James Randi
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James Randi
James Randi (born August 7, 1928) (stage name The Amazing Randi) is a stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF).Randi began his career as a magician, but when he retired at age 60, he switched to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims. Although often referred to as a "debunker", Randi rejects that title, describing himself as an "investigator". He has written about the paranormal, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and is occasionally featured on the television program Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.
The JREF sponsors the famous million dollar challenge offering a prize of US $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties. As of this time, no one has claimed this prize, which is to be discontinued on March 6, 2010. The prize money held by the Foundation will be used for other projects, the nature of which will be announced at that time.
Career as a magician
Randi worked as a professional stage magician and escapologist beginning in 1946, initially under his birth name, Randall Zwinge. Early in his career, Randi was part of numerous stunts involving his escape from jail cells and safes. On February 7 1956, he appeared live on The Today Show remaining in a sealed metal coffin submerged in a hotel swimming pool for 104 minutes, breaking what was said to be Houdini's record of 93 minutes.Randi was the host of The Amazing Randi Show on New York radio station WOR in the mid-1960s. He also hosted numerous television specials and went on several world tours. Then Randi appeared as "The Amazing Randi" on a television show titled Wonderama from 1967 to 1972 and as host of a revival of the 1950s children's show The Magic Clown in 1970. In the February 2, 1974 issue of Abracadabra (a British conjuring magazine), Randi defined the magic community saying, "I know of no calling which depends so much upon mutual trust and faith as does ours." In the December 2003 issue of the The Linking Ring, the monthly publication of The International Brotherhood of Magicians, Points to Ponder: Another Matter of Ethics, p. 97, 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 tour, Randi performed as the dentist and executioner on stage. Also, Randi had designed and built several of the stage props, including the guillotine. Shortly after, in February 1975, Randi escaped from a straitjacket while suspended upside-down over Niagara Falls in the winter on the Canadian TV program World of Wizards.
Early in his career, Randi was sent a contract for a tour in Florida. His friends in New York mentioned to him that he'd certainly be working before audiences segregated by race, so before he signed the agreement, he wrote in a clause specifying that the promoters could not deny tickets to blacks or segregate the audiences in any way. Upon arriving on scene, he found that the concert promoter had ignored this stipulation in his contract. He discovered that blacks were forced to watch the show from the balcony, and he immediately walked away from the tour. Appealing to the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA), he was paid in full for the balance of the tour.
Randi was once accused of actually using 'psychic powers' to perform acts such as spoon bending. James Alcock relates this incident which occurred 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." The famous author and believer in spiritualism Arthur Conan Doyle had years earlier made a similar accusation against the magician Harry Houdini.
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