why not? Do this. Have him call you in a second. You'll go over there where there's no microphone. And I want you to ask this guy the same question I asked Jamie. Do you remember the name of the first grill you had a big crush on? And sometimes people don't remember. I just want you to know I've done this a lot. Should I ask him that? Not yet. I would do it on the phone. Okay. Yeah, screw it. Ask him that. Okay. Do... Okay. I should have just did it with voice. No, no. Well, yeah. Yeah.

Nobody's listening to this. I'm sure no, but I mean it's quicker. Don't tell me what he says Okay, if he says no a lot of people don't remember this question, okay? So then I hedge and I go well who's the first girl you ever kissed? Let's see, but make sure there's absolutely no way I can see what's on your phone right now We can't see boom get that tight and see bitch Okay, okay, does he know he doesn't know he knows yep, did he tell you yep? No shit. Yep. Ask him is it the same as the first girl he ever kissed? Okay, see who says

Here we go. No. Does he remember her name too? Okay. Here we go.

Yep. Two weeks ago, right? No, I'm kidding. Put away. You have two names in your head. Okay. Can we establish the fact that you have 50 people that have been on your show? Yes. That you took anybody. Right. If this person would have texted back, text somebody else. I don't care who it is. Right. There is no conceivable way. This isn't a bank that gave you a number. Right. And if he didn't know who it is, we would have done something different. I don't care. Put the phone away. Okay. Yeah.

How am I going to do this? How are you going to do this? How am I going to do this? Right? And he said, what happens when it goes wrong? Nothing. I'm not getting paid to be here. I don't care. You're freaking me out. Think of both names. They're different. He had two different people. Yes. The same way that you did 2020 and you didn't know, think of both names and I want you to juggle back and forth between the two. The first kiss and the first crush. Okay. And, uh,

Is one name more interesting to you or like they're equal or is one name more interesting or not really? Not really. Okay, so you don't like if you gravitate I would have been like go to one. Okay, count the number of letters in the first crush to yourself. Don't use your fingers. I can see. Count the number of letters to yourself for the first crush. I did that to psych you out. Yeah. I started doing those. And then count the number of letters in the first kiss. Oh, you looked up. Interesting.

They're not equal. Can you agree with me? They're not the same amount of letters, are they? No, they're not. No, see, because you'd have the same reaction. Do you know when you put somebody in a polygraph test? Have you ever been polygraphed? No. They can't just ask you the questions right away. They can't because they first have to get your benchmark. Same way blood doping, you've got to test someone's blood against their blood. People have different amounts of testosterone naturally. So I had to see how you would do each one. And then you did the thing with the eyes that throw me off. The first crush...

Is that name shorter than the first kiss? Yes. Yeah. Go to the first crush. I'm going to go with that one. Less work for me. Okay. One more time. Count the letters. Okay. And you were trying to avoid it. Six letters. Is that name six letters? Yes. Yeah. Mix up all the letters. Okay. In that first crush's name. Forget the first kiss. Scrap it. Okay. Pick any one in your head. You got one? Got it.

Jamie gave me a gift on a platter thought of a vowel when he did that it was a hundred percent You wouldn't pick a vowel later. You didn't do a vowel in the name. Did you know dude? I'm here for a reason, right? I haven't done this. I've been doing this for a long time, right? I told you goal is to be the best in the world at this. Okay. I have watched I know everything you just did second letter. Do you think a second letter? I will mmm M Amanda's the name Amanda. Yes, I

What the fuck did you just do? And you will talk about this for years. Hold on a second. I'm texting him back. Can you figure out the second one? No, I'm done, man. Come on. Showbiz. You do your closer, you drop the mic, and you pick the mic back up? Never. Do you want to know who it was? No, I don't want to know. My friend said, you're a witch. And he said, kill him now. Definitely a comedian. Definitely a comedian after that. It's definitely a comedian. It might not be. I hang out with a lot of weird people. Yeah.

I don't know how to go back to conversation mode. Am I right? I got pissed like a racehorse. What do I do? Go pee. Do I pee or no? Do we keep going? Do we go strong? With this? No, I'm just saying we'll recalibrate. We definitely can pee. It's always easier to pee. Is that all right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's perfect because you don't want to. It's too hard to form sentences when you have to pee. All right. I'm going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Rapid fire. Are we back? We're back. Lightning. All right.

I feel like brand new. Oh, yeah. I know the feeling. I was sitting on it. You rehydrate. And I drank so much Gatorade right before, and I was like, oh, party foul. Should have thought that one through. You ran 27 miles. You deserve a little Gatorade. So do you want to know who it was yet? It's up to you. I like hanging thread, but it's up to you. But what is the purpose of hanging the thread? No, tell us at the end. Can you tell me who it is? I could, but come on. What do you think it is? No, I'll tell you at the end.

Okay. You already gave the comedian. You said this. I didn't say comedian. You said comedian. He's a witch. Kill him. 100%. 100%. That's not Ben Shapiro. You know what I'm saying? Did you say witch? Did he tell you? No, no, no. I took the quickest pee of my life. I raced over there. No, I didn't tell him shit. You didn't tell him? No, I don't want him to know. Curious. Do you think that there's people that knew this shit back in the days of witches? They figured out some of the powers, maybe? Not powers, but like that. I think that 100% psychics of the past...

Used a lot of the same techniques I'm using because when I watch psychics and I have people always tell me at certain things they tell me like oh You know I saw psychic do this and this and this and I hear it and I go to myself You know, I could do that same trick and I could no offense do it better, but think about it I'm doing this right now from with an ethical compass versus if I go I'm getting this and I thought about this and this is what happened with your dad You're like, oh my god, you know, I'm a gold only 25 grand more to have a private session Let's talk to him a little bit more

I'm not saying there's nobody psychic. I'm telling you that a lot of the psychics, I'm watching them like, I know how you're doing that. That was my other question. Have you caught anyone trying to get some stuff by you? Like, I don't know. Like a psychic, you mean? Not a psychic. You're buying a car and someone's trying to pull some trick on you. Like, I know what you're about to do.

100%. You know, not a shameless plug, but like I literally wrote a book. It's coming out in October where it's all about, it's called Read Your Mind. And it's not me telling you how to be a mentalist because 99.9% of people don't want to guess a first crush. It's not useful to you in your life.

But what if you could read people more effectively to help you in your life, at home, at work, in relationships? That is a quantifiable thing that the tools of a mentalist, when not used for entertainment, but in life, day to day, are extraordinary. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you must be great at all kinds of things because of this. I don't know about that. Anything dealing with human beings. Right. Negotiating. Oh, I would imagine. I've never sold a property at a loss. Let's just say that. It's been pretty good so far. Yeah.

You get in there, you're like, I won't take a dollar less. I'm like, I know you will. I know you will. That's funny. That's funny. What a weird skill to have. Right? What's a good book?

Good book to read on this well on becoming a mentalist or so many of these skills like what did you start with? Do you remember the book you started with do you mean if you want to learn how to do you have a little you? Started with when you first started learning this stuff so the first book I started reading was a book called 13 steps to mentalism and

But man, is it going to be tough for most people because it was written in the 1920s. So it's kind of like, you know, it's like watching an old movie. No offense to old movies, but I'm like, oh, it's hard to get into this with my attention span now because it's antiquated. Some of it still applies, but you have to really do a big reach to know how do I apply this? Because back then there were no TVs or no phones. There's no it's just that's what I started with. But I had to learn the hard way. So much of what I do now is again, I told you, I don't really do what other people do.

Because I don't explain it's they create different right if you were building a house and you have all these tools You're gonna build using your tools. Does that does that make sense? So I've got this set of tools I knew a hammer does this I do that I create with the house already built so my vision again and why what's been a differentiating feature is I Build with that person at the end in mind and I already know what the house is gonna be I know what the memory I know what you're gonna say like

CNBC, do you ever watch that channel? I try not to. So CNBC, Fox Business are financial channels. I have been on those channels dozens of times. How many other mentalists or magicians have ever been on them? Zero.

Why is that? Because it's unusual. That's a serious network. Why do you put me on? Because I do stuff around the markets. And so if you're watching it, you buy in because my stuff's about stock market, interest rates, all stuff. And it's like, this is crazy, but it had to do with stuff I know. So the same thing when I do ESPN, I'm creating from a different perspective than most. I customize the content. Like when I do a corporate event, I learn in and out your business. And when I go up there, I sneak in the medicine. So now I'm

You're actually your people aren't just seeing a show they're getting messaging and they're getting in a way where they don't tune out because they don't realize they're being spoken to it's mostly entertainment boom I planted those thoughts and you leave there with you know, what's the product launch? What's this all those things are now internalized and remembered and

And this 13 steps that was said it was written in the 1920s? Oh, fact check me, but I think it was the 20s. What did this guy do? What was his job? He was a mentalist? Yeah, but there were no mentalists back then. There were just a few people, but they were mostly telling you the skills of psychics. They were showing you how psychics did stuff. And it wasn't really debunking, but they're showing you all the tools, the 13 steps. Like, what are the ways that we can read people more effectively? And what are the tricks of the trade of what we do? Right? Like, how do you...

Know when someone's counting something like that right and you're counting the letters You know because to me you might as well be playing drums Do you understand I'm saying like if you're playing drums and I have an ear for it. I can hear the beats So once you learn how to do certain things they build on top I can if you're counting letters like again Names are anywhere from three to twelve letters It's not rocket science for me to figure it out and again I can't do it in a vacuum if you turn your back and said I'm not not not doing anything not again if you control the environment and

I can't do it as well. Right. It goes back to that fear thing. If I started messing up right now, you'd be like, Oh, it's getting awkward. And you would pull back and I wouldn't be in control anymore. Right. So like a lot of what I'm doing is, is I'm,

You know, showing you how I can read you, but also you're allowing yourself to be read. Right. So like when you're saying count the letters, you can see me counting them. I can see when you're counting. I can see when you try to throw me off the count. It's like a poker player. Poker player knows if you really have aces, pocket aces, or you have two, four, and you're bluffing. The best ones do.

Which brings the question up why don't I play poker more? Yeah, why don't you play poker? It's just it's too boring like I That's a grind man, I'd rather make money doing this. It's you with this one and a half speed. Yeah, your whole life is one and a half speed. That's wild.

That's really interesting. I'm fascinated. No, I think I'm going to read one of those books. I'm going to probably get that one. I'm going to send you one. I'll try and find a better one. Well, that one seems interesting, too, because I want to read the origins. I want to read it like when it first started out. Yeah. What was it like in 1920? Like, what did he learn and where did he learn it? Is it? You find it? Yeah. 1950-ish or so. Oh, 19—well— But it's also not known.

This is the guy? Yeah. So he's born in 1930. Oh, I screwed this up. It was 1920. So no, the other one's 13 Steps. There's another one by Theodore Anamena. He did not make his birthplace public. Oh, you fucking sneaky bitch. He's a sneaky bitch. He's a first mentalist and he's sneaky. Though it was believed to have been Mill Hill suburb of London for unknown reasons, he renamed himself Tony Cornita.

Korinda. Korinda. So he's born Thomas William Simpson, and he renamed himself for some reason Tony Korinda, a variation of the surname Conraddy, when he began working as a mentalist. In 1950, he opened up a shop where he sold all manner of stage magic goods, but catered especially to mentalists. He later took over the magic shop on Oxford Street. The shop was at street level and thus catered mainly to the regular public so that many of the items sold were either practical jokes or beginner's tricks.

But items for semi-professional magicians and hobbyists were also sold. Around the same period, Corinda had the magic concession in Hambley's Toy Shop on Regent Street. Interesting. So the book, 13 Steps to Mentalism, was in 1961. So he wrote a series of 13 booklets on mentalism between 1956 and 1958.

Each one dealing with a different aspect of mentalism or allied art. Interesting. I'm getting you a copy. I'll buy it. Is it reprinted? No, it's definitely reprinted. And see, it's since become to be the essential mentalism reference book.

But again, you're going to have a big problem because you're going to read that book and if you make it through to the end, which God bless you if you can, you're going to be like, yeah, but how the hell did you do all this stuff? You're going to get to the end of it and be like, so that's baby steps. And then you've got to get to the next level. Oh, sure. I'm not thinking I'm going to get all the information from that. But I'm curious as to like...

what the origins of it was. Like, how did this guy devise these things? Like, how did he figure it out? Psychics. So it's, again, people with psychics want to believe. Anyone who's in that room who paid that money to hear psychic has someone they've lost and they want something with them because there's, you know. Do you believe in any psychic powers at all?

So, again, I'm not like a debunker because I'm kind of like agnostic in this thing, which is I just believe what I've seen so far. And in a lot of instances, I've never personally experienced something that I couldn't explain yet. But a lot of people have told me their experiences. Have you heard of the telepathy tapes? Yeah. So that...

I know you had her in here, but that's have you watched the videos? I mean come on. Yeah, that's wild No, no, I'm the opposite. I do not think that's real. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, really? No, why? Well, if you want but with the videos so it can we show the videos? Well, I don't know if you got the paywall again. I don't want a controversial but They're holding in many instances in that form of communication The person knows the information is holding the letters

Do you understand what I'm saying? So right now, if I had shown you a word and you're either touching somebody, right, you could get, do you know what a two person code act is? No. So two person code act is like a mentalist thing with two people. There's a few that are the best in the world. Avacyn's, uh, mine to mine in Dubai, like a few really good ones who've done this. And what they do is they can be blindfolded in a different area and anything you hand to them, anything you say, the other person knows it.

No electronics, no nothing. They just look at your credit card and they'll guess the credit card numbers. And what the way that's being done is they're communicating to each other based on pauses, based on like a million ways that you can't think of. It's the best code act ever without speaking. And you'll watch it and you'll be like, there's no way they're communicating, but they are. And so it looks like telepathy, but it's not. You get them in the room of scientists. You'll fool every scientist under the sun. Uh,

What they're doing is like not bulletproof at all with the kids. And again, God bless. If I had a child in that condition, I for not one moment wouldn't want a solution. And I would want something to know that they're not that they're in there and I could talk to them and I don't want to speak out of turn. But from the videos I've seen, I can explain that in a minute there. They are moving things around and positioning the letters. If you do a double blind study where the person does not know the word.

That they're trying to communicate. I'm not even saying psychic. Just don't tell them the word, the person holding it. And only show the word to the person who should be saying it. Right? Right. If you're the autistic child, show them the words there. I see it. And then have them type that word in and do that for me. Nine out of 10 times. And they've not been able to do that. That's not even psychic. That's just show me that you can type the word in that you saw. And so when you do like a deep dive on that, it's been.

She offered to have someone come in with their parent and do that. Would you do that with us? Sure. So you could show how they're doing it? I don't want to take anyone's hope away. I'm a parent, and again, I don't think they're making money on it. No. I'm very—I don't like to—again, when you ask me psychics, there's people who had real deep experiences, and who is it for me to take that away? But when I watch that, and you're talking to somebody who's a pro at doing this, same as psychics—

I can see exactly how that's done. But what did you think about their ability to read languages that they've never studied? So again, you're missing it. So that's, again, the devil's in the details. Okay. It's the memory, what you remember of the story. Show me how they did that. Did either of the people there present know that language, who was doing it, and how was that being communicated? Did the end person who's moving the board around know what the meaning of the word was?

Do you understand what I mean? Yes. So, like, again, you're hearing the Cliff's Notes, the end edition. Watch the video and show me something that I can't... There was nothing I saw in that special or in that telepathy tape in the videos that I couldn't readily explain. Really? That's correct. Interesting. Very interesting. So, could it be right? Yes. I'm not saying it's not. I'm not... Again, they could be 100% right and I could be 100% wrong. Hubris. Right. I haven't been in the room with them. I'm judging simply from videos I've seen. But...

As someone who is for a living pretending to read people's minds, but I'm actually reading people, I can see how it's being done. Interesting. The method, it's kind of like a casino boss. I see how that person's cheating when they're playing cards. Right. Because I know all the cheating methods. Interesting. The other thing that they said was these kids all have this area that they go to called the hill. Yep. They go to their, what do you think of that? So again, I heard it. It was unbelievable. Like the podcast was incredible. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't like, you know, I've heard psychics tell me, people tell me I saw a psychic. And how do you know that my friend died after we saw a Grateful Dead concert and did? I'm like, well, I don't know. I'm seeing a lot of stuff on you that looks Grateful Dead vibes. Like if I told you that you're a big Roger Waters fan, you'd be like, how did you know that right now? So for everyone not looking, Joe's wearing a Pink Floyd shirt. Like you can, you can...

figure out a lot of stuff based on cold reading. I can see what's the wear on your wedding band? How do you behave? What are certain things? When do you pause at a certain moment about certain things? Did you lose someone? I can tell instantly if you're having a feeling of emotion, like,

Anyone good at this and not even great but like good can notice a lot of things like a psychic just watches you So you can kind of tell like what a person's done that day? Well, I think you can get like you can guide them to what you want Which is when you get a hit right think of that game when your kid hot cold you hide stuff, right? Right your brother sister looks around they go cold. Do you think I woke up early today or late? I don't know

There's no on-demand feature to the show. I think you woke up early, though. Really? Yeah. Why do you think that? I don't know. Just based on when you said it? Nope. Nope. Woke up late. Good. I got it wrong. I'm happy. I'm happy. You'll be like, we screwed this guy. Finally, we got O's, and it was with a 50-50. Yeah, that was just a rando. Coin flip. Yeah, that was good. We'll do a coin flip before I leave. Okay.

Who has coins anymore? I brought one coin. I heard that there's a penny that's in circulation that's worth millions of dollars. I heard that too. Yeah, that wheat penny. The one with the wheat on the side of it. My buddy Lewis Howes had. I saw that on my social. He found one. Really? I think so. Whoa. It's fucking super valuable. With millions. I'd be like, yo, give me that wheat penny. That's crazy. A penny worth millions. Yeah.

Okay, so what's in the one that's sealed, that package? No, that's nothing. I was going to get it out, but I'll do it later. It's a gift. Is it later? No, it's something silly. Why do I not believe you? No, I swear. I swear. I thought I would have it out, but no. You thought you'd have it out, but you don't want to have it out? Not the right fit. What do you mean? No, I was going to do something. You had a lot of books here, and I thought we'd get a book, but I don't think I'm going to do it.

Just doesn't feel right. No. What feels wrong? Self-curate. I don't know. It's not going to work. You got to go on instincts. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. Nope. What was the goal to get it to work? You could say it now since we're not going to do it. The goal to get it to work was I thought I had some sort of... I thought I know if I get you to get a book, we have less books in this room. We have books in that room. I just...

I don't know. I brought it in. I always have a backup plan. Plan A, B, C. And this one's not meant for this one. This one might be if I ever come back and do another JRE. We'll put it in the safe. Okay. Do it. That's a great idea. Yeah, we'll put it in the safe. Put it in the safe. I'll never touch it again. Okay, we won't touch it either. Let's make sure that we know it's sealed. Two bricks of cocaine. You're in big trouble. We should get a wax seal. Yeah? You know, like Game of Thrones style? Let's do it. We'll seal it.

I love that show. Great show. Yeah. We can't play this, but I found one of the tapes that someone put on YouTube. It's only a one-minute clip. All right, let's watch it for us. Let's watch it for us. We can't play it because it's copyright? Okay. If you right now got the best two-person codec in the world in here, they would do nothing.

She would literally be in another, she could be a hundred feet away behind this person's back. Cause she's touching him. Touching, moving. I mean, like those are for letters. You only have 26 options. Do you have any idea what this is right there? Somebody effective right now, just this right now and pausing and before they say a word could have given you a full credit card number. Right.

Insane. She was kind of moving him a little bit. Moving him. Like, if you could, if you can, how do you compress data? Right? Like, if you do hexadecimal or ASCII, you could take a 16-digit number and break it down into three letters. Did you ever see the movie The Martian? Yes. Great movie, right? Yeah. Another Matt Damon reference. Yeah. Love Matt Damon, by the way. Me too. Has he been on here? No.

Such a good dude. Yeah, I talked to somebody about getting him on like he was gonna reach out. We're gonna do it eventually I'm sure I love that guy. Yeah awesome met him a couple times love him as nice as you'd expect So if you can in that movie in the Martian He didn't know how to send data because he only had the camera So he shows a thing where he figured out how to take and compress big things into small What's the easiest way you can make it very small so you can send information in a certain way again I don't want to blow his cover, but there is absolutely when I see that I know exactly how it's being done

But I don't know if she's doing it on purpose. I think they've just learned each other's rhythms. And that's an agent. Oh, OK. You know, like you got to have her in a different room. Right, right, right. Read my mind. Read my mind through a door. Haven't they done stuff in a different room, though? Didn't Kai Dickens? Didn't she said in particular that another magician actually told me that they had an issue watching that particular kid's videos. They thought that those two were doing something funny. Yep. Clearly. Yeah.

But that's what I, the other videos I don't know. They're behind a paywall. You have to get to them. That's it. That's the sneaky biz. It's everyone that sees the paywall. I had a couple sent to me and I'm like, because people asked me this and they were like, what do you think, man? And I listened to all the tapes. I thought it was amazing. It got a little wild at the end. If you got to the end, like the hill and that, and you want to believe. Who doesn't want to believe that? There's psychics amongst us and especially kind of like the superhero story of all. Yeah.

These are kids who nobody thought was in there and they're really in there and they're communicating with each other. It's, I mean, I don't know. So it's essentially, you're saying that instead of psychic energy, there's a sense of like a kind of micro communication. You know what? And people want to believe. And so you kind of have confirmation bias looking at the evidence.

You want to believe. Kai Dickens clearly wanted to believe. Just super simple. Have a mentalist and maybe a scientist involved. And a mentalist is better than a scientist because scientists, they can watch me and they'll be like, I don't know how he's doing it. Right? We're designed. We're literally, it's like get a card sheet to beat other card sheets. Right. So get me involved. Yeah. And then let's do the same thing. And I'm going to say, here are the three things I need you to do different. And I'm not going to say how you're doing it, but do it with these three things. And if you do that, I'm convinced. Okay. We might have to set this up. Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder if they'd want to. But the problem is that there's very little to gain from that. And then also, we got bad energy in the room. Right. That's the whole thing. Did you ever see when Uri Geller was debunked by the amazing Randy on Johnny Carson? And he couldn't bend the spoons. And he goes, I can't do it with him here. He's got bad energy. It's not... And it's like...

You know is it bad energy or is this a guy who knows how you're bending the spoons right? And so every time you're about to do a move. He's like a sob was like stop right there Don't move your hand keep the spoon right there. Don't don't no no don't look away look It's like it's like my nightmare. I had a guy show me how they do the spoons Yeah, we had a guy demonstrate magic needles. I could show you how to do this one. Yeah, I

And it was like a different kind of spoon. It wasn't a regular spoon. No, no. You could do with real spoons. I could do with any spoon. Yeah? Yeah. And you could bend it with your mind? I mean, again, I don't want to knock it, but that's more of a, it's not really, it's not a psychic power. That falls more into the category of a magic trick where you're misdirecting people. You're doing something else where I'm not really bending a spoon with my mind. There's not supernatural powers involved. I can't lie to you and say that. I'm doing it in such a way where you don't know the method.

And it's layered, but it's sure going to look like it's bending by itself, but it's not. This guy was saying that it's a kind of metal that as he moves his hand around, he heats it up. Yeah, he's lying to you. Really? Motherfucker. He lied because he didn't want to tell me how he does it. No, yeah. Damn it. Yeah. Got me again. Got you.

You must enjoy getting people, though. The spark that lights in your face when you're accurate is really fun to watch. I hope it's contagious, but I enjoy watching reactions. Yeah, clearly. That's the rush, right? Yeah. Do you not love laughs? Of course, yeah. You ever go into a room and nobody's laughing and you just bomb and you just eat it? It's like... Not fun. How often do you bomb anymore? New jokes bomb. So you'll bomb for chunks of...

You're bombing segments. You have to figure out how a bit works. And sometimes you try a bit in a way, like in the middle of it, you're like, ooh, this is not the way. And then you have to kind of adjust.

And you're doing a lot of sets at the Mothership, I assume? Yeah. Yeah. And how much do you get allowances? What's the clock for being Joe Rogan before it's like, oh, no, let's just see if you're funny as a person? Where does that end? You got to be funny pretty quick. You think so? Yeah. People are good for like a minute. Yeah. They're happy to see you for like a minute. It's only a minute, huh? Not much time, man. Jerry Seinfeld talked about that once. He's like, being famous buys you about 30 seconds. Oh, I thought it's more. I think that's what he said. Yeah.

No, no, especially on a night filled with like really top notch comedians, which is the mothership every night. It's all a bunch of killers. So you got to be. But that's also why we do it that way. You know, the one thing that's really bad for comedians is when they start only doing their crowds. So like they do it on the road and they do large places and then they have the same opening act over and over again. So they're never challenged. Right. Yeah. That that makes people soft. Yeah.

90% of the time. I made that number up. I don't know what the real number is. But it's like a high number, you know, because you get soft.

Right. Yeah. I did. This is funny. So I used to go to the comedy cellar. I told you I love comedy like aficionado. I lived in the village for years and this is pre kids a lot more time. And we used to go to the cellar when you could get in the cellar like that. Now, good luck. Right. And we would see just everybody over and over. And I think you had him on Mike Vecchione. Sure. So good. Great. So great guy.

Amazing. Super funny. And he went on on a night where it was just like dropping, dropping, dropping. And he had to follow Seinfeld. And Seinfeld goes on and just hammers it. And then Mike Vickione comes on. And you know the bathroom in the cellar, right? Which is about the size of like...

a quarter of this table where you're touching arms when you're taking a leak next to some dude. I went in there and I was quite drunk and I'll never forget this. I've worked with Mike Zins and I was telling him, dude, you probably don't remember me, but I was such a drunk idiot and we were touching arms while we're peeing and I always felt bad about this. I'm so drunk. I'm like, dude, forget Seinfeld. You killed it. He's like, stop talking to me while we're peeing, dude.

I crossed that threshold. And I tried to ask him, I'm like, because we did a gig together. And he opened for me and I was like, do you, is there any chance you remember? He's like, dude, so many drunk idiots have been next to me at the cell or telling me stuff. I'm like, the night where you dropped, you know, that trying to see if you remember it. Right. And I wanted to apologize for it because I felt so bad. And I'm like, I was talking to you while you were pissing. And dude, I just loved you so much. I was like, dude.

And he forgot. He didn't even know this moment. But I'm like, I've been holding this weight for a while, Mike, and I'm a big fan. And I'm sorry I talked to you while we both had our dicks out. It was not okay. It was not okay. There's a line in the sand that I have just crossed, brother. That's funny.

That's hilarious and he forgot about it. He didn't know dude I mean it's like when I have gigs where people come back to me and three years later like dude Do you remember this thing and I go of course I do yes No, most of the most of time you don't remember you try. I remember the best and the worst man I remember like I remember some moments where I've bombed so bad that it is seared in your DNA You know that feeling oh, yeah, and it's usually ones where you're not to blame but

But the buck stops here. You know what I'm saying? Sure. The setup is terrible. The outdoor gig. I had one where, God, it was like the town of Charlotte or some town hired me, some city. And I had to insert all these data points about the city. And we're like, normally we do two or three things. I will mention two or three things in the course of a show. And if it's 10 minutes, forget it. I don't want to be a salesperson up there. People tune out. If they're like, what are you selling me something right now? Right.

And I had to say eight or nine things about the town of, was it Charlotte? And at the last moment, we do dress rehearsal and go, by the way, we're all dressing as genies and we're going to have a life-size genie lamp on stage. And it's going to start doing smoke while you're doing this. I'm like, I don't really like any of these things. But I was newer to showbiz. I'm like, I go with it. The whole time I'm on stage, the smoke is going wild.

Like at 100%. We're coughing. It's going terrible. I can't see the person whose mind I'm reading. I'm sweating. I'm trying to talk about the Billy Graham Museum. I'm dying a slow death up there. I get two things in a row wrong. And you know, if you bomb your opener and your closer, like you're dead. I left apologizing. You never want to leave a stage. They somehow still loved it. I don't even know how.

But I sweated through that suit. It was like, you know when you question what you're doing in life? Yeah. That was like a question. I'm like, maybe I'm not supposed to be doing this. Well, also you probably say, okay, never doing that kind of setup again. Kind of. But me, I'm more catastrophize and I'm like, yeah, I should just be done. But then I came back.

I came back. I picked myself up. Yeah. Funny enough, tomorrow's my my my one of my daughter's fifth birthday and I'm doing a show at school for five year olds. Oh, wow. Yeah, man. I got to get back. But sweetheart, this is like the sweet spot where they still think I'm cool. That's cool. Before I'm going to be like, don't do this and embarrass us, dad. Right. And last year for my oldest son, who was at the time I just turned eight, I did his school second graders and do date me alive.

Really? Because I'm not doing this. Like, this is, you know, my sweet spot is mentalism. Right. I had to brush off the dust of my kids' show, which I haven't touched in, like, 25 years. Thank God I'm not doing kids' shows anymore. No offense to kids' show magicians, but, like, that ship has sailed. And, man, second graders are ruthless. Really? Ruthless. Why second graders? Because...

I don't know, man. Like, one kid... I finished this show, okay? And during the show, my wife is in the room recording. I'm like, don't record, don't record. And I had to, like, look at my wife at one point, and I whispered...

Because one kid's like, it's in your hand. Show me that. Show me that. And I'm like, dude, shut up. And I'm not good at it. I haven't done it in a while. Right. So I'm just bombing on tricks. And thankfully, 95% of the crowd actually liked it. It was just these two kids who just got me. And when I went home, one of my neighbors saw me. And he goes to me, he goes, oh, my God, what's wrong? Are you okay? Because my face was like ash and white. He thought somebody died. And I'm like, dude, I don't know.

I don't even know what to say right now. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this. I had to at one point tell the teacher, I'm like, I actually do this for a living. I had to try to flex. I'm like, I have an Emmy. I wanted to let them know I'm not actually this bad. Like I...

That's hilarious. Yeah. That's hilarious. Do you think comedy is kind of a bit of hypnotizing people? Oh, yeah. The best comedians, the pacing, the rhythm. Like, I was watching a Tom Segura special this morning.

I don't know how well you know his material. I mean, you know him well, but he had a bit about flying first class. Do you remember that one? I don't. He talks about, I don't think he's using this material anymore, the fact that he gets upgraded. He buys coach tickets. It was early. It was years ago.

And he gets upgraded so much that he gets first class tickets. And he goes, should I not say this bit? I don't know if I want to say it. And he goes, it literally the moment I get upgraded, this feeling of superiority washes over me where I'm like, don't when people walk in, don't look at me, you poor piece of shit. Like he's just so he goes, I dare you if you're in coach to try to use my bathroom. If I'm in the front, I will put my hand on your chest, bro.

I've seen that a hundred times and it's just as funny, if not funnier, every time I watch it. And it's like the timing, the rhythm. I learn more from comedy than ever magic or mentalism. Way more. Interesting. Because we've talked about it a bunch, comics. I'm like, I think we're hypnotizing people because I feel hypnotized when someone's killing me.

When someone's killing, I'm allowing them to think for me. Yep. Like, they're taking me on a ride. And I'm just, I'm not thinking at all about what would I say, what would I do. I'm just in their head. Or they're in my head. Right. And also when you bring someone along and when you have that, like, just, you drop just amazing line. Yeah. Just, there's so many. I mean, listen, I consume so much comedy. But, like, I love watching the rhythm, seeing where people go with it, the people that are more short form, like,

punch delivery, right? Versus like a long form, like a Nate Bargatze, like watching Andrew do his things. Scholl's amazing. Man, some of these guys are just like, you can't see where the joke is going to come and how you just squeeze every bit of juice out of the orange and the good callbacks. I think the ultimate hypnotist is David Tell. Oh yeah, David. Dave, because David, there's a rhythm. There's a rhythm to why he does. It's like you just get lost in his thinking. Right. And he just takes you on the, and he's so effortlessly

He does so many sets, like he's so polished that there's like this effortlessness to his movements and the rhythm and everything. It's like, it's wild. Paul, like Sebastian Maniscalco. I just frigging love watching Sebastian. There's so many people that came up now that I've seen like over and over and over and just watch them go up. Like Sam Murillo, I've been a fan of for years. Sebastian was actually the first guy to recommend you to me.

I love Sebastian. Shout out to Sebastian. I love you, Sebastian. Yeah. Was there anyone else after that? A couple people told me you were awesome. Nice. Quite a few. Now, Sebastian's such a stand-up guy. This friend of mine, when I told him that it was- Shane Gillis. It's Shane Gillis, isn't it? It is. Yeah.

You just thought of it. You shouldn't have let down your guard. I just knew it. How'd you know? That was it. That was the moment. What did you see? I can't tell you, but right when you said this friend of mine, I knew you were going to protect your parks, and I said, could it have been Ari? Could it have been Mark? And I immediately knew it was going to be Shane Gills, because neither of those two would have said, definitely not Mark, would have said, kill him. He's a witch. I just knew it. Yep. That's Shane. That's such a sense of humor, too. He's a witch. Kill him. Yeah. That's so Shane. That's so Shane.

Yeah, that was a little bit of a giveaway because I said it was my friend. Yep, that is. That was the giveaway. That was the giveaway because I didn't tell you it's someone that I know. You said 100%, so now I'm thinking he must live in Austin. There was a lot of indicators. Yeah.

Whatever. But that's part of the thing. Right. But that's also you admitting that this isn't like supernatural. I'm not psychic. So everybody, when people put me on the spot and like, tell me this right now, I literally go, it's not Netflix, no on demand feature. Like I, again, that's where these skills, when people like, why don't you win the lottery? Why don't you like all these things that are silly where you don't get what I do apparently. Yeah.

Do you believe that there is any sort of psychic power that people have? Like when someone gets a phone call from someone they're just thinking about? Intuition. Right. I think there's, I mean, listen, that's like a bigger picture question. Like, you know, where does your mind expand? Like psychedelics, like where, what is there beyond this plane that clearly, you know, people are aware of? It'd be silly to think, but...

How do you kind of get on that frequency? There's no question that people have an intuition. Again, could I call it psychic powers? I've had things happen that I can't explain to you based on the skills I have.

Does that make sense? Like what? Well, I've guessed things from people where I didn't do the normal way I do it. Do you understand what I mean? Like I normally have a – there's a series of steps on how I do it, kind of like a chess player. You get a chess player. You get Magnus Carlsen. You get the best chess player in the world. They can literally blindfold play 30 people, and I'm like, how are you doing that, right? That's like magic to me. But you're keeping track of all that stuff in your mind, and you're doing stuff that is –

Indistinguishable from real magic, in my opinion. But you've hyper-focused on one skill. That's what I've done. You just think it's a lot of skills. What I've focused on is one thing, is...

assessing what people are thinking and what they give away that they don't think they're giving away. That's all. I just guess secret information for a living, but to make it exciting, entertaining, I add bells and whistles and make it interesting. Otherwise it'd be boring. How many mentalists are out there? Like, is there a community guys? You share notes? Sure. So I, there's like a, I wouldn't call it a brain trust, but there's people I bounce ideas off of when I'm creating kind of like you'd punch up jokes where they're, here's what's rare in our world. There's creators who,

And then there's performers.

Do you know what I'm saying? Like writers, and it's like singer-songwriters. How many people have their songs written for them? Right. Some of the biggest stars in the world. Right. And how many are like Taylor Swift style where you write and this and you get a piece of you in it? Yeah. And there's something about when you write your own song. I'm not knocking people that don't write their own song, but there's something that you feel different. Right. Do you know what I mean? Which explains the connection Taylor Swift has to her fans. I believe so because you're getting a piece of you that somebody else can't. I'm sure that- Just a random pop star that gets like some fact

You'll still like it. Like, I freaking love a Backstreet Boys song. Don't get me wrong. How dare you? I want it that way, Joe. But, like, when you are with her, and I'm sure, like, Jack Antonoff, she has a huge, amazing crew of writers that I'm sure get things out of her. And I know a lot of, like, music producers, but...

You feel some connection. So what, again, I think is differentiating. There's a lot of mentalists, but it's a really small number that are the singer-songwriter, the creator-performer who have the thoughts and are constantly doing new stuff. Because we are a cover band. Most mentalists are a cover band of other mentalists. We don't need to do new stuff.

You could literally do the same thing. This is pretty amazing. I could do this for the next 40 years and make a good living. God bless. And why do new stuff? Like when Louis CK was popping out three specials a year, everyone was like, what the fuck? Why are you doing this to all the rest of us? You're so creative. You don't have to. And in our profession, you really don't have to because you don't have to bury material. Right. If I'm not putting stuff online, if I'm not going like...

the Matt Reif model, who, by the way, I love that guy, but it changed the game. Now if you want to blow up on social, you've got to be doing this or do current events, do topical, do things you can burn, but I can't put my real act out there. Right, right, right. But you enjoy the creative aspect. I love it. I find it boring. If I keep doing the same stuff, I'm bored. Right.

Right. And I get like sad. Right. But it's interesting because like I wonder how many people you can bounce ideas off of. It seems like you're kind of a lone wolf.

Like in that world, I don't think there's, I mean, there's a lot of comedians. Like I could call a lot of comedians right now. Right. Bounce an idea off of. There's way less mentalists and there's way more magicians. And then of the group of mentalists, if you were to do the core one, and again, this is not subjective. I'm much more like objected the way we looked at names. How many of them have done certain volume of TV appearance, certain volume of views, like which ones are getting the attention of the world and the zeitgeist? It's a very, very small number because it's,

You gotta innovate, right? This is like an attention economy. You have to do stuff that's compelling to the viewer. And for me, I don't think about myself. It's a trick in life. I think about who's watching. What do you mean by it's a trick in life? It helps you in everything in life, right? My secret sauce is that I hold the mirror up not to myself, but to you. Do you get it? When you're watching and you're watching a football thing, Right.

What's intriguing is the fact that you're a football viewer. If you're meeting somebody and you want to be memorable, learn more about them. Start listening more. I'll tell you a story. I met Steven Spielberg. I did Steven Spielberg's dad's birthday. And I got in that room. Have you met Steven Spielberg? No. And I'm like...

you know a crazy fan like i can't explain to you how many movies he had as a kid that were life-changing i'm like dude close encounters third kind like yeah he's one of the greatest of all time ever yeah and so i'm in the room i've done stuff for his family this is not like a big blowout corporate event it's like 80 people hope he doesn't mind me sharing this and and it was great time amazing and at the end of it i'm like getting some face time with spielberg

Right. And I walk up to him and we spent almost 20 minutes talking to each other, which is like...

I didn't expect that. I thought he'd be like, oh, great job. You know, do you know how many questions? I had a million questions. Do you know how many questions I asked him? How many? Zero. Really? Zero. And that's like right there. I learned a lesson in life that applies to everything. That's why Steven Spielberg, he is naturally curious. This guy, wealthy beyond belief, stories beyond belief. He could make it ego driven and he could have been telling me, oh, this, and I would have been hanging on my every word. But instead he wanted to know more about me. And he kept asking me, I was like,

Just pause dude. I have like a lot of questions Like come on and so I Learned and I could have just left that and been like I didn't get any questions in with Steven Spielberg instead I realized this is the person at the highest level of what he does and he is naturally curious And he lets other people shine and this is something to do in life Brian which is you don't know when you meet somebody who they'll be or what they'll be or what can I'm not doing it from a transactional sense and

But why I've had so many TV appearances is when I go into a place, I'm going to do stuff for the security guard. I'm going to do something for the person who irons my shirt. I'm going to leave that place like a bomb went off of amazement where everyone around there now likes you. And you don't know when they'll jump ship to another network, to another thing. And if they like you, sales 101, they're going to want to keep doing business with you. And so those people become your champions elsewhere. And it's kind of a lesson where he could have talked about himself the whole time. He didn't.

Interesting. So I shouldn't either. When you go to other places, let other people shine. And that's something I've carried with me. And I think that's a superpower in life that most people don't do. They think, what am I going to say next? Right. That's kind of the key to running a good podcast, too, because you really want to extract the most out of the person possible. Right. Where you just...

My questions are basically just to try to get you to expand, and I just want to find out how you think. Right. And for Spielberg, a guy who deals in all these stories and narratives and all these characters and heroes, to meet a unique character like yourself is probably really fascinating to him, too, because he's probably like...

oh, I don't know anybody like this. Right. You know, like, what are you doing? How are you doing? Like, and now he's got, like, a new tool in his toolbox. Totally. Because he's got you. Right. Like, this, you know, you have this spectrum of possibilities in terms of, like, the humans that you meet. And then you meet one that's outside of that. You're like, ooh, I hadn't even considered you before. Right. What are you, where, how, who the fuck are you? That was pretty much the question. And then he had, like, he, but he was interesting because...

I don't know if you get this, but I get like X, like the 20 questions is what I call it. Yeah. Which is how'd you get into this? Like the opening questions, which you can't blame someone. If you've got a weird job, right. People want to hire about it. Right. Like, uh, did somebody in your family do this? Like there's all these questions you're going to get every time. God bless people. I don't hold it against them. Mine is always, I'm doing like a sound check for a gig. And then there was like, all right, so we got this, we got this. I go, don't you know that we have that? Like, ah, you know,

I'm like, okay, so just real quick, where's the green room? Like, you don't know already? And I'm like, okay, this is... This is getting silly. I just smile and I'm like, you know, I never heard that one before, but it's... You get that. Yeah. But in this situation...

Again, it's like he didn't ask those questions. He was very uniquely finding questions that weren't like the usual. Of course, because he's a study. I mean, he studies humans. Right. I mean, to be a great filmmaker the way he is, to do Schindler's List, to do... Oh, that's such a heavy movie, man. Have you seen that recently? Private Ryan. Yeah. I mean, he's got heavy movies. And then, you know, Close Encounters is one of my favorite movies of all time. I mean, the...

It's interesting. One of the things I really liked about that movie is he, after he became a father...

changed how he felt about the ending of his own movie. He wouldn't have the father leave everybody. Oh, wow. Yeah, because at the end of the movie, Richard Dreyfuss' character gets on the spaceship and leaves with the aliens. Wow. He's like, I would never do that. I didn't know that. Yeah. Did they film it or no? Well, it was after the fact. He made the movie, I believe, when he was younger and he didn't have children. And then as time went on...

You know, he looked back on it. You're like, oh, God, I would never leave my kids to go on this fucking UFO. Right. Nor would I. Nor would you. No. No. Like, but in this idealistic version of who he thought the Richard Dreyfuss character was and the circumstances like he had to leave. He had to go. You got to go with the aliens. Sure as hell get my phone out and try and get good footage for a change. I'm like right here. Good stuff. I like the tic tac and gimbal, but I want to see it close up in high def. I know you.

You got anything? Nothing. Off air. You got something? Come on. I have off air what I think are people bullshitting me. Oh, you don't have to be off air. I've watched these. I can read people. I can tell. On air, off air. Where the snake oil is. Yeah, I feel it. That's where it's instinctive. Like, I don't have the tools that you have, but there's a part of me that's like, hmm.

Something smells. Something feels weird. I told Jamie when I walked in here and I said, this is again, pass the sniff test. And pardon my French, but everyone takes a crap, right? Everyone in the world. I don't care if you're the Pope. You take a crap. So if they're being held in a facility, someone's taking craps. Right. And who's cleaning it? I don't think the scientists are. There's a janitor. There's someone in that room. So are you telling me that there's nobody in there that's got a 401k, health insurance, some sort of... How is someone not getting...

So tell me, explain to me what NDA they're signing or what they're doing, that if they found this out, someone loose lips, sink ship. Somebody would have told somebody who works in that facility who's not the scientist, who's not the military person. And word gets out. How is that buttoned up tight where nothing gets out ever? Well, for 50 years, you're telling me there's a basement somewhere in this country where

Eight stories down where they've got those things and no one else knows who's credible and can release it. How? Occam's razor. What do you think? I think the government can keep things secret for a long time. I think they did with the Manhattan Project. I think they've done it with other projects in the past. I think it's possible. You think it's siloed? It's just siloed. Nobody knows all the info. Because people do talk. There's a lot of people talking and people share similar stories.

And they have for decades. And I think there's something to it. I just don't know what it is. I think, you know, we had Jesse Michaels on yesterday who has this amazing show on YouTube, probably the best YouTube show on aliens and UFOs and UAPs. And he's very agnostic in his thinking and he's very objective. And he also is very, very, very thorough as far as his understanding of the information.

And even he is baffled as much as he knows. But he knows more about siloed technology than pretty much anybody does in regard to this UAP phenomenon. Right. And he points to this guy, Thompson Brown, who was working on gravity technology in the 1950s. They were –

They had working models. He thinks that they have some sort of a gravity propulsion device. But then there's things like Roswell where the crash – like if all those stories are true, that's too early. It's 47. There's too early. There's no way they had working models of these devices back then. So he thinks –

It's possible. You know, he's not a I know this is true. He thinks it's possible that it is both United States government secret projects that people are seeing. And there's probably quite a few of them. We actually pulled a few of them up and showed some of them that look like UFOs. That probably is part of what people are seeing. But he thinks is also probable that there's some other things.

And these other things could be from anywhere. And then there's just the Fermi paradox. Like if they're all out there, where are they? There's so many planets. There's so many galaxies. Well, that's got to be the case. It has to be the case. It's a question of whether or not they have visited or whether or not they're here. Right. You know, and then there's this like weird Peruvian mummies that we went over, these tridactyl mummies that they take CAT scans of and you see the tissue and the bones and-

You know, they were all found in... What is it called? What's the kind of earth that they found that these things are? The dye something...

Do you remember what it is? Where they were all dried out? I know exactly the description, but I don't remember the word. Something earth. I know the word. I can't. It's escaping me right now. All this stuff is very fascinating. So fascinating. Ancient depictions on cave walls of these things. And we pulled up these tapestries that are a thousand years old that had these three-fingered creatures. Very weird. Very weird. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're alien. Right. You know, we talked to...

We talked rather about all the various versions of human beings that they're finding now, you know, from Denisovans to the Island of Flores, Hobbit people. There's like these there's a weird variety of humans that went extinct. Right. And these tridactyl things could very well have been that. Yeah. You had it was Christopher Melanon. Right. And that was my favorite one because he had I think I don't want to butcher. I think he called it ultra terrestrial. It makes the most sense, which is.

Think about right now if you just drop the bottle in the ocean, right? What are the odds you ever run into that bottle in the ocean? It's impossible. That's what time is. If we've been around for 13 billion years, sure, there's aliens, but how do you – we've only been around for a few thousand. Like it's such an – it's a grain of sand in the whole beach. So what if – what would you do? Right now, if we had technology 1,000 years from now, 2,000 years from now, right? AI, multiply it out, the whole nine –

What would you do? You'd send these things everywhere. Sure. Just like sci-fi and you'd plant them and you'd come out every now and again and check what's up. Sure. So that's, I don't, I don't, my likeliest thing is I don't think there's any biological beings or aliens. I think you've just got automated drones in essence that are running patterns that have some sort of a, like, I don't know, that makes way more sense. It certainly could be that. I mean, that's what we're doing currently on Mars. Right. It's what we do with, you know, probes.

you know, with the James Webb telescope, a lot of different things that we use. We just send a machine out and get information from it. And then also I think at a certain point in time, we're being realistic about what we're doing right now. We're going to have biological beings and then we're going to have some kind of digital being. We're going to have some sort of a, whether it's,

Right.

Right. So what would if if you extrapolate where we're at now with quantum computing and the ability to calculate things that if you turn the entire universe, every molecule of the universe into a computer, it would take you so much time, according to Mark Andreessen, that the universe would die of heat death.

before it could solve an equation that a quantum computer can solve in minutes. Right. We're talking about nuts. No, it's crazy. And this is just 2025 stuff. You know, if you looked at

The internet from 1994, it's like archaic, 14-4 modem. I remember it. I remember it. I'm that generation. That's 31 years ago. So what are we talking about when we're dealing with 31,000 years? So conceivably a life form has existed and gone through the same stages as us without catastrophes, without nuclear war, without all the things that could trip us up.

We could be dealing with things that are beyond our imagination, literally beyond our imagination, and they're probably around us all the time. I had an idea that I wondered. I've always thought, what if ideas are life forms? Right. Because we think of life as being it has to breathe, it has to have cells, it has to – but –

Everything in this room and everything in this city and everything on this planet that's a man-made physical object came out of an idea. And the ideas compound upon each other. The more people working on these ideas, the more competition, the more the ideas will flourish, and the more the ideas will be more complex and more efficient versions of this idea. Yeah.

But it has to start as a creative thought inside someone's head. And either a creative thought that you can apply to existing creative thoughts or a completely unique one like Francis Crick or when they're figuring out certain aspects of biology or certain aspects of the quantum field. Whatever they're doing that's a breakthrough thing. Like where is that coming from? It's coming from an idea. And then these ideas, they manifest itself in physical form through human labor. Right.

Well, it's Schrodinger's cat, right? Does it happen if you don't observe it? That's the weird thing about quantum physics, right? It's completely... You can't imagine it, but if you don't open that box, nothing's happened yet. It hasn't happened until you observe it. Right. They prove that. Well, that's what gets really weird, you know, when people...

There's a lot of people that are deciding now that to approach it, approach it as if consciousness is the reason these things exist, not consciousness is seeing that these things exist, that they only exist when you're interacting with them, which is like, what? Some of the stuff when you read that, like I've read books about string theory, about quantum physics. It's just they're too complex.

It's too hard to process in the real world when you're like the table, but the table is actually empty space. Right. There's almost nothing in it solid. Yeah. Every atom, I don't even know what the numbers are, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, but how small is the nucleus and the actual physical items out of it? They're empty. Everything's empty. Everything's empty. And then you get to subatomic and you're like, okay, well now this is just pure wizardry. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

that they exist and they don't exist. This is something Michael Jackson said about ideas. Start like right here.

Philip says, we went and met with Michael, and Kenny said, Michael, you've got to stop. We've got an incredible show. We don't need any more vignettes. Michael said, but Kenny, God channels this through me at night. I can't sleep because I'm so supercharged. Kenny said, but Michael, we have to finish. Can't God take a vacation? Without missing a beat, Michael said, you don't understand. If I'm not there to receive these ideas, God might give them to Prince. Incredible. Just incredible.

Just an incredible... Michael slept one night, and that's why Purple Rain exists. Did you know that? Little Red Corvette was going to have a totally different meaning with Michael Jackson. Isn't that crazy? Too soon? God might give them to Prince. Yeah. Wow.

Wow.

And I was ready to geek out with him because I'm just so curious. It's the creative, like how does somebody come up with something is fascinating to me. And one of his recent songs was a blinding lights by the weekend. You know, I want just such a massive hit. And I just, I love that song. And I just like, just like perfect. Sounds like a movie track in my mind. And how did you do that? Like how, you know, where did you start? Did you guys have a beat? Did you know the lyrics? Like, I'm just so curious. How does that happen? Is it like 10 minutes? Is it months? And he just walked me through like,

He had a vision. We have this. We have like all this stuff that we sit down and then the first the music, then I'm like just wow. It's so amazing to create something like that, that a billion people now listen to. Number one in every country in the world. It's like how do you manufacture something so kind of perfect that everyone in the world likes it? Yeah. And is there a format you know it's going to be the hit before it is the hit? That to me is the most like how many bands –

Get stuck for the rest of their life playing a song that they freaking hate that they didn't know was gonna be there Especially if you're a one-hit wonder. Yeah, you're like dead in the eyes. You're like I gotta play this again I gotta you know, come on Eileen like you love a song and the artist doesn't want to sing it anymore like oh

And then they start singing it a different way at a concert. And you're like, why are you doing this weird acapella, bro? I want to hear it like the radio. Yeah, that's interesting. That's kind of the difference, though, between musicians and anybody else. Because musicians, you want to hear the same thing over and over again. Exactly. Exactly.

I have that a little bit where if I get clients who book me over and over, they'll, I say to them, do you want me to do something different? Cause it's like jokes, right? You know, it's like I've seen Gaffigan, you can do hot pockets. Like people call it out and I want to hear it, but you know, the punchline, right? Right. Something that especially you're known for. So I found that if I did a completely different show, people are kind of mad. Like you, I don't have exit surveys, but like I, I kind of listen in and see what's going on. I wish he did that one.

Bon Jovi has got to do living on a prayer at every game or people are pissed. For me, I need at least two of the things to be the same because people want to see if they can catch it the second time. Got it. So there's a level of they heard about it and they're like, oh, you got to do that thing with the thing. And so if I do everything new, yeah, they're kind of happy, but they still want a greatest hit. And it took me years to learn that because I used to be like, oh, I'm going to do it.

I can't do the same thing. I got to be, you know, unique. And then I learned that that's not that's not better. You know, I was just thinking like mentalists would be the best police interrogators. Right. Minority report style. Right. Don't you think like if someone but don't you think of a police interrogator learn the skills of being a mentalist? I think they could. But again, it's the best analogy that I can give you is a director holding the camera and

I'm always holding the camera and pointing it at what I want. Does that make sense? What police interrogator is gonna say, "Okay, to the perp, think of where you were that night. Look this way, look that way." They're not gonna do all that stuff. This is done when it's done under the guise of entertainment. And if they do do that, you're kind of leading the witness. You could lead whatever. People are gonna... It's not a show. So you're not gonna have a willing participant. You can't be hypnotized against your will.

Most stage hypnotist they do compliance testing first. Do you know what I mean by that? They have everyone in the audience hold your hands together and Imagine in like and like who can't get their hands apart and the person goes like this right away like I'm not bringing them on stage They're not doing anything. You have to be able to be hypnotized. You have to be suggestible. Mm-hmm Mine isn't necessary suggestible, but mine is a maze where every time you hit a roadblock I'm moving you around until I get you to the spot where you go through and

And so that's why you asked me why I didn't do this. It wasn't going to work. I knew it wouldn't. I have more things planned than you know right now. Okay. I've been thinking about this for a while, but I'm not going to do them all. Okay. Because again, how do you structure an act? You leave the best for last. Got it. You never leave here doing the best thing in the middle. Well, we're going down the home stretch. Are we home stretched? Are we at the final moment? We're almost at three hours. Wow, this goes fast, huh? Flew by. Flew by.

Remember when you asked me, did I wake up early or late? Right. The only thing I got wrong. Right. Right? Except, well, he said the vowel, but he thought of melody, but either Y was the, you know what I mean? That was a little bit tricky because A-E-I-O-U. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Here's what I want to do. You said 50-50, coin flip. Okay. And I brought one. You said, who has coins? What do we got here? A coin. What is it? Candy half, right? Yeah. All right, let's go. I feel like one is not exciting enough. That's like a football game.

Okay. Here's what I do. I don't know if you can see me from over there. Let's do three tosses. Okay. Statistically, how many would you get right? Two. One and a half. All right. All right. Either way. Call it in the air. Okay. Can you see me over there? The table's real busy. Okay. Call it in the air. Tails. You're going tails? Yeah. What do we get? Heads. All right. Okay. All right.

Whatever. 0 for 1. Okay. Did you feel good about it when you did it? No. Okay. Should I really put it in my head? No, do whatever. I mean, it's a coin flip. It's not a trick. Okay. Now it gets in your head because you guessed it and you're like, fuck, it didn't work the first time. But nobody cares. There's nothing riding on this. You already called it in the air. What are you going with? Tails. You're going tails again? Yeah. You're going tails again? Yep.

I can't. See, that time I would never change. It's heads. 0 for 2? All right, all right. Third try is charm. Okay. You think you got it? Yep. What are the odds on that? So this has got to be your shot. Call it. Tails. Tails? I was going tails never fails. What do we get, Joe? You're 0 for 3. Heads again. You're 0 for 3. You done? Nope. You want one more? Sure. You insist? Yeah. All right. You're not done. I said 3. Okay. Should I go over here? Has that envelope been there the whole time?

This envelope? Yes. We sealed this the moment I arrived at the studio. Right. Okay. You're going to get it this time, just for the record. Okay. Tails. Tails? Yeah. Fuck. 0 for 4. Are you doing this? I'm not doing anything. Take the coin. You're not making it land on heads? 0 for 4. No, but do you know how to do it? Do you have a method? Call it.

Call it whatever you want. Tails. Did I do it? You said it. What is it? It's heads. But that didn't count. That's five in a row. You're just bad luck. Is that five in a row? I don't really count that one. That seems odd. Let's try one more. Double check the tails still there. Do it yourself. Double check what, Jimmy? Double check there's still tails on there. There's still tails. Okay, just check it. But this doesn't count because this one's yours. Whoops. That was very clumsy of me.

Put it anywhere. Do it on the table. I just didn't have room on the table. It's tails. But did you guess tails? Yeah. Oh, okay. I just kept going. I feel like it's got to be tails eventually. It's not a trick. It's statistical. All right. But statistically, five in a row of heads, it seems odd. I said to you, I hope everyone stayed along for this journey. I said, this is your future. This is my future. Right? But I lied. Past, present, and future. Oh, my God. Now, hold on. I'm going to come over there. That's a lot. Open it up. You'll see what I mean. But I don't want you to open it. Open it up. There's two things in there. Now, freeze right there. Okay.

Show us what you have. Two envelopes? One's not an envelope. One's a folded piece of paper. Folded piece of paper. And one is a manila envelope. Is it taped everywhere? Yes, taped everywhere. I'm coming over. Okay. You want to do it? Can you guys hear me? We're going to open it. Where am I? Is the camera here? There's a camera over there. Okay, you tell me. Okay. I'll go around you. I just want to make sure you can see this. All right. Joe. Joe.

Look inside. Okay. I want you to look inside and before you grab it, no, no, no, look, look, look, look, look. Okay, I'm looking. And tell me, you see, it says two words. Can I turn this around? It says Joe Rogan. It says Joe Rogan. And I don't want to touch. Will you do it? I don't want to touch. Grab that one, that pink one out. Okay. And read to us. Grab that. That's your pass. Hold on to this. Okay. Read out loud. That's been in there from before we started. It says Joe Rogan will get three coin flips in a row wrong, insist on doing one more, and then get that one wrong too. Okay.

The present. You can't change that. The past. Joe, take out what's in there. Tell us all. Look around the edges. It's stapled. I usually used to lick stuff. Do this. Bring this over. I want you to see. I don't want to touch. I just want you to look around. It's stapled. When I walked in here, Joe, I made a big thing of it. I said, I want you to have this before. Sealed. It's been here the whole time. Sealed. Impulsive, spontaneous, in the moment. Got it.

And I said to you, did something get in your head? Who earlier, when I said any fighter you've ever, you've ever seen what fighter came to mind? I said, Anderson, Anderson Silver. Yeah. And how many fighters rip it open? Okay. How many fighters did you say cycled through? And I said, be very specific. How many fighters do you think cycled through your head?

I don't know. I said a dozen at least. Did he say a dozen? He stuck with 14. You said 14. Read. Please open that up. Take that out. And I want you to please read what's been in there from the moment I walked on this set. It said, Joe will have 14 fighters go through his head, but with Anderson Silva in the end and a fight that he won. Past, present, and future. That's insane. Past, present, future. The other piece of paper. That's literally insane.

Because at first I was going to go with Zabit. Zabit Magamob Sheriff. Do this. Grab the other piece of paper. It's got a paper clip. Freeze right there. This is the future. Stop, stop. Don't move. Hold it right there in your hands. Okay, I'm holding it. Nobody knows the future. Nobody knows the future. It's true. Nobody does. Imagine right now. Best magic trick in the world. Boom. I throw a smoke bomb. Disappear. Disappear. Anyone ever

Someone famous, though. Otherwise, I want to see my grandma again. Okay. Appears right here instead. Imagine you literally, I don't want Jamie to do it, but you pull up a photo, you show me this person's photo. Got it. Say it. Who do you see right there in that chair? Say it. What's their name? Miles Davis. Can I ask you a question? Yes. Because I like this. Here's what I always like to do. I always call it the grass is greener. I can see when people's eyes shift.

When they have one person and they're like, I want that person. But that's the front of their mind. I can always get in the front. But for this to be a legendary ending, who is in the back? Who is the person you thought of before Miles Davis? Tell us. Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali, right? That's what I love. The gold standard. The reason you're going to talk about this for years is because you changed your mind at the last moment. That's been in there from when I walked in here. Look at what's in there right now. Muhammad Ali. How is that possible? That's insane. You are a witch. We're going to have to kill you. Lock the door, Jamie.

Bam! That's really insane, man. That's really weird. I want to ask you how you do this, but you're not going to tell me. Yeah, off camera. Tell you everything. You show me where Bob Lazar's hiding the UFO. I wish I knew. I wish I knew. That's insane, dude.

That's crazy. It was Anderson Silva versus Rich Franklin. Oh, what a good fight. What a great fight. This you keep. This you keep. You lock in the safe for when I come next time. Assume the close. I will. I'll be back. I will keep down the safe. This is really nuts, man. I don't know how you did it. It's really crazy. The coin flip, the 14 different fighters, like all of it. Thank you. It's fucking nuts, man. Change your bank pin code right now. Change it. Yeah, I'm going to. Jesus Christ.

Jamie, anything to add to this? Nope. We should have walked off when you were silent. We should have just ended it there. This is like pure wizardry, dude. I don't know how you're doing it. Appreciate that. I don't think you're ever going to be explained to me either.

Thank you. I appreciate you, man. I'm a huge fan for many years, and I love what you're putting out in the world, and I'm telling you, I just love it, and thank you so much. I'm honored to be here. It's an honor for me, too. This is, like, truly insane. I've been blown away before, but I don't think I've ever been blown away this much. This is really nuts, and it's, like, shattered my worldview. I have to rethink how I think about everything and what signals human beings give off and, like, how someone could read something like that. Pretty nuts.

Thanks, brother. Thank you. Bye, brother.