VIDEO: Can Oz ‘The Mentalist’ Pearlman Guess Howard’s Secret Word?

Mentalist, magician, and world-class entertainer Oz Pearlman has done it all. Having stunned everyone from movie star Bradley Cooper to N.F.L. quarterback Joe Burrow with his unique brand of mind-reading, the “America’s Got Talent” Season 10 finalist reunited with former judge Howard on Tuesday with one main objective — to guess a word Howard has kept secret for over a decade.

When the late actress Valerie Harper appeared on the Stern Show in 2014 in the wake of her terminal cancer diagnosis, she gave Howard a secret code word she would use if she ever tried to contact him in the afterlife. “I never told anyone,” Howard told Oz on Tuesday morning.

Pearlman was confident he could figure out the word. “All I’ve been doing for 30 years is reverse engineering the human mind,” he told Howard.

Before getting to the main event, Pearlman first correctly named the word staffer Sal Governale thought Harper might have told Howard. Sal was stunned. “My fake hair is standing up,” the staffer joked, adding, “I have no words — I need to sit down.”

Then, in what he called a “high stakes ‘Wheel of Fortune’ game,” Pearlman took Howard along for an incredible ride as he tried to figure out the word Valerie Harper had told him. “Remember this moment, Howard, because you’re going to be talking about this for years to come,” Oz said before getting to his big reveal. “The word she told you was ‘curly,’ wasn’t it?” he asked Howard.

“That’s the word!” Howard said in disbelief. “She looked at my hair and said, ‘The word is curly.’”

Even Oz appeared to be amazed by his accomplishment. “I had a bunch of words I thought it could be … I knew it was down to four words, [and] I went for ‘curly,’” he explained. “I don’t think you understand … how crazy that was.”

See more of Oz’s memorable Stern Show debut (below).