James Randi: The Honest Liar

James Randi was the stepping stone between magicians 'Harry Houdini' and 'Penn and Teller', but he was also an adamant debunker of paranormal claims and abilities; or as he would put it, he was an investigator of psychic and paranormal claims. Most famously in this regard, Randi was known for his constant battle with Uri Geller, a self professed psychokinetic spoonbender who now calls himself a 'mystifier'. Geller is just one of Randi's many battles though; Randi also took on the US TV evangelist and faith healer Peter Popoff, and even caused a university's lab to close. His relentless battles weren't approved of by everyone though as, despite him trying his best at showing how a magician could replicate what 'psychics' were claiming to do without trickery, it still left room for arguement. 

James Randi: The Conjurer

James Randi, first named as Randall James Hamilton Zwinge, was born in Toronto, Canada, on the 7th of August 1928. His parents were called Marie Alice (Paradis) and George Randall Zwinge. Randi also has one brother called Paul, and one sister called Angela. Even though Randi was born in Canada, his heritage is quite varied. His paternal grandad was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and other ancesters are French-Canadian, along with both English and Scottish. 

From a young age, it was clear to teachers that Randi was extremely intelligent, and it's believed that he even had an IQ of 168. For context, Albert Einstein is believed to have an IQ of 160, and so is Stephen Hawking. As a result, Randi's teachers allowed him free reign when it came to his education; meaning he really only attended school to take the tests. Apparently the teachers said he was bored in school, with him being so far ahead of the others, and so he spent lots of his time being self taught. Randi also spent lots of time at the Arcade Magic and Novelty Store on Yonge Street, and eventually saw a magician perform for the first time. This magician was Harry Blackstone, and the performance both mystified and inspired Randi. As he watched the performance, he tried to work out how the tricks were done, but he couldn't figure it out. This encouraged him to pursue a career in magic; and at the age of seventeen, Randi dropped out of high school to literally run away and join the circus. When he joined, he started his career as a mind reader, an escape artist, and a magician; although he preferred the term 'conjuror'.

He took on a number of names while performing such as 'Zo-Ran', 'Prince Ibis', 'Telepath', 'The Great Randall'; and finally, after a local Quebec newspaper called him 'L'Etonnant Randi', he became known as 'The Amazing Randi'. James Randi took on quite an eventful life as a performer, and embraced the theatricality that those such as Harry Houdini had set before him. He took great inspiration from Houdini, and so endeavoured to try and out-perform anything Houdini had done. This led to him having a saying of 'if a man can make it, I can break it'; and he did. He broke Harry Houdini's record of how long he could stay sealed in a metal coffin at the bottom of a swimming pool for by achieving a total time of one hour and fourty four minutes. In the mid-70's Randi also escaped from a straight jacket while hanging over Niagra Falls as part of a Canadian TV special. 

I would argue that the 70's is the time period where Randi was at his most prolific as a magician. Through both the 60's and 70's, he appeared on TV as a conjurer and escape artist; but it was during the 70's that he hung over Niagra Falls, and it was during 1974 that he survived for fifty five minutes within a block of ice; a world record breaking feat at the time. He also joined Alice Cooper during the singer's 'Billion Dollar Babies' tour during 1973 and 1974. Randi's role during Cooper's performance was to create an illusion where he decapitated the singer with a prop guillotine. Cooper had wanted the best magician at the time to perform this act, and so he turned to Randi. The magician even performed an act at the White House in 1975 for some children after being invited by president Gerald R. Ford. He also appeared on the tv programme 'Happy Days', in 1978, during an episode titled 'The Magic Show'. 

James Randi: The Honest Liar

James Randi wasn't only a magician though. Magicians throughout history have had quite the ongoing battle between honesty in the entertainment of illusion, and the power of knowing how easy it can be to decieve others and gain from deception. If an individual leans toward the entertainment, then they are a magician; but if they lean more into the power of deception and monetary gain, then they are a con-artist. James Randi discovered this line from quite early on in his life. He learnt about the entertainment aspect through witnessing Harry Blackstone perform, but when he was fifteen years old, he learnt about the deception and the impact it can have on people. During this time, he visited a church and saw a preacher perform a trick where pretended to read the minds of those in the audience. Randi saw that the people absolutely believed the preacher, and this really angered Randi to see how the preacher was manipulating the emotions of the audience for his own monetary gain. As a result, Randi, at only fifteen years old, interrupted the preacher and showed the audience how the trick was done. The preacher's wife then called the police, and Randi spent the next four hours within a cell. 

The experience with the preacher inspired Randi to expose anyone faking anything in such a way as what he had witnessed on that day; and by the 50s, Randi was also a psychic investigator who had his own New York radio show. As a magician, Randi would say to his audience that he was going to deceive them, and he would even tell them how he would decieve them, and yet they would still remain decieved. This is what it means to be an honest liar, and it's something that the magicians Penn and Teller have taken into their own performances, having taken a great deal of inspiration from 'The Amazing Randi'. This is the ethos Randi liked to see with magic, but he really did not like anyone he saw as a con-artist. A prime example of this is his battle with Uri Geller. 

Uri Geller was, at the time, someone who claimed to have all sorts of psychic and telekinetic abilities. Most notably, Geller claimed that he could bend spoons, and other metal utensils such as forks, with nothing but the power of his mind. Geller even undertook scientific study due to how much everyone believed him to be legitimate, and he even convinced the scientists of his abilities. This led to Geller appearing on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson during the 1970's. Apparently Randi was also asked to be on the show, but he couldn't make it. Instead Randi, suspecting that Geller was faking his abilities, gave some instructions to the props department of the show and said that if they followed his instructions, Geller would not be able to do anything at all if his abilities were nothing more than trickery. As instructed, the props department set out the props onto the table and prepared them in the way which Randi suggested. As Randi suspected; Geller didn't perform a single trick on the show, and after an ad break Geller claimed that he didn't feel strong that night.

Despite having been embarrassed on TV, Geller continued in his spoon bending career. This ignited an ongoing battle between Geller and Randi, with Geller even suing Randi. In 1975, Randi wrote a book titled 'The Magic of Uri Geller', and in 1982 retitled the book to 'The Truth About Uri Geller'. In truth, the two seemed to form a co-dependancy where they brought one another further into the public eye, and kept one another relevant; truly following the line of 'there is no such thing as bad publicity'.

This bad publicity is something that Randi may have brought on himself in more recent years due to how stubborn he could be, a trait shown in his pursuit of Geller. I wasn't sure if I should include the following details, but no one is perfect, and it's important to highlight someone's imperfections just as it is their perfections. I did come across an article by Slate which emphasised how stubborn Randi could be in his own attitudes and beliefs. Apparently there was an incident where the writer of this particular article, Rebecca Watson, was promoting feminism within the skeptic community by asking debunkers and skeptics to behave better towards women. This led to Watson feeling unsafe at one of Randi's events due to some comments she recieved, and apparently Randi refused to ban a particular individual who had made such comments from the event. The article also discusses that Randi complained to mutual friends about Watson asking for dubunkers and skeptics to be better, and that he thought by making this request Watson was making Randi's movement look worse. 

Project Alpha

One of Geller's arguments to him being genuine about his abilities was the fact he had undergone scientific tests which authentified his legitimacy. He argued that you wouldn't be able to fool scientists if the abilities weren't genuine, and so Randi sought to prove otherwise in an experiment which did recieve backlash for as it was cited as being unethical. This experiment took place around 1981 at the Washington University, St Louis. During this time, aviation tycoon James McDonnell donated $500,000 to the University to be put towards the research of psychic phenomena. The study which then resulted was called 'Project Alpha', and the whole thing was derailed by James Randi. 

Randi tried to warn the university about how they could be fooled by false psychics, but the university didn't listen and didn't follow the list of measures Randi provided. The research team ended up focusing on two men in particular: Michael Edwards and Steve Shaw. These two both claimed, in a similar way to Uri Geller, that they could do various psychokinetic feats; including spoon bending. As the study progressed, the controls did tighten on the two candidates which made it harder for them to provide results, but even though results weren't as significant, they were still there. The research team at the University aimed to release the positive results of the study, but before they could, James Randi leaked that Edwards and Shaw were both amateur conjurers who had been planted there by him. It was also revealed that they had been using the simple techniques of magicians, such as slight of hand and palming, to fool the investigators. 

This reveal was followed by a long magazine article which detailed everything which had occured in the study. As a result of Project Alpha's failure, the universities lab closed and other pursuits into studying the paranormal were abandoned. The ethical backlash Randi recieved came from points from scientists claiming that Randi's stunt had set back research, and that the general deception involved was unethical. Randi addimantly argued that his experiment was much needed to occur in order to show just how easy it is to trick people with simple magic techniques. 

Peter Popoff

Shortly after the Project Alpha debacle, Randi set his sights on the US TV evangelist and faith healer Peter Popoff. During the 1980s, Popoff was extremely popular and appeared to perform miracles in healing people through the power of God. Popoff would call people out of the crowd and tell them details it seemed impossible for him to know. He would tell them their name, he would tell them their address, and he would tell them what they were ill with. Popoff would then go to them, touch them, and claim the power of God has cleansed them of their illness. From looking at the footage of Popoff at work, it was a highly emotionally charged environment and those he 'healed' would often collapse after the deed was done due to the high emotions and the feeling that God had cured them. Due to being an atheist, you could argue that with this one Randi had a pre-existing bias. Regardless of this, Randi suspected Popoff was faking his claims and so sought to prove this was the case. 

Randi didn't investigate Popoff directly, instead he sent someone he knew at the time to keep an eye on him to see if there were any clear tricks at play. For a while no tricks could be seen, only the emotions of the 'healed' along with all of the money which was being donated to Popoff for his work. Eventually, it was noticed that Popoff was wearing a hearing aid in his left ear, and Randi immediately suspected he knew what was happening. 

Randi hired a private investigator to try and detect signals which weren't always there, and so with the help of this investigator, Randi managed to intercept signals which were being sent directly to Popoff's earpiece. Upon listening to the messages, Randi could hear a female voice talking to Popoff; and this voice sounded exactly like Popoff's wife. From these messages, all of the pieces were put together. Beforehand, everyone attending Popoff's gatherings would fill in a form, and on this form they would fill in all of the details Popoff miraculously knew. Randi figured out he knew these things because his wife had these forms, was directing him through the earpiece, and was telling him all of the information he needed to know. 

James Randi then went on tv with this evidence, as he did have the intercepted messages, and he played footage of Popoff with the audio overlayed to show how it lined up with what Popoff was being told. Shortly after this, Popoff declared bankruptcy. He did make a comeback though, just like Geller. A reason Randi went after Popoff as he did was because he vastly disapproved of Popoff convincing the ill that they needn't go to doctors anymore, or take their medication, as they had been healed when they hadn't been. A quote from Randi regarding faith healing goes as follows: "I can't say that faith healing has never worked, or that it doesn't ever work. All I can say is my experience is 100% failure." 

Jose Alvarez and 'Carlos'

Another very important part of James Randi's life is his life partner, and husband, Deyvi Peña. When Randi first met Peña in 1986, Peña was going by the name Jose Alvarez. The reason for the different name was because he was gay and grew up in a country which didn't tolerate that at all, leading to his life being threatened. Peña fled to America, claimed the false identity of Jose Alvarez, and became an art student. He was twenty four years old when he met James Randi, and shortly after became Randi's assistant. 

In 1987, Randi persuaded Peña to take part in a huge hoax he had planned to show the media's flaws when it came to their willingness to promote individuals of false psychic claims. Specifically, Randi wanted to expose how easy it was to fake being a 'channeler'. These 'channelers' were people claiming to be vessels for spirits who were thousands of years old. To highlight how easy it was for someone to fake such a claim and be believed, Randi created a lie where Peña, at the time still known as Jose Alvarez, was a channeler who contained the spirit of a 2000 year old entity known as 'Carlos'. 

Randi collaborated with Australia's '60 Minutes' tv programme to help pull this off, and it worked spectacularly. Australia's media were provided with fake press releases and articles which spoke of Carlos's activity in America. There was immense interest from the media, and so Carlos gained booking across the country along with on TV. Whenever 'Carlos' performed, Randi would feed him lines through an earpiece in the same way Popoff's wife did with him, and everyone believed 'Carlos' was real. They believed it so much that following a performance at the Sydney Opera House, fans of Carlos wanted to buy his tears for $500 each, and they were willing to buy an 'Atlantic Crystal' for $14,000. Of course, no payments were accepted, and the hoax was revealed a few days later on 60 Minutes. 

As mentioned earlier, Peña was Randi's life partner and had been since 1989. In 2010, Randi announced that he was gay, and then in 2013 he finally married Peña in Washington DC. A really funny detail around Peña's identity theft is that the real Jose Alvarez was unable to apply for a passport, and as a result missed his sister's wedding. Randi and Peña were married shortly after this. 

James Randi: The Investigator

Randi much preferred to be called an investigator rather than a debunker, just as he would rather be called a conjurer than a magician. He thought that debunkers set out to disprove, whereas he just wanted to investigate; and he felt magicians created real magic, whereas conjurers pretended to create real magic. 

In 1988, Randi investigated a claim that water had been shown to retain a biological memory of a substance that had previously been within it. The one making this claim was immunologist Jacques Benveniste. Upon hearing the claim, Randi visited the lab with the scientific fraud investigator Walter W. Stewart and the science magazine editor John Maddox. The three men watched the tests be replicated, and all of the replications failed to support the initial claim. Despite these failed tests, and experimental flaws being discovered, Benveniste argued against Randi's own findings in the study being false. In 2008, Randi also exposed a British manufacturer who claimed to be making bomb detectors. He wasn't, and Randi revealed these detectors were fake. 

To assist with his mission, James Randi established an organisation. This organisation, established in 1976, was the Committee for Skeptical Enquiry. Other members of this group were the mathematician Martin Gardner, the planetary scientist Carl Sagan, and the science fiction author Isaac Asimov. This group publishes 'Skeptical Inquirer', a magazine dedicated to the scientific investigation of the paranormal and otherwise extraordinary claims. Then, in 1996, the James Randi Education Foundation was established.

 

In 1986, Randi recieved a MacArthur 'genius' grant from the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This grant consisted of $272,000 and helped out Randi with his ongoing legal battles with Uri Geller. Randi also wrote a number of books about his work. These books include 'The Faith Healers' (1988), 'Flim Flam! The Truth About Unicorns, Parapsychology, And Other Delusions' (1980), and 'An Encyclopedia Of Claims, Frauds, And Hoaxes Of The Occult And Supernatural' (1995). 

The Amazing Randi

Randi appeared thirty two times on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, wrote ten books, and appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. He was even the Regents Lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, during 1984; and then a few years later during 1987, he became a US citizen and changed his legal name to James Randi. A huge arguement Randi held against the existence of psychic claims was a monetary offer he made to the public. Since the 60s, Randi put his money where he mouth was and offered large sums of money to anyone who could demonstrate legitimate paranormal or psychic powers to him. This is something which a founder of the UK magic circle, John Nevil Maskelyne, started during the early 20th century. James Randi, however, took it to the next level.

From 1996, the James Randi Educational Foundation kept of raising the stakes until they reached an offering of $1 million to anyone who could prove they had legitimate psychic abilities. No one won the prize, and if ever Randi was asked about the existence of psychics he would simply respond by referencing the prize and asking why there isn't a huge queue of these legitimate psychics waiting outside to claim the prize money. He has also asked why Uri Geller hasn't claimed the prize money. 

As you can see from the thumbnail of this post, Randi completely embraced the theatricality, and the prize money emphasises this. Some people even grew concerned that his flair for the dramatic detracted from his mission of reliably exposing the false psychics of the world, especially as he liked to wear wizard-style hats, sported a sage-like beard, and carried a cane adorned with a skull. Regardless of how he went about it, I think Randi proved effective in his points; and this is clear when watching any clips of him doing his thing. He clearly always took both a scientific and respectful approach, and always let the evidence speak for itself rather than him directly being what said someone was fake. Sadly, Randi died aged 92 on the 20th of October 2020 of 'age related causes'. 

I think, regardless of which side of the fence your on regarding belief in the paranormal and mystical, you can't deny the impact James Randi has had on the world. He's contributed both to magicians and to the paranormal space, highlighting not only the entertainment and joy which magicians can offer, but also the deception and cons which can often be found in the world of the paranormal. To end this article, another quote from Randi: "Don't be too sure of yourself. No matter how smart or well educated you are, you can be decieved."

Thank you very much for reading to the end of this post! I know it's quite a different tone from the usual posts I do given that this was a good dive into the negative side of belief, but it was an extremely necessary post to make as I believe Randi and his work should be taught to everyone. His legacy is more relevant today than ever with the rise of AI and poor news reporting; we really do live in a world where seeing is not believing, and Randi showed these deceptions for what they were time and time again. 

A special thank you to Damain, Nicolette, The Cornish Ghost Whisperers, and Kerry for your continued support of The True Paranormal. If you want to follow The True Paranormal you can do so on Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, and Tumblr. You can also subscribe to The True Paranormal on YouTube, or directly to this website through the bar on the left which will give you email notifications. That bar also lists all of the links which will take you to The True Paranormal's various social media platforms. If you want to contact me about your own experiences, or about anything at all paranormal, you can email thetrueparanormal1@gmail.com 

Sources I Have Used:

1. Nature

2. IMDB

3. The Guardian

4. BBC

5. The Guardian: Legacy

6. NPR

7. TED

8. Slate

9. CBC

10. WNYC Studios

11. MacArthur Foundation

12. PSI Encyclopedia

13. Genii Magazine

14. Rotary Hawthorn

15. Church Times

16. The Washington Post

17. Los Angeles Times

18. SFGATE

19. The Telegraph

20. The Washington Post: An Honest Liar

21. Totally History

22. Freedom From Religion Foundation

23. AP News

24. CBC: Magicians

25. Independent

26. Independent Lens

27. IMDB: Biography

28. Independent: Death

29. Deadline