Forget pulling a rabbit from a hat, mentalist Oz Pearlman can pull an ATM PIN code from someone’s mind

Oz Pearlman baffled podcaster Joe Rogan and Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley when he guessed Rogan’s ATM PIN code and Barkley’s go-to purchase at the grocery store.

The 43-year-old mentalist and father of five has been working his magic on audiences for years, mystifying celebrities, billionaires and athletes alike with the personal information he pulls out of figurative hats. He can guess a childhood bedroom poster, a third-grade teacher’s name and dream vacation destinations. 

“How you’re gonna think is shockingly under my control. It’s almost like the way a puppet gets moved around,” Pearlman said. 

How Pearlman got into the magic of the mind 

The mentalist got his start in magic as a teenager after his parents took him on a cruise ship vacation, where he saw a magician perform for the first time. 

“I was brought on stage. He performed this trick with me as the person. And I was, I was blown away,” Pearlman said. 

Back on land, Pearlman checked out every magic book he could find. He got a part-time job so he could buy every trick in the neighborhood magic shop.

Pearlman later dropped the card tricks and turned to the mind games of mentalism. He’s spent thousands of hours practicing in the decades since.

How it works 

He says his current act is based on one big lie.

“The lie is that I can read your mind,” Pearlman said. 

The mentalist tells his audiences that he’s not psychic, that there’s nothing supernatural about what’s going on. Yet he’s cagey when it comes to admitting what’s actually going on. 

“I am not gonna tell you. That doesn’t do well for my job security,” he said. 

Pearlman will drop hints. He says he studies body language to read what’s going on in someone’s mind. He watches the way eyes shift and where audience members put their hands. 

“I’m getting you to make very specific choices, right. In my show, I guess a lotta things, such as numbers, such as words, such as names, things that have seemingly an infinite amount of possibilities. But do they? No,” he said. “I’ve figured out how to kinda take a piece of information that seems too impossible, I can build up in a big way, and create a lot more of a limited subset than you think.”

The magician likes putting words into people’s heads. 

“Certain moments where you’re right now about to change your mind, and I move you into another direction, you don’t realize that you were about to do something but that your mind works in a certain way,” Pearlman said. 

Critics have accused Pearlman of following audience members around ahead of time and doing deep dives into their lives to get answers, like Rogan’s PIN code. 

“If you think that I followed Joe Rogan around to get his ATM PIN code, I love that answer,” Pearlman said. “But no, I did not follow Joe Rogan around.”

The mentalist also said certain types of audiences are easier to figure out.

“People that are very intelligent are much easier because their mind is regimented in a certain way. Like, I perform for Nobel laureates. You go, ‘This is one of the most intelligent people on the planet.’ I go, ‘Pft. Hook, line, and sinker. Let’s go. This is gonna be a cake walk.'”

Bringing mind magic to audiences 

Pearlman makes most of his money from corporate events, and performs for NFL and college football teams. 

He’ll spend months preparing for a gig.

“I’ve been ideating, formulating, thinking, what am I going to do this time?”

It’s gratifying to watch the audience’s amazement, Pearlman said. 

“It’s like certain movies give me goosebumps. And you don’t get that, often,” he said. 

His tricks have impressed audiences so much that Pearlman says CEOs have reached out to him for help negotiating deals.

Pearlman is also publishing a book, “Read Your Mind: Proven Habits for Success from the World’s Greatest Mentalist,” with tips on how to use mentalism in everyday life. 

“My book is not about teaching you to be a mentalist because there’s books about that,” he said. “So I want to teach people not to be a mentalist, but how to think like a mentalist.” 

The mentalist’s tricks have fallen apart, sometimes in front of very large audiences. But the magic is in Pearlman’s ability to pivot in the moment, keep from panicking, and make his audiences think he’s pulled it off. 

Several years ago, Pearlman wanted NBC weatherman Al Roker to pick a celebrity who would run for president in 2016. Pearlman wanted Roker to say Taylor Swift. The trick failed, with Roker picking actor George Clooney. 

Pearlman asked Roker if he had any women in mind as potential candidates and, when Roker suggested Swift, Pearlman revealed a “Taylor Swift for President” shirt. 

“In that moment, it’s hyperfocus of saying to him, ‘And what if it could be anybody else? What if?’ And so I was steering him back on track to what I thought would work,” Pearlman said. “So it looked even more amazing, because it seemed like he changed his mind at the last moment.”