James Randi has been thrilling audiences all his life as an escape artist and a magician. He is also the world's leading investigator into the Paranormal.

Ken, webmaster of About Facts Net. http://aboutfacts.net Webmaster@aboutfacts.net

Ken:

There are a lot of unexplainable things that seem to happen.

James Randi:

When you say unexplained, that would mean that they are unexplainable. How would you define something that is unexplainable? It may not be explained at the moment, but that does not mean that it is unexplainable.

Ken:

Well that's true. What I was going to ask your opinion on was spontaneous human combustion. What do you think of that, do you think it is a paranormal event?

James Randi:

No I believe not. I have never seen any instance where it was shown to be a paranormal event, it usually happens with old people, when they are alone and are in rocking chairs or a bed or some such thing and they almost invariably are smoking. People catch fire and old people are pretty dry and sometimes they're wearing costumes that are flammable and certainly the bedding is flammable. I don't find this too much of a mystery, the problem is that the evidence is all burned up.You can't do any analysis on it. So when you've destroyed the evidence of any paranormal event, it automatically is destroyed by the nature of the event and there is not much that you can go on at all. There are a lot of elderly people who smoke and will drop a cigarette or an ash on their costume and they catch on fire and somebody comes along and puts them out, but that does not get into the papers. It is only when they don't have an explanation of what happened and how and if it happened, that it gets into the papers and that always makes headlines, but people who put out the fires don't make any headlines.

Ken:

How do you think these fires generate so much heat that they can actually destroy bones, that is the thing that always amazed me?

James Randi:

Well that is what happens when you leave a turkey in the oven too long. You can destroy the whole thing, it goes up in flames. I don't find this too mystifying really, maybe I'm missing something here? What they like to do is they like to quote the temperatures at which bones will be destroyed......

Ken;

Exactly.

James Randi:

We weren't around with a thermal couple when the old lady burned up and we weren't taking measurements while they were trying to save her.

Ken:

The history of Magic seems to go so far back in time that we can't seem to find out when it really started. Who do you think was really the first credible magician?

James Randi:

It depends what you mean by magician? Do you mean somebody that does tricks?

Ken:

A performer.

James Randi:

Okay that is a different matter altogether. It would be a conjurer more correctly. I think that conjurers were probably around in the time of the caveman and perhaps even Neanderthals for all I know, I wasn't around at that time, almost but not quite. I think that this is the thing that is part of the growing up of humanity. They're looking for magical things those magical solutions and they don't have logical answers and somebody comes along and has some knowledge of how these people can be fooled and they take advantage of them . These are charlatans and scam artists and they could exist in caveman time too I am sure.

Ken:

It seems that everyone wants a crack at the a million-dollar challenge, but most people are too scared of you to come forward. For those that haven't heard of it, this is where you offer $1 million to anyone that can perform a paranormal feat. How many people tried to accomplish this over the years and who had the hardest trickery to detect?

James Randi:

Well none of them have been difficult to detect.

Ken:

Really?

James Randi:

They have all been doing exactly what we expected of them. Not too long ago, a couple of years back I was asked to do a TV series in Korea. When the Koreans came into the foundation in Florida they asked me to sign the contracts and I did and the interpreter said that they were very confident that you're going to see things in Korea that you have never seen before. When I got there I turned to my assistant and I said, it's the same old crap. There is nothing new here at all, these are things from the 1600s and described in early books on how to do tricks to fool people. There is nothing new whatsoever, the costumes the language, the appearance of the face changes, what it is, is the same old nonsense that has been going on since the 1600s, that we know of in recorded history. So there is nothing new here and it certainly hasn't done anything to increase my wonder about the world, except I wonder when it is going to stop? So there is a essentially nothing new and these people have been around for a long long time and we've known about it for a long long time.

Ken:

You have a lockbox with certain items in it and have offered $1 million to anyone who can tell you what is in there. You put a coded message up to prove that the items would remain unchanged. Unfortunately, a decoder figured out what was in the box. He had no psychic powers and didn't claim the prize. Did this make you nervous that someone else without such morals would decode the message and claim he did it using psychic powers to figure out what was in the box?

James Randy:

The locker is here and I have the only key to it and if someone wants to come along and tell me what the contents are, they can. The contents are changed every two weeks anyway. We change it regularly and the way I do it is that I have a big Webster's dictionary right here on my desk and what I do is I open it up randomly I run my finger down one of the columns, stop and I try and find the next thing that I can actually put in. If it comes to something like love, or something like that, that I can't put in, because I can't put love in the box, then I continued down through it until I can find something there that I can actually provide a sample of to put into the box. I get a sample of that, whatever it is and I place it in the box, then I close it up again and lock it up.

Ken:

That's interesting.

James Randy:

Anyone is welcome to come by at any time and tell me what it is.

Ken:

Did you know that a person named Bob Beschizza has published a list of 10 top tips of what not to say to you while going for the million dollar prize

James Randi:

Well yeah, I think we published it on a webpage as a matter of fact.

Ken:

I thought it was quite interesting and funny myself.

I guess no interview with you would be complete without talking to you about Uri Geller. He claimed that he was bending spoons with his mind didn't he?*

James Randi:

Yes. He doesn't say that anymore.

Ken:

Well let me ask you this, what do you think about his showmanship? I know that he wasn't bending spoons with his mind, but do you think that he was a good showman?

James Randi:

Well he was very very limited in his repertoire, I only know 4 tricks that he has ever done In his whole career. That is 4 different tracks. He does those repeatedly and on Phenomenon, the NBC show he has a ready done 3 of those, maybe he's only got one more show left it seems? He only knows 4 tricks and you would think that a guy that has been at this for more than 30 years would have developed a couple of other routines somewhere along the line. He is very charming, very charismatic and the fact that he used to say that he was doing these things by real psychic powers, he is not saying that anymore, because it has all been exposed on YouTube. He can't very well continue to claim that. I believe he is trying to back out of it, but he will have a hot time doing that because of the millions of dollars he caused to be spent by innocent academics in different countries all over the world, who investigated the so called Geller effect. He has to account to these people as to why he had them waste all of this money. If it was a joke, it sounds like a very expensive joke to me. I would think that he would have a hard time accounting for that, however he is charismatic, charming, a nice smile and the whole thing and wows the ladies, no question of that. He doesn't have any effect on me for some reason, I don't know what it is?

Ken:

What were some of the paranormal claims that were made by Russian scientists and would you tell us about the most interesting ones and how you investigated them.

James Randi:

The Russians haven't made any claims that have not been made here in the other part of the world, that I know of. The one thing that they did come up with was something called psionic devices. These are machines, very simple machines that are supposed to work on mind power, but I was in Russia on one of my trips there, I think it was my first trip to Moscow and I visited the Brain Science Institute there, roughly translated and I saw some of these devices there and they were exactly what I expected. A - they didn't work, B - they couldn't work from the way that they were constructed. They claimed that they were working on them and trying to get them to work. I had to take their word for that, but so far as I know none of them did get to work. The Russians have not been terribly original in this field. They have pretty well copied us and previous cultures in this field at attempts at flummery and woo woo stuff as we call it.

Ken:

Do you think that being born in Canada has made you more skeptical than the rest of us that were born here, or do you attribute that to some event in your life or perhaps your upbringing?

James Randi:

Well I think I had some common sense and that is a very serious thing that some people should get a hold of somewhere along the line. From a very early age, when I was a small child, I didn't believe in Angels and Imps, in Demons and people living underneath the earth, in the sky and such. I kept looking around and asking what the evidence was. This did not make me very popular in Sunday school. I was told you don't ask questions like that and I said yes I am asking questions like that. Sunday school and I soon parted, I just couldn't attend anymore, my parents never knew about that so please don't tell them. In any case I've never had any problem with being skeptical. I always felt this way from a very early age and it's served me well over the years.

Ken:

You've made a lot of enemies over the years just by the nature of your work. Have you ever been threatened by anyone and if so, did you ever have to get the police involved?

James Randi:

Oh yeah, constantly yeah. There is a file at the FBI that I contribute to every once in a while. Every time I get a threat it is sent off to an office at the FBI, they handle things like that. They keep them on file, I don't know if they've ever done anything about them? I am not too worried about a guy that comes to the door screeching at me or anything like that, but I am worried about the guy that comes to the door very quietly with a sawed off shotgun and pays me a visit. I had one shot fired at a previous home I've had here...

Ken:

Oh my goodness.

James Randi:

It went through the window. Whether or not it was something aimed at me I really don't know. All I know is that the bullet did this to the window.

Ken:

Could you please tell my readers about the time you created a hoax with Australia's 60 minutes, what it was and why you did it?

James Randi:

Well they called me and they asked what they were going to do about the channelers and could we prove that the channelers were fakes and I said no, but the way to do it is to create one. Get somebody who could handle that sort of thing to create one and admit after it that it was a fake. They said oh we will get an actor and I said no, I have a good friend here who was a performer and I will ask him. I asked him if he was interested in doing it and he said yeah, so we took off eventually for Australia. We created the character Carlos that was based on the crop of currently popular channelers, so called at that time. We fooled some of the Australian's rather thoroughly at the time, we got headlines in the newspapers, major newspapers in Australia and we opened with a show at the Sydney Opera House. We had a nice crowd there, people devotedly fingering amulets and what not and exchanging beads and other substances of various natures. The following week it was featured on 60 minutes in Australia, a version of the 60 minutes program. The first half of the show was devoted to the Carlos character and the second half was devoted to yours truly who was the evil genius behind the whole thing and was all exposed as a hoax. We did not hoax anybody with hoaxes that lasted more than two weeks and we revealed the whole thing at the end of it. We never took five cents as a reward for it either.

Ken:

Do you feel that since you established the James Randi Educational Foundation that people have now become more skeptical?

James Randi:

Oh I don't know about that, I think that is a very hard thing to assess. I would certainly hope that and I do get letters essentially every day by e-mail or in the post or get phone calls. Some people say that gee, you have made a big difference in my life and because of your existence and the Educational Foundation, I have approached my life from a different point of view, it is a healthier and more sensible and rational point of view. So I get these thank you's every now and then, for which I am exceedingly grateful, It does show that we are having some effect.

Ken:

I heard that Sylvia Browne, another so-called psychic, has finally refused to take your test. She seems to have accepted in the past, but never actually took it. Why do you think that she just didn't refuse right away and be done with it?

James Randi:

Or she couldn't, she was on the Larry King Live show and I was on it as well by remote camera and she was forced into accepting by Larry King. She agreed to do it and he agreed to see that she did do it and then nothing else happened from that moment on. That was what, six years ago or something like that, I have forgotten? It was quite some time ago and at first she said that she didn't know how to locate me. Here is a woman that talks to dead people.

Ken:

(I just had to laugh at this)

James Randi:

I am very much alive as you may have noticed and I am in the phone book, but she didn't know how to contact me, so I sent her a certified letter that had all of my contact information. It had the address of my brother and sister who live in Canada and all of the people such as friends and whatnot, my personal phone numbers, e-mail, cell phone, everything that she needed to contact me. Then she adopted a different point of view, she said that I am not a godly person and that she just didn't want anything to do with me. Wouldn't taking $1 million from a godless person be a major victory, I would think so. She didn't choose to do that.