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

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Ken:

That story is hysterical.

I guess you know by now that many of those who'll take your challenge will come up with some lame excuse as to why they couldn't accomplish their task. Do you ever feel you want to laugh when they do this, or do you feel sorry for any of them?

James Randi:

Well I don't feel sorry for them if they.... Most of them don't, Uri Geller said that he won't do it, because he doesn't like me. That is all the more reason to take $1 million from me. Sylvia Browne says that I am a godless person. They all have their excuses, but those excuses with sensible people, don't cut any ice at all. The woo woo people who choose to believe in these things, you have to remember that they don't just want these things to be true they need these things to be true, because it fulfills something in their lives that they need, a woo woo factor that they desperately need to be true. They will never be talked out of it and they will never see people like Geller, Sylvia Browne, and John Edwards and the rest of them for what they really are.

Ken:

How many people have you come across that wanted to take your challenge that turned out to be mentally ill?

James Randi:

Oh a great number of them along the way, well not a great number, there must be 30 or more of them who are at least afflicted in some way with some irrational point of view. We just have to get out of trying to handle that kind of thing. We tell them that we will accept their effort but we need a professional point of view on whether or not they need some attention, professional attention from a psychiatrist or a therapist. We usually don't hear from them after that point.

Ken:

Who would you say is the best illusionist alive today and why?

James Randi:

That is very hard to say, there is a fellow named Juan Tamariz who does specific things, card manipulations and such, I think he's pretty much the king in this particular field, but it is just like saying what person in medicine is the most accomplished. Well do we go back to former generations of people that have passed on, or we can stay in the present, we can do brain surgery, we can do kidney work, we can do all kinds of things like this all specialties. In the field of magic, or conjuring more correctly, there are all kinds of people with their specialties and they excel in their particular specialties. It is like saying who is the greatest person alive? In what field? This country or not, living or dead? You have to zero it.down to what field you were going to accept here. This is like being asked what is your favorite color. Well black at night, blue during the day if I am outdoors. Provisions have got to be made in a question of this nature.

Ken:

What are your thoughts about all those street magicians like Chris Angel? Is this something new or are we just noticing them more?

James Randi:

No it is the oldest form of magic, the very oldest one. I would say that at one point all conjuring was done in India by the Jawalas and in England particularly by the Buskers, people who performed in public doing street magic. Most of them were extremely skilled, although they had a very small repertoire, because that was sort of the family tradition. They said what sort of tricks could we do and they were successful and always will be successful, so they didn't have to change them or do anything different at all, maybe make a very slight adjustments in them but nothing major, because they know these things work. Street magic is the oldest form of magic, I think it's an admirable art and there are many many good street workers that have done this kind of thing.

Ken:

Those people that the street magicians pick out of the crowd to help them, are they all shills or are some of these guys so good that they can use an actual passersby?

James Randi:

Oh they would have to pay hundreds in the audience, they would have to speak the local language, depending on where they are going and that would require a great deal of skill on their part and not only that, they can be detected. With any luck at all you would know that there were shills being used. I don't know any magicians that use shills, none. If they're selling something like the bunko game, three card monte or something like that, then yes they would use street shills that are highly trained and very very competent at what they do, but not the street magicians. I've never known any of them to use confederates.

Ken:

If you had your life to live over again, would you live it the same way and become the amazing Randi again?

James Randi:

I could become the amazing Dorothy depending on what gender I was. I don't have much control over that of course. I think I would go essentially the same way. I would bypass certain elements along the way that I have learned from past experience are not productive, but I wouldn't change very much I don't think, not much.

Ken:

Well you have something so unique named after you that I have to bring it up, 3163 Randy. How does it feel to have an asteroid named after you?

James Randi:

Well it's a mixed blessing. When I first had the asteroid named after me by the International Astronomical Union, I e-mailed Sir Arthur Clarke, Arthur C. Clarke that is and I said Arthur, they just named an asteroid after me. He e-mailed me back and said yes it is quite a distinction, I had one named after me five years ago. That made me a little grumpy, so I looked up the details and it turned out that his asteroid was 2 km across and mine is 4 km across. I wrote him back and I said I just looked it up with the IAU and it turns out that my asteroid is bigger than your asteroid. I didn't hear from him for quite some time after that, maybe he was a little miffed?

Ken:

How well did you know Carl Sagan?

James Randi:

Ah, very well, he wrote the introduction to two of my books. We met quite frequently and I spent some time at Cornell with some of his classes and things. I was pretty intimate with Carl and it is a shame that we have to do without him, because I think he was just getting started.

Ken:

What was he really like?

James Randi:

He was very full of himself, there is no question about that, but he had every right to it. He didn't suffer fools gladly. He tried to ignore people that he couldn't handle by using logic and rationality. I found that this is something you have to do. I miss him a great deal, because he was very affable, he knew how to laugh at the world and at himself. He was always very understanding and very very cooperative. He was a good friend and I miss him dearly.

Ken:

Do you miss not having your own radio show anymore?

James Randi:

Not particularly, because that was quite a grind from midnight to five in the morning. If I had a better scheduled perhaps I wouldn't mind doing it, but I keep very busy just getting up Swift every week, it goes up on midnight on Thursday all over the world, that is EST, Eastern Standard Time, Eastern Time I should say, ET. ET call home, I know that's the wrong one. In any case, that keeps me very busy and I'm just putting the finishing touches on one that will go up Friday, that is Thursday midnight this week, I'm just getting the details worked out, getting illustrations together right now, as a matter of fact.

Ken:

There is one story that I love that I just have to ask you about. The story states that a professor from the University at Buffalo shouted that you were a fraud when you imitated Uri Geller, by bending spoons and you said yes indeed, I am a trickster, I am a cheat, I am a charlatan, that's what I do for a living. Everything I've done here was by trickery and he said that's not what I mean. You are a fraud because you're pretending to do these things through trickery, but are actually using psychic powers and misleading us by not admitting it. Is this a true story and if so, was this guy really serious?

James Randi:

Well it might be, this has been said many times, by people who are not necessarily smart, because education doesn't make you smarter it just makes you educated. When they don't have an explanation for something and they see me do something that appears to be paranormal or supernatural, because I am a magician by trade after all and I appear to do these things, though I do them by trickery, they don't have an explanation for it and they say that there is no explanation for that because it is supernatural. They think that they are supposed to be able to come up with an answer. I don't mind admitting when I'm puzzled by something, but some academics have a very hard time admitting that.

Ken:

I was going to ask you a question about that. Do you think that people that are educated are just as easy to fool by trickery as those who aren't?

James Randi:

Absolutely, that is not their expertise. I can fool a dentist as well as I can fool a statistician, or a plumber, because they're not familiar with the work I do. A plumber can fool me completely. I know nothing about what he does and statisticians have got me totally buffaloed. I just have to except their word and if they want to explain it to me, then maybe I can understand it or maybe I can't. People have different fields of expertise, mine is how people can be fooled and how they fool them selves.

Ken:

You have been on so many TV programs over the years, why do you think that you are still so popular after so many years? You have had the longest run of anybody I know.

James Randi:

Oh I am not as popular as Mr. Geller is at the moment.

Ken:

Oh I don't know about that.

James Randi:

You know that if somebody would sign a contract with me for the sum of money he just got for that NBC program, I would be rather content, to say the least. He gets this sort of thing regularly, he is sought out because people want sensationalism, they don't necessarily want the truth, they don't want rationality, they want glitz, they want sparkle and glitter. I don't supply a great deal of that, I'm far too much down to earth for TV producers who...... In trying to sell a TV series to these produces I always get the final question, but some of it has got to be true right? I say no none of it is that I know of, but they say, you have got to make believe that some of it is true at least, people want it to be true. I say that I can't do that and then they say, well then we don't have a series. The other thing that they say is, you have a million-dollar prize, you have to give away the million-dollar prize. I say not unless it's supposed to be given away according to the rules. They say, no no no, you don't understand, you have to give away the million dollars. I say that's not my premise, I am dealing with reality here and they keep on calling it reality television.

Ken:

Right, something like Ghost Hunters.

Do you consider UFOs to be in the realm of the paranormal?

James Randi:

Well it depends on your definition of a UFO. If it is something that doesn't have an explanation in science then it would be paranormal by definition, but I don't know if they exist. I just saw a UFO go buy this morning in plain sight, it was a jet plane at a local airport, but I didn't know where it was going and I don't know what airline it wants, because I couldn't see, so that's a UFO. It's unidentified and it is a flying object, I could see that very plainly. It depends on what your definition of a UFO is.

Ken:

Houdini was said to be double-jointed and could dislocate his shoulder when escaping from a straitjacket, are you double-jointed?

James Randi:

No and he wasn't either. He didn't have to be, not at all. It was done without him being specially jointed. This is something that amateurs come up with as an explanation and they'll wrong.

Ken:

In this modern age many electronic gadgets are available and many are not readily detected. Do you find that it is tougher to detect a scam when one of these devices is used?

James Randi:

Except for one, Popoff concealed a radio receiver, that is about the only time that advanced technology was used that I know of. By and large these people work with the same principles that they worked with back in the 1600s, which is psychological misdirection and a few things like that, so there is not very much new in the trade I am afraid.

Ken:

Do you think that it could be possible that when you would duplicate a so called paranormal act with trickery, that maybe the results are the same, but the paranormal act could have used paranormal means?

James Randi:

I don't follow that question at all. Are you asking me if there are paranormal means out there by which one could do this thing?

Ken:

What I am actually asking you is this, do you think that it is possible to repeat by trickery a paranormal act? In other words you get the same results but by different means?

James Randi:

I don't recognize a paranormal act. I don't know how to replicate it. Can you speak Martian, if so say the word balloon in Martian? You don't know? I thought you spoke Martian. This is trying to reproduce something that we have no evidence of in the first place. That is a very difficult question to get around

Ken:

Have you groomed somebody to take over for you as the world's leading skeptic, when you feel that you don't want to be in that position any longer?

James Randi:

Well I'll not want to be in that position when I die. I'm going to stay at it until that moment and I will be busy at it when I breathe my last, I can assure you of that. There are 2 people that are candidates for this and I wouldn't name them because I don't want to put the burden on them to respond to it, I have a couple of people in mind, yes.

Ken:

Cash prizes have been offered to psychics for over 150 years by different organizations, if they could perform actual psychic events. It is said that never has anyone or any agency offering these prizes had to pay out one cent. Do you think that this confirms the fact that it is impossible to have psychic powers?

James Randi::

No not at all. I didn't say it was impossible to have psychic powers, I merely said that there is no evidence that these things exist. It is the old Richard Nixon thing, it is not impossible that Richard Nixon is still alive and living in Argentina. It is very unlikely, I can't picture a situation whereby that is true, but it is not impossible at all.

Ken:

Do you think that the human brain might be able to be enhanced by chemical means to make it more powerful and maybe capable of psychic abilities?

James Randi:

It depends on what your definition of psychic ability is?

Ken:

Well for example do you think that a human brain, maybe someday in the future, might be able to be enhanced with a chemical so that the person might be able to move an object without touching it?

James Randy:

No I don't think it is very likely, because there would have to be a modus for it, a way of transferring energy and then there would have to be the energy there in the first place. It would have to have sufficient magnitude and there would have to be a transfer mode so there are a lot of steps here that have to be taken into account. One step that has to be taken into account is that I am due some place at 12 and that is in 5 1/2 minutes.

Ken:

That was the last question.