The Ben Mulroney Show - Shlomo the mentalist messes with Ben

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

GUEST: SHLOMO Levinger    /  magician and mentalist. He has performed internationally and has been called "the athletes' magician" If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's why I remember 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada. You know, with everything going on in the world, it's

easy to get your blood boiling and every now and then you got to just downshift. You got to downshift and appreciate the magic and wonder in the world. And there's a lot to be impressed by and there's a lot of head-shakingly cool

things out there. There are very few things out there that blow my mind like mentalists and close up magic because I get really close. But I've got a grip. One of my best friends in the world, his name is Learam Siegel. And whenever you'd have a party, he'd bring a mentalist in. And I would get within inches of whatever was happening in that guy's hands. And I still, for the life of me, could not figure it out.

So I'm left with only one conclusion. magic is real. Now, I know it's not, but I kind of also do. And it blows my mind and it irritates me, but it's also, it's that wonderment, right, that I think a lot of us are craving these days. And a few weeks ago, I saw on social media a magician and mentalist named Shlomo Levenger. And they call him the athlete's magician because he does so much stuff with athletes. And before we bring him on, I want to play some audio of Shlomo guessing Vladimir Guerrero's phone pin. He's volunteering. He's volunteering.

How's it going? Good to see you. You're going to count the 10 out loud. I'm going to try to pick up on which numbers are in the password. Go out loud, one to 10. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Three, zero five. 043. God bless. Yeah, we got it.

All right, we got it. We're in. We're in. Please welcome to the show. Shlomo Levenger. Slow Mo, welcome. Hey, thank you so much for having me. This is awesome.

Look, there's, there is, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of great magicians and mentalists out there. And I've seen a lot of them on stages in Vegas or at parties and stuff. But to find your niche and to find that thing that differentiates you from all the other great, incredible, talented people out there can be difficult. And you found your thing. You're the athlete's magician. How do you do that? How do you become that?

That's a good question, honestly. It's funny. Like, I grew up a huge sports fan, but I didn't really choose that. It kind of chose me. The same way you kind of found me through social media, about six years ago. I've been posting stuff for a long time, and I actually had a, I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He was kind of a small player, but there's a baseball player by the name of Mike Trout. I don't know if he's ever.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So he actually, one of the greatest of all time. He actually saw my stuff online as well. And he reached out to me, he DM me and said, hey, like, I love magic. Like, this is crazy. Like, I don't, you know, I want to see this in person. and he kind of had me come out to California

and then after a game we hung out and showed him and a bunch of his friends of magic and kind of the rest of the history, we filmed it, put it on YouTube, and then a lot of other athletes I just saw it and started reaching out. Look, I don't think I'm breaking any news or making anybody feel bad or giving a hot take or peeling the onion.

But, you know, it's, being a mentalist is, it appears as magic, but what skills do you as a, as a mentalist develop to be able to do, I'm not asking you to give away your tricks, but what do you have to be really good at in order to do what you do? I think the main thing is being a people's person

is just being able to be comfortable around people and sometimes pick up on things that other people wouldn't necessarily pick up on. I do kind of, I'm of the opinion that mentalism and magic are a lot more similar than people maybe tend to think. But, yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of a different angle in terms of like slight of hand being, you know, a card trick being slight of hand or, you know, a magic trick having some sort of, you know, trapdoor or something like that. Where this is like gimmick free, hands free, it just looks like you're looking into someone's soul, which could be a little bit scary. But it is more similar to a magic trick than you might think in terms of sometimes the methods.

But the hard part about it is that you really are, there is a psychological aspect. any good mentalist really has worked on being able to, I guess, see patterns and things and see things that, I guess, maybe someone who doesn't do this, you know, maybe he won't see. Well, let me, I want to play another piece from one of your videos. And this, so just to give context to my listeners, this is Jeff Passon, he's a sports journalist. You had him unlock his phone, but hold it screen down and scroll through his

contacts and then touch the screen where he couldn't see it. And I think that's all I need to to. It's first, his reaction and then another reporter he did it to him. All right. This is his reaction and then another report he did it to. I said to him at the beginning, I do not believe in this. And then he went out and did it. And I don't know how. And I'm okay with that. So what I'm getting. You're already on a count of through. You're going to say the name out loud. I'm going to turn this around. If I got it, a miracle, one here, one, two, three, what's the

Laura D. Laura D. I don't know. I don't know. How do you feel about this? Do you have? Am I bugged? Dude, he did the same thing to me.

It just happened to both of us. Okay, Shlomo, I haven't even watched that video, and it hurts my brain because I was watching the, I was watching the pin videos, like guessing someone's password. Like, like, passcode, right? And in my head, I was like, oh, he's paying attention. He's looking at the screen. to see if there are any smudges on any particular numbers. And obviously, I know so much more than that. There were 888 people in his phone.

That is a, there's an infinite number of possibilities. There's, it's unguessable. I don't even know if a quantum computer could guess. Like, seriously, it could be anything. That person might have had, the person he might have stopped on could have just been initials, or it could have been a jumble of, of, of, of, of, of symbols. Correct, which actually happens sometimes.

That does happen sometimes. We're like, it will be a different language or it will be initials or it'll be like a first name, last initial, or it'll be a nickname of sorts. And that's, that's kind of where this gets fun because then I'll still have that challenge, you know, trying to get it. So, like, I'm trying to understand, like, do you ever get brought in to sort of intelligence briefings? Like, do you ever, like, I, no, but I, you clearly have a skill that we want to attribute to magic.

But seriously, like, this is a skill that if, if it can be taught, I don't, I don't see how it wouldn't be a skill that the CIA would want everyone to have on their staff. Every spy to be able to read people so well that they can guess a name, divine a name seemingly out of nothing. Well, first of all, if, if it was true, no one would talk about it. So that's number one. And number two is that I will say to that point. And the same thing, people ask me like, oh, how come you just don't know the lottery numbers and stuff like that? And the answer to that is very simple. I'll start on the lottery point. Like the lottery, you know, the numbers are picked by a machine.

So my job is to read people. So it's a machine. It's random. There's nothing to read. So that's kind of a different thing. And then as well, with intelligence sort of thing, a lot of this stuff is very directed in a sense of like, in a sense of like I'm kind of in control of what information I'm trying to get. And the person that's that I'm trying to get that information from, there has to be a certain guard, meaning their guard can be up, but only to an extent of like where they have to, there are certain skills and techniques that I'm using. they have to be, they have to be willing to kind of follow my, my rules and the things I want them to do. So if I want them to count a 10 out loud, or if I want them to say the alphabet, those are things that you would need them to do. And sometimes in, you know, real life, you know, intelligent situations, you don't necessarily have that opportunity. Yeah, there's an element of suggestion. Correct.

Is there anything, is there anything similar with this and hypnotism? Yeah, I think there are similarities in a sense of like the person who's doing it is performing it isn't control of like the scenario and kind of, you know, taking lead of how they're going to get that information or in hypnosis, like how, you know, how you're going to put that person in that state. So, yeah, that's that's the kind of the similarity there. There's a lot of crossover. I know plenty of mentalists who are hypnotists as well.

All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break, Shlomo. You're sticking around because when we come back, Shlomo is going to mess with Ben Mulrooney. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back, and I want to thank my guest to Shlomo Levenger for sticking around. He's a magician and mentalist. He's performed internationally. He's been called the athletes a magician. And one of the reasons these clips are so good, besides the celebrity angle of the athletes, Shlomo, is the reactions, right? People's reactions. You never know what you're going to get. Talk to me about some of the best. best reactions you've ever gotten. Like, who's freaked out the most? Oh, man. Listen, one of the reactions that stands out of my head first door is Shohay Otani.

That was, I don't know if you saw that clip, but that reaction, I don't think he ever shows that kind of emotion. So it was just such a cool moment. Well, and for those who don't know who Shoheyotani is, he's the greatest living baseball player. And after his performance last year, they're in the playoffs, you could make an argument that he is the greatest athlete who has ever lived. And a lot of Toronto Blue Jays fans, not so happy with that fact, but that doesn't. And he's known as being reserved, you know, as a Japanese player.

He's known as being reserved. And so what was his reaction? He kind of just like was so shocked. It's hard to explain his reaction. He kind of just like let out like he just started laughing really loudly. Like it was just such a fun moment. Other moments that kind of stand out or, you know, I've had people run out of the room. Yeah, I've done that.

I've had people almost have panic attacks. Like, it gets crazy out there. It's got, so listen, Shlomo, you're a good Jewish boy. I know a lot of Jewish moms. And most Jewish moms do not hope that their son grows up to be a mentalist. And so what happened when you told your mom, mom, I'm not going to be a doctor. I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm going to do this.

They actually just banished me from the family. No. They were, honestly, honestly, I started this when I was 14, so I was in high, I had just started high school. You did it for, you did to get to girls, right? Like every girl loves slight a hand. Yeah, well, yeah, you know, magic, to be honest, in the beginning, magic, it was like, it was kind of the long, I was playing the long game because, you know, it definitely

sometimes could have that, you know, kind of that, like stigma of being, you know, a little bit of something different. But I think it just depends on who's doing it in their personality. Like, if you can make it cool, you'll make it cool. It's not, not, you know. But, yeah, I started in high school and, like, I don't know, it was just a hobby that, like, I'm very, like, self-competitive. Like, I like to compete with myself.

Anything I get into, I get, I just get, I go all in. Like, I go hard. So, yeah, I kind of just took it on as a challenge. And then I just really got into it and I love it. And, you know, once I, once I finished high school, I was already, by my senior year, I'm already doing small, like, small parties, small gigs. And I guess before I had any responsibility to make money, like there was a, you know, there was, there was a clearly, like some sort of path there. So I don't think the blow

was as strong as it would have been if I would have just, you know, jumped them and said, hey, this is what I'm doing. But I think they kind of saw it coming. Yeah. And the sting often comes out of whatever expectations parents have when they see that their child is happy. They see that their child is at what they've chosen to do they're really good at. And when they find out it pays the bills. When those three things, they can check those three boxes, the parents tend to, the white knuckling ends to a certain

extent. All right. On that note, my friend, I think now, and I don't know how often you do these things over the radio, but let's see if you can do something that's going to make me want to run out of the room. Absolutely. I love it.

And this is a good challenge because last segment we were talking about how I told someone to contact from their phone, and they had about 888 contact, which is a lot. But let's up the stakes here a little bit. Let's up the stakes. Let's get this. Let's do something that I don't think has ever been done before.

And I kind of want to do something a little bit crazy. So here's what we're going to do in your mind right now. I want you to think of anything in the entire world. This could be a person, a place, a thing, anything you want. Okay. Anything you want. Yeah, okay, okay. Okay, let me just get, okay.

Okay. I've got it. I've got it. You got something. All right. So just to repeat, you want me to pick anything. It could be an object. It could be a person. Could be a place. Anything. Okay. I've picked a thing. I've done it. I've done it. Okay. Beautiful. Now, I want people to understand how actually impossible this is.

So here's what I'm going to have you do. Do you have your phone with you by chance? Yes, I do. Perfect. I want you to pull out your phone. Okay. I want you to Google something for me. You're going to Google something for me. You're going to Google something for me. You're ready. I'll tell you exactly what your Google. you're going to look this up you're going to go how many articles now we're going to use a little bit of a

database here how many articles are there on Wikipedia how many articles are there on wikipedia i want you to google that okay the answer should be there yes and i've got the okay uh the AI so okay so you want me say what it is are you like are you on are you on are you on um are you on um so i i i used uh I use the Apple browser, and I just typed that in, but it came up on Google on the AI overview. Sure. So just scroll down. I think there's like a live counter that will give you the exact number so people actually understand this. So I think there's a live counter.

I think it's called Wikik count or something like that. Wiki count should be like one of the first, yeah, like one of the first couple links. It should even say there like an exact number of how many articles. Stand by. Okay. When you see that, just click it and let it take you there. and it will give you an exact number. When you have that, just read it out.

Okay, let me see, wiki count. Wikipedia. Wikicount.net or something along those lines. It's Wikipedia's like official live counter. Okay, wiki. I said, I'm not seeing it here. Wikipedia. Hold on, let's see.

You know what, I'm just going to go to Chrome instead, okay? So I can do it there. Yeah, go to Chrome. And you know what just typed us in wikikikcount.net. So wikai, c-o-u-un-ttnet. Dot net. Okay. WikiCount.

It should give you the answer. Okay, so here we go. WikiCount.net. Okay, so it says 5,07, $7,706,247. 247. And then does it say there on the bottom, like how many words per article? Just say there with an average of how many words? Yes.

1,555 words per article, average. Okay. And so see there, do you see where it says visit Wikipedia? Yes. So click that, let it take you there. Now, here's what you're going to do. We're over the phone right now. We're not seeing each other in person.

I can't see your phone. I can't see people around you. Even if I had a camera and skee, like I can't know what you're thinking in your brain. Here's what you're going to do. The reason I'm having you do this is because I need to visualize it in order for your brain to process it a certain way. And in a minute, I'm going to have you say the alphabet,

something like that. I'm going to try to figure out exactly what it is. Do you see, you're on with the, you see the search bar top right there. Do you see that? Yeah, I've got the, yeah, search, yeah, top right. Okay. I want you to pull up. the article for whatever you're thinking, kind of hold it towards you, just in case I could somehow

see. And I want you to show it to just to show it to one other person or you don't have to show it to anybody. It doesn't matter. Okay. But as long as you have the article there up in front of you or whatever you're thinking of, that's okay. Yeah, okay, we got it. Yeah. And my producer's recording it and I'm making a video. Okay. Perfect. I want you to stare at the article. Yeah. And really just stare at it. Try to just don't think, don't really like focus on really anything. Just kind of just try to take it in. And then I want to. you just out loud right now, do the alphabet, A through Z as loud as you can. A, B, C, D, C, D, D, F, G, G, H, I, I, J, K, K, L M, N-O-P, Q-R-S, T-U-V-W-X-Y-N-Z.

Beautiful. Okay, there's a couple letters that are standing out to me. Now, here's the thing, by the way, also, just for the record, there are people, there are, millions and billions of people in this world and there are people looking things up on Wikipedia all the time. So even if like somehow I could know what people are looking up, like there's people searching things up every second of the day. So to know this thing that you're exactly thinking of would be impossible. But I think there's a couple letters that stood out to me. Tell me if I'm right here and I think it's funny because when I had you think when I told you to think of whatever this is, I have a feeling like when I heard the letters just now that there were maybe. And now I can't

see you. So this does make it harder. but there were maybe, and I tell me if I'm wrong here, I think you actually had something else first, besides for the thing that you're thinking of. And I kind of think you were going back and forth in your head and you were thinking to yourself, like, which one would be better? And then you kind of settled on this. And I think it's actually based on something that you maybe saw recently.

Like, that's the feeling that I'm getting here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. And you kind of settled on this because you felt like in your mind that it was really random. so it's not like I could have known that's based on something, but it's not like personal, personal. This is something random.

You know what? It's funny. Is this, I said person, place or thing, this is an object. Am I correct? Yeah, yeah, it's an object. Yeah, it's an object. And it maybe would even fit in your hand.

Like it fits in the size of your hand. Like it would fit in your hand. You can hold it. Yeah. And I believe, I believe, did you see this today? Is this something you saw today earlier today? Yeah, I saw something of, I saw something very similar to this today. It's very similar to this.

So not that exact version. And it's funny, the thing you actually saw earlier was debating going with that, but you kind of just went with this. You're going, you went, oh, is this, this is a food? Is this, is this Golden Graham? Oh, my God, he's a witch. Burn him. He's a witch.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I'm assuming we got it. Oh, Jesus. Shlomo Levenger. I wish we could continue that you freaking nailed it, dude. Oh my God, you are an apex predator.

Thank you so much. Congratulations on all your success. We will be watching you on social media. If people want to find you, how can they find you? This winter on Global. Have you ever told a lie? Are you serious? Isn't lying part of the job description of CIA?

On executive producer Dick Wolf and the team behind FBI. New partner. He can be a little by the book. Dude, I'm not used to me alive, but you're really no use to me dead. I never knew you cared. Two perspectives, one mission.

You guys work in the open, we work in the shadows. Starring Tom Ellis and Nick Gelfis. Nice work, partner. CIA, all new Mondays at 10 on Global and stream on Stack TV.