Cheap Trick: Debunking the "Magic" of Mentalist Oz Pearlman
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Pablo Torre
4.7 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
He's wowed presidents, pro athletes and podcasters. But magicians tell us Oz Pearlman's viral act has crossed an ethical line. Stevie Baskin, after obsessively studying Pearlman's tricks, explains to Pablo how influencers from Charles Barkley to the White House were in on the act — and why he thinks this brand of "mind-reading" amounts to fraud.
• Much more from Stevie Baskin's YouTube video
• Previously on PTFO: The Unwritten Rules of Magic
(Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. |
| 0:06.7 | Where is the person with the balls to just, like, flat out accuse this guy of fraud? |
| 0:12.9 | Right after this ad. |
| 0:20.8 | I do want to make clear that I am a guy who becomes obsessed with characters that confuse me that I find on some level unsolvable. |
| 0:30.0 | And when I unilaterally bring up the name, O's Perlman, O's the Mentalist, There are two sort of reactions. One is, who the |
| 0:40.0 | is that? The other is, we're about to have perhaps a five-hour conversation about this guy. |
| 0:48.5 | And Stevie Baskin, as the preeminent authority on O's the mentalist and the decoding of what makes him so |
| 0:55.2 | irresistible, how would you explain O's to the first group that has no idea who he is, has never |
| 1:02.8 | seen him, has no sense of why I would even care? Well, maybe, maybe there's an argument to say |
| 1:10.2 | that the most useful way to introduce him is that he's sort of someone who has mastered the art form of mentalism, which I think then would be immediately followed by the question of, well, what is mentalism? |
| 1:30.8 | You go back in time and you look into the face directly of somebody that you have not thought of |
| 1:36.3 | before today in years. You don't know why, what reason or why, but you're seeing this person |
| 1:42.5 | in your mind at this very moment, open your eyes. |
| 1:47.0 | You and him used to play basketball together, didn't you? |
| 1:49.9 | What the fuck? |
| 1:52.9 | Yes. |
| 1:53.8 | What's his name? |
| 1:54.8 | Pernell Davis. |
| 1:55.7 | Pernell. |
| 1:56.1 | What the fuck? |
| 1:57.4 | Are you kidding me? |
| 2:00.8 | Bro, this is like the craziest. |
... |
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