The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, a century-old night of mingling for politicians and political journalists, won't feature a roast by a comedian this year.
Instead, bucking decades of tradition, Saturday's headliner is a mentalist: Oz Pearlman, whose mind-reading, PIN-guessing tricks have made him a favorite of social media, late-night shows, professional sports teams and corporate clientele.
"As the world's most celebrated mentalist, Oz Pearlman will offer a fascinating glimpse into what's truly on the minds of Washington's newsmakers," association president Weijia Jiang, of CBS News, said in a February announcement teasing an "exciting, fresh, and interactive evening."
Pearlman, 43, has been a full-time entertainer for over two decades, but he's been doing magic for much longer. He started doing card, rope and coin tricks as a teenager, which helped him pay for college, and kept the side gig going even as he began working on Wall Street. His career got a major boost from his third-place finish on America's Got Talent in 2015.
But he says he could have never imagined turning mentalism — a relatively niche genre of magic — into a full-time job, let alone booking the correspondents' dinner. In doing so, he follows in the footsteps of big-name entertainers like George Carlin, Chevy Chase, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Stephen Colbert.
In fact, Pearlman told NPR over Zoom that when he first got the call, he thought it was a prank or a mistake. But he soon came to understand the intent behind the invite.
"My hope for the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and why they brought me there instead of a comedian to roast people, is that my job is to bring us together," he said. "[People in the room] don't necessarily agree on how the country is being governed or the war or economy or a million different things … I think that for 25 minutes they're going to laugh, they're going to applaud, they're going to have their jaws drop."
Pearlman hopes people will leave the room (at the Washington Hilton) in a better mood than when they arrived, adding, "I think as a country, we need that at times."
A mentalist is not as much of a pivot from a comedian as people might think, says Anthony Barnhart, a professional magician-turned-psychological science professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin.
"Oftentimes, the natural response to experiencing magic or mentalism is laughter," Barnhart says. "So I suspect the kind of tenor of the show will be pretty similar to what we've seen in previous years; it's just a different approach to eliciting that laughter. And, I guess, people love the notion that he's going to be divulging the secrets of politicians."
What makes this year's dinner extra buzzy is the fact that President Trump plans to attend, which would be his first-ever appearance as president and most recent since 2011.
And Pearlman hints that Trump won't just be watching, but participating, in his act. He says, "reading Donald Trump's mind is arguably the most impressive thing you could ever do."
Pearlman may be most recognizable for his short-form, rapid-fire mentalism in social media clips. And while he's excited to have nearly 30 minutes to work the room, he knows he just needs one jaw-dropping moment to wow the crowd, take off online and cement his legacy.
"I have been formulating what it will be, how it will play, every minutia of it for 10 years," Pearlman says. "So I believe that Saturday night, if it goes the way I want it to … will be the reason you talk about me for years to come."
That chatter, he hopes, will be along the lines of: How did he do that? For mentalists everywhere, that's the magic question.
What is mentalism?
Mentalism is a form of magic. But instead of performers seeming to pull rabbits out of hats, they appear to pluck thoughts from others' minds.
"We're all pretty much convinced that someone cannot know what we are thinking unless we, in some fashion, reveal it," says Alexander George, an Amherst College philosophy professor and performing mentalist. "Though that is what the mentalist seems to be able to do."
Mentalists create the appearance of mind-reading through the power of research, suggestion, showmanship and other means. Peter Lamont, a professor of history and theory of psychology at the University of Edinburgh, says the usual explanation is that "at some point, the information is not just in your head."
"Somebody writes something down, or a phone is used, or somebody does a Google search or something like that," says Lamont, whose work focuses on the history and psychology of magic. "I can say with some confidence it's not coming through reading your facial expressions."
As sworn-to-secrecy, card-carrying members of the Society of American Magicians, the mentalists interviewed for this story declined to elaborate on the specific methods and mechanisms involved.
"But I think that it's through a combination of psychological techniques, keen observation, a quickness in taking advantage of fortuitous circumstances, and, last but not least, devilish trickery, a mentalist will succeed," George says.
The form has a long history. George traces mentalism back to the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece, who purported to deliver divine — and cryptic — messages from Apollo.
"People have been kind of fooling other people about the mind since there have been people," he says.
Modern mentalism has some roots in the spiritualist movement, which gained traction in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (around the same time as the birth of psychology). Spiritualism was the popularization of clairvoyance, telepathy and mediums who claimed to communicate with the dead.
"A lot of the things that they did in the course of the seances … were picked up by the magical community and then taken in various directions," George explains.
Examples include "messages" appearing on a chalkboard, or a word seemingly jumping out at a mentalist from deep within a randomly selected book. There's also the "double act," where one mentalist is blindfolded onstage as the other gets — and appears to transmit — information from the audience. It made its way quickly to new platforms, first radio, then television, and now, the internet.
Modern mentalism looks largely the same as it did a century ago, Lamont says, in terms of the type and number of tricks. The main thing that's changed is the technology. Lamont says the internet gives mentalists new tools and ways of accessing information, plus a wider audience (if they're lucky). But it also runs the risk of exposing secrets and upping expectations.
"For magic to work, you have to do something which seems impossible," he says. "And when technology makes certain things possible, you have to do something else."
That "something else" largely has to do with showmanship. And Pearlman seems to keenly understand that. He brands himself as reading people, not minds. He also published a self-help book in 2025 called Read Your Mind: Proven Habits for Success from the World's Greatest Mentalist.
"My whole profession is, I reveal secret information, or I appear to plant my thoughts in others' minds," Pearlman says. "That's it. But how you package those two skills in different entertaining ways for different audiences has been my secret sauce to success."
What mentalism is not
All of the magicians who spoke to NPR stressed that, as entertaining and convincing as mentalism can be, it's crucial for viewers to recognize that it's just an act.
"I learned how to be a mentalist," Pearlman told NPR. "It's not like an innate talent that I pretend I was born with … but I think there's certain things that I have innately in me that allowed me to get better and better at mentalism."
Tricks of the mind can be harder to explain or debunk than sleight of hand, magicians say, which presents some serious ethical considerations. Chief among them is that bad actors may try to take advantage of people's willingness to believe that such feats are possible.
"Presenting these abilities as real lends legitimacy to psychics who are exploiting the bereaved, who take your money claiming that they can talk to your dead relatives or predict your future," explains Barnhart, of Carthage College.
The magic community doesn't want to do anything that could leave audiences more vulnerable to those kinds of scams or false beliefs, George explains. But performers are divided about how to accomplish that.
He says some mentalists consider it their ethical duty to issue a disclaimer during their act, making clear nothing supernatural is actually involved. Others believe the context clues of a show happening in a theater should make that clear enough.
And others carve out a third path, presenting themselves not as full-blown psychics but as uncanny readers of body language.
"It gives the audience a way of thinking about it that seems equally extraordinary," George says, though he is quick to clarify that magic is still involved. "The participant could be basically dead or comatose and they would still be able to pull off the trick."
Pearlman feels obligated to explain that what he's doing is an illusion, but he is adamant that like any magician, he doesn't have to tell anyone how it works.
"I sleep amazingly well at night because I think I'm probably the most ethical person at what I do, period," he adds. "I sell moments of joy to people. Anyone that thinks that I'm going to do something more for you — tell you the future, talk to dead people — spoiler alert: I don't and I can't."
The mentalists NPR spoke with all said the internet seems to have propelled interest in magic to unprecedented heights.
Pearlman's headline-grabbing gig could put mentalism on the map even more, as he is hoping. He believes there is a big market for it, especially as artificial intelligence makes it harder to know what is real.
"There's something human about our interactions with each other that we thirst for, and that's going to continue a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, especially as more and more things are going to start to be, like, 'What's the truth and what's not the truth?'" Pearlman says. "I think this hugs that line, and people enjoy seeing what is and isn't possible. And I'm right at the periphery of impossible."
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