James Randi

At 92 years old, James Randi physical status not available right now. We will update James Randi's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Although defining himself as a conjuror, Randi began a career as a professional stage magician and escapologist in 1946. He initially presented himself under his real name, Randall Zwinge, which he later dropped in favor of "The Amazing Randi". Early in his career, he performed numerous escape acts from jail cells and safes around the world. On February 7, 1956, he appeared live on NBC's Today show, where he remained for 104 minutes in a sealed metal coffin that had been submerged in a hotel swimming pool, breaking what was said to be Harry Houdini's record of 93 minutes, though Randi called attention to the fact that he was much younger than Houdini had been when he established the original record in 1926.

Randi was a frequent guest on the Long John Nebel program on New York City radio station WOR, and did character voices for commercials.: 31:00  After Nebel moved to WNBC in 1962, Randi was given Nebel's time slot on WOR, where he hosted The Amazing Randi Show from 1967 to 1968.: 35:00  The show often had guests who defended paranormal claims, among them Randi's then-friend James W. Moseley. Randi stated that he quit WOR over complaints from the archbishop of New York that Randi had said on-air that "Jesus Christ was a religious nut," a claim that Randi disputed.: 35:00

Randi also hosted numerous television specials and went on several world tours. As "The Amazing Randi" he appeared regularly on the New York-based children's television series Wonderama from 1959 to 1967. In 1970, he auditioned for a revival of the 1950s children's show The Magic Clown, which showed briefly in Detroit and in Kenya, but was never picked up. In the February 2, 1974, issue of the British conjuring magazine Abracadabra, Randi, in defining the community of magicians, stated: "I know of no calling which depends so much upon mutual trust and faith as does ours." In the December 2003 issue of The Linking Ring, the monthly publication of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, it is stated: "Perhaps Randi's ethics are what make him Amazing" and "The Amazing Randi not only talks the talk, he walks the walk."

During Alice Cooper's 1973–1974 Billion Dollar Babies tour, Randi performed on stage both as a mad dentist and as Cooper's executioner. He also built several of the stage props, including the guillotine. In a 1976 performance for the Canadian TV special World of Wizards, Randi escaped from a straitjacket while suspended upside-down over Niagara Falls.

Randi has been accused of actually using "psychic powers" to perform acts such as spoon bending. According to James Alcock, at a meeting where Randi was duplicating the performances of Uri Geller, a professor from the University at Buffalo shouted out that Randi was a fraud. Randi said: "Yes, indeed, I'm a trickster, I'm a cheat, I'm a charlatan, that's what I do for a living. Everything I've done here was by trickery." The professor shouted back: "That's not what I mean. You're a fraud because you're pretending to do these things through trickery, but you're actually using psychic powers and misleading us by not admitting it." A similar event involved Senator Claiborne Pell, a confirmed believer in psychic phenomena. When Randi personally demonstrated to Pell that he could reveal—by simple trickery—a concealed drawing that had been secretly made by the senator, Pell refused to believe that it was a trick, saying: "I think Randi may be a psychic and doesn't realize it." Randi consistently denied having any paranormal powers or abilities.

Randi was a member of the Society of American Magicians (SAM), the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM), and The Magic Circle in the UK, holding the rank of "Member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star."

Randi wrote 10 books, among them Conjuring (1992), a biographical history of prominent magicians. The book is subtitled Being a Definitive History of the Venerable Arts of Sorcery, Prestidigitation, Wizardry, Deception, & Chicanery and of the Mountebanks & Scoundrels Who have Perpetrated these Subterfuges on a Bewildered Public, in short, MAGIC! The book's cover indicates it is by "James Randi, Esq., A Contrite Rascal Once Dedicated to these Wicked Practices but Now Almost Totally Reformed". The book features the most influential magicians and tells some of their history, often in the context of strange deaths and careers on the road. This work expanded on Randi's second book, Houdini, His Life and Art. This illustrated work was published in 1976 and was co-authored with Bert Sugar. It focuses on the professional and private life of Houdini.

Randi's book, The Magic World of the Amazing Randi (1989), was intended as a children's introduction to magic tricks. In addition to his magic books, he wrote several educational works about paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. These include biographies of Uri Geller and Nostradamus, as well as reference material on other major paranormal figures. In 2011, he was working on A Magician in the Laboratory, which recounted his application of skepticism to science. He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his friend Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers.

Other books by Randi include Flim-Flam! (1982), The Faith Healers (1987), James Randi, Psychic Investigator (1991), Test Your ESP Potential (1982) and An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural (1995).

Randi was a regular contributor to Skeptic magazine, penning the "'Twas Brillig ..." column, and also served on its editorial board. He was a frequent contributor to Skeptical Inquirer magazine, published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, of which he was also a fellow.

Randi gained the international spotlight in 1972 when he publicly challenged the claims of Uri Geller. He accused Geller of being nothing more than a charlatan and a fraud who used standard magic tricks to accomplish his allegedly paranormal feats, and he presented his claims in the book The Truth About Uri Geller (1982).

Believing that it was important to get columnists and TV personalities to challenge Geller and others like him, Randi and CSICOP reached out in an attempt to educate them. Randi said that CSICOP had a "very substantial influence on the printed media ... in those days.": 20:05  During this effort, Randi made contact with Johnny Carson and discovered that he was "very much on our side. He wasn't only a comedian ... he was a great thinker.": 21:15  According to Randi, when he was on The Tonight Show, Carson broke his usual protocol of not talking with guests before their entrance on stage, but instead would ask what Randi wanted to be emphasized in the interview. "He wanted to be aware of how he could help me.": 21:30

In 1973, Geller appeared on The Tonight Show, and this appearance is recounted in the Nova documentary "Secrets of the Psychics".

In the documentary, Randi says that Carson "had been a magician himself and was skeptical" of Geller's claimed paranormal powers, so before the date of taping, Randi was asked "to help prevent any trickery". Per Randi's advice, the show prepared its own props without informing Geller, and did not let Geller or his staff "anywhere near them". When Geller joined Carson on stage, he appeared surprised that he was not going to be interviewed, but instead was expected to display his abilities using the provided articles. Geller said "This scares me" and "I'm surprised because before this program your producer came and he read me at least 40 questions you were going to ask me." Geller was unable to display any paranormal abilities, saying "I don't feel strong" and expressing his displeasure at feeling like he was being "pressed" to perform by Carson. According to Adam Higginbotham's November 7, 2014 article in The New York Times:

However, this appearance on The Tonight Show, which Carson and Randi had orchestrated to debunk Geller's claimed abilities, backfired. According to Higginbotham:

According to Higginbotham, this result caused Randi to realize that much more must be done to stop Geller and those like him. So in 1976, Randi approached Ray Hyman, a psychologist who had observed the tests of Geller's ability at Stanford and thought them slipshod, and suggested they create an organization dedicated to combating pseudoscience. Later that same year, together with Martin Gardner, a Scientific American columnist whose writing had helped hone Hyman's and Randi's skepticism, they formed the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).

Using donations and sales of their magazine, Skeptical Inquirer, they and secular humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz took seats on the executive board, with Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan joining as founding members. Randi travelled the world on behalf of CSICOP, becoming its public face, and according to Hyman, the face of the skeptical movement.

András G. Pintér, producer and co-host of the European Skeptics Podcast, called Randi the grandfather of European skepticism by virtue of Randi "playing a role in kickstarting several European organizations."

Geller sued Randi and CSICOP for $15 million in 1991 and lost. Geller's suit against CSICOP was thrown out in 1995, and he was ordered to pay $120,000 for filing a frivolous lawsuit. The legal costs Randi incurred used almost all of a $272,000 MacArthur Foundation grant awarded to Randi in 1986 for his work. Randi also dismissed Geller's claims that he was capable of the kind of psychic photography associated with the case of Ted Serios. It is a matter, Randi argued, of trick photography using a simple hand-held optical device. During the period of Geller's legal dispute, CSICOP's leadership, wanting to avoid becoming a target of Geller's litigation, demanded that Randi refrain from commenting on Geller. Randi refused and resigned, though he maintained a respectful relationship with the group, which in 2006 changed its name to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). In 2010, Randi was one of 16 new CSI fellows elected by its board.

Randi went on to write many articles criticizing beliefs and claims regarding the paranormal. He also demonstrated flaws in studies suggesting the existence of paranormal phenomena; in his Project Alpha hoax, Randi successfully planted two fake psychics in a privately funded psychic research experiment.

Randi appeared on numerous TV shows, sometimes to directly debunk the claimed abilities of fellow guests. In a 1981 appearance on That's My Line, Randi appeared opposite claimed psychic James Hydrick, who said that he could move objects with his mind and appeared to demonstrate this claim on live television by turning a page in a telephone book without touching it. Randi, having determined that Hydrick was surreptitiously blowing on the book, arranged foam packaging peanuts on the table in front of the telephone book for the demonstration. This prevented Hydrick from demonstrating his abilities, which would have been exposed when the blowing moved the packaging. Randi writes that, eventually, Hydrick "confessed everything".

Randi was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1986. The fellowship's five-year $272,000 grant helped support Randi's investigations of faith healers, including W. V. Grant, Ernest Angley, and Peter Popoff, whom Randi first exposed on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in February 1986. Hearing about his investigation of Popoff, Carson invited Randi onto his show without seeing the evidence he was going to reveal. Carson appeared stunned after Randi showed a brief video segment from one of Popoff's broadcasts showing him calling out a woman in the audience, revealed personal information about her that he claimed came from God, and then performed a laying-on-of-hands healing to drive the devil from her body. Randi then replayed the video, but with some of the sound dubbed in that he and his investigating team captured during the event using a radio scanner and recorder. Their scanner had detected the radio frequency Popoff's wife Elizabeth was using backstage to broadcast directions and information to a miniature radio receiver hidden in Popoff's left ear. That information had been gathered by Popoff's assistants, who had handed out "prayer cards" to the audience before the show, instructing them to write down all the information Popoff would need to pray for them.

The news coverage generated by Randi's exposé on The Tonight Show led to many TV stations dropping Popoff's show, eventually forcing him into bankruptcy in September 1987. However, the televangelist returned soon after with faith-healing infomercials that reportedly attracted more than $23 million in 2005 from viewers sending in money for promised healing and prosperity. The Canadian Centre for Inquiry's Think Again! TV documented one of Popoff's more recent performances before a large audience who gathered in Toronto on May 26, 2011, hoping to be saved from illness and poverty.

In February 1988, Randi tested the gullibility of the media by perpetrating a hoax of his own. By teaming up with Australia's 60 Minutes program and by releasing a fake press package, he built up publicity for a "spirit channeler" named Carlos, who was actually artist José Alvarez, Randi's partner. While performing as Carlos, Alvarez was prompted by Randi using sophisticated radio equipment. According to the 60 Minutes program on the Carlos hoax, "it was claimed that Alvarez would not have had the audience he did at the Opera House (and the resulting potential sales therefrom) had the media coverage been more aggressive (and factual)", though an analysis by The Skeptic's Tim Mendham concluded that, while the media coverage of Alvarez's appearances was not credulous, the hoax "at least showed that they could benefit by being a touch more sceptical". The hoax was exposed on 60 Minutes Australia; "Carlos" and Randi explained how they had pulled it off.

In his book The Faith Healers, Randi wrote that his anger and relentlessness arose from compassion for the victims of fraud. Randi was also critical of João de Deus, a.k.a. "John of God", a self-proclaimed psychic surgeon who had received international attention. Randi observed, referring to psychic surgery, "To any experienced conjurer, the methods by which these seeming miracles are produced are very obvious."

In 1982, Randi verified the abilities of Arthur Lintgen, a Philadelphia doctor, who was able to identify the classical music recorded on a vinyl LP solely by examining the grooves on the record. However, Lintgen did not claim to have any paranormal ability, merely knowledge of the way that the groove forms patterns on particular recordings.

In 1988, John Maddox, editor of the prominent science journal Nature, asked Randi to join the supervision and observation of the homeopathy experiments conducted by Jacques Benveniste's team. Once Randi's stricter protocol for the experiment was in place, the positive results could not be reproduced.

Randi stated that Daniel Dunglas Home, who could allegedly play an accordion that was locked in a cage without touching it, was caught cheating on a few occasions, but the incidents were never made public. He also stated that the actual instrument in use was a one-octave mouth organ concealed under Home's large mustache and that other one-octave mouth organs were found in Home's belongings after his death. According to Randi, author William Lindsay Gresham told Randi "around 1960" that he had seen these mouth organs in the Home collection at the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Eric J. Dingwall, who catalogued Home's collection on its arrival at the SPR does not record the presence of the mouth organs. According to Peter Lamont, the author of an extensive Home biography, "It is unlikely Dingwall would have missed these or did not make them public." The fraudulent medium Henry Slade also played an accordion while held with one hand under a table. Slade and Home played the same pieces. They had at one time lived near each other in the U.S. The magician Chung Ling Soo exposed how Slade had performed the trick.

Randi distinguished between pseudoscience and "crackpot science". He regarded most of parapsychology as pseudoscience because of the way in which it is approached and conducted, but nonetheless saw it as a legitimate subject that "should be pursued", and from which real scientific discoveries may develop. Randi regarded crackpot science as "equally wrong" as pseudoscience, but with no scientific pretensions.

Despite multiple debunkings, Randi did not like to be called a "debunker", preferring to call himself a "skeptic" or an "investigator":

Skeptics and magicians Penn & Teller credit Randi and his career as a skeptic for their own careers. During an interview at TAM! 2012, Penn stated that Flim-Flam! was an early influence on him, and said "If not for Randi there would not be Penn & Teller as we are today.": 1:40  He went on to say "Outside of my family ... no one is more important in my life. Randi is everything to me.": 5:34

At the NECSS skeptic conference in 2017, Randi was asked by George Hrab what a "'skeptic coming of age ceremony' would look like" and Randi talked about what it was like as a child to learn about the speed of light and how that felt like he was looking into the past. Randi stated "More kids need to be stunned".

At The Amaz!ng Meeting in 2011 (TAM 9) the Independent Investigations Group (IIG) organized a tribute to Randi. The group gathered together with other attendees, put on fake white beards, and posed for a large group photo with Randi. At the CSICon in 2017, in absence of Randi, the IIG organized another group photo with leftover beards from the 2011 photo. After Randi was sent the photo, he replied, "I'm always very touched by any such expression. This is certainly no exception. You have my sincere gratitude. I suspect, however that a couple of those beards were fake. But I'm in a forgiving mood at the moment. I'm frankly very touched. I'll see you at the next CSICon. Thank you all."

In a 2019 Skeptical Inquirer magazine article, Harriet Hall, a friend of Randi, compares him to the fictional Albus Dumbledore. Hall describes their long white beards, flamboyant clothing, associated with a bird (Dumbledore with a phoenix and Randi with Pegasus). They both are caring and have "immense brainpower" and both "can perform impressive feats of magic". She states that Randi is one of "major inspirations for the skeptical work I do ... He's way better than Dumbledore!".

Exploring Psychic Powers ... Live was a two-hour television special aired live on June 7, 1989, wherein Randi examined several people claiming psychic powers. Hosted by actor Bill Bixby, the program offered $100,000 (Randi's $10,000 prize plus $90,000 put up by the show's syndicator, LBS Communications, Inc.) to anyone who could demonstrate genuine psychic powers.

In 1996, Randi established the James Randi Educational Foundation. Randi and his colleagues publish in JREF's blog, Swift. Topics have included the interesting mathematics of the one-seventh area triangle, a classic geometric puzzle. In his weekly commentary, Randi often gave examples of what he considered the nonsense that he dealt with every day.

Beginning in 2003, the JREF annually hosted The Amaz!ng Meeting, a gathering of scientists, skeptics, and atheists. The last meeting was in 2015, coinciding with Randi's retirement from the JREF.

Randi began a series of conferences known as "The Amazing Meeting" (TAM) which quickly became the largest gathering of skeptics in the world, drawing audiences from Asia, Europe, South America, and the UK. It also attracted a large percentage of younger attendees. Randi was regularly featured on many podcasts, including The Skeptics Society's official podcast Skepticality and the Center for Inquiry's official podcast Point of Inquiry. From September 2006 onwards, he occasionally contributed to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast with a column called "Randi Speaks". In addition, The Amazing Show was a podcast in which Randi shared various anecdotes in an interview format.

In 2014, Part2Filmworks released An Honest Liar, a feature film documentary, written by Tyler Measom and Greg O'Toole, and directed and produced by Measom and Justin Weinstein. The film, which was funded through Kickstarter, focuses on Randi's life, his investigations, and his relationship with longtime partner José Alvarez (born Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga), to whom he was married in 2013. The film was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, at Toronto's Hot Docs film festival, and at the June 2014 AFI Docs Festival in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., where it won the Audience Award for Best Feature. It also received positive reviews from critics. The film was featured on the PBS Independent Lens series, shown in the U.S. and Canada, on March 28, 2016.

In December 2014, Randi flew to Australia to take part in “An Evening with James Randi” tour, organized by Think Inc. This tour included a screening of An Honest Liar followed by a "fireside chat" with Randi on stage. Cities visited were Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. MC in Adelaide was Dr. Paul Willis with Richard Saunders interviewing Randi. MC in Perth was Jake Farr-Wharton with Richard Saunders interviewing Randi. MC for Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney was Richard Saunders with Lawrence Leung interviewing Randi.

In 2017, Randi appeared in animated form on the website Holy Koolaid, in which he discussed the challenge of finding the balance between connecting sincerely with his audience and at the same time tricking/fooling them with an artful ruse, and indicated that this is a balance with which many magicians struggle.

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