An Honest Liar

A profile of James Randi is presented. Largely mirroring the life of his predecessor Harry Houdini, he spent the better part of his adult life as a magician, specializing in the escape arts, he claiming there was nothing ever made which he could not break out of. In his mid-fifties, a close call from an injury sustained in a failed escape led to him changing his focus to exposing charlatans who were using "magic" or some other form of deception to dupe people for their own gain. In his true affection for magic as a source of entertainment in being up front that magicians are the most honest people in telling their audiences ahead of time that they will be doing something of a deceptive nature, he believes psychics and anyone claiming to have paranormal powers are ultimately using "magic" as a source of fraud. In using fraudulent means himself ultimately to come clean in the end goal, he, with the assistance of others, including some magicians themselves, went about trying to expose those fraudsters in as public a means as possible to shut down the fraud. Two of his higher profile targets were evangelist Peter Popoff, who claimed to be a faith healer, and purported psychic Uri Geller who used simple magical tricks in the guise of being paranormal powers. In the process, Randi learned that people generally hear and see what they want to hear and see. A twenty-five year deception in his own life is also presented.