As a teenager, he stumbled upon a church where the pastor claimed to read minds. He practiced as a mentalist in local nightclubs and at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition and wrote for Montreal's tabloid press.
He often skipped classes, and at 17, dropped out of high school to perform as a conjurer in a carnival roadshow. He confounded doctors, who expected he would never walk again. and reading conjuring books while spending 13 months in a body cast following a bicycle accident. He took up magic after seeing Harry Blackstone Sr. He was of French, Danish and Austrian descent. He was the son of Marie Alice ( née Paradis 1906–1987) and George Randall Zwinge (1903–1967), an executive at Bell Telephone Company. Randi was born on August 7, 1928, in Toronto, Canada. In 2015, the James Randi Educational Foundation said they will no longer accept applications directly from people claiming to have a paranormal power, but will offer the challenge to anyone who has passed a preliminary test that meets with their approval. He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, famously exposing fraudulent faith healer Peter Popoff, and was occasionally featured on the television program Penn & Teller: Bullshit!īefore Randi's retirement, JREF sponsored the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, which offered a prize of one million US dollars to eligible applicants who could demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties. He wrote about paranormal phenomena, skepticism, and the history of magic. Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from his foundation at 87.Īlthough often referred to as a " debunker", Randi said he disliked the term's connotations and preferred to describe himself as an "investigator". Randi began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, which he collectively called "woo-woo". He was the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), and founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.
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