 Hi, I'm James Randi with yet another bit of philosophy to share with you, a reflection if I may. A couple of years ago when my good friend illusionist Jerry Andrus told me of his terminal condition, well I broke down. Only to have Jerry try to console me. He, the man who was dying, told me that he'd seen just about everything he wanted to see, been every place he'd ever wanted to visit, and met everyone he'd ever wanted to meet. Well I thought about that and started to sum up just part of my satisfaction that I might offer to others under those same circumstances, so here goes. First what have I seen? Well in China I visited the Ming dynasty tombs near Beijing and reverently touched the monstrous marble blocks, and in Xi'an I was stunned by the full-scale ceramic army still standing in armed formation with their steeds awaiting a command from the first emperor of China to march. I walked in Tiananmen Square not suspecting that only a few weeks after I returned home I would see on live TV from afar in the Washington CNN studios with Larry King unarmed students confronting army tanks. My appearance with King was rescheduled because we chose to witness that historic moment. In Houston, Texas I was given a VIP tour of the NASA space flight center. Dressed head to foot in a sterile costume my beard was vacuumed in case there were alien contaminants lurking there. I held actual moon rocks pieces of our satellite brought from a quarter of a billion miles away in my gloved hands. These hands. I've experienced dawn at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and sunset at Stonehenge in Salisbury, England. I've seen Niagara Falls up close from a rather rare point of view hanging upside down trust in a straight jacket on a freezing January morning just to make myself a couple of months income. And I watched the live TV shot projected on the great dome of the Hayden Planetarium in New York of a moon landing. In June of 1990 I saw a total solar eclipse in Jonesu, Finland. And in 2000 I walked on the surface of the great radio telescope at Parks Australia. Several times I witnessed a sunrise standing silently in the ruins of the Inca city Machu Picchu in Peru. And I actually walked the boards of the Teatro Verdi in Trieste, Italy in the company of Massimo Polidoro. The same stage from which Giuseppe Verdi introduced Rigoletto, La Praveata, Aida and other such masterpieces. I've wandered the vast rooms of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Kremlin in Moscow. I climbed to the very top of the pyramid at Teotihuacan, Mexico and could not resist when I arrived there shouting down to the friend who had deferred that delight. Top of the world, ma! But if you didn't see that cagney film, as my friend hadn't apparently, you might not get the joke. I've filmed hummingbirds on the slopes of Kotopoxi, the 20,000-foot volcano in Ecuador, and so much, much, much more. This need to see the wonders of the world began with me very early. One of my first space thrills was being held up to the eyepiece of the David Dunlop Observatory's 74-inch diameter, that is, telescope in Richmond, Ontario, Canada by my uncle. To see the planet Saturn shimmering and shaking before me like a great luminous grapefruit, an image that I was told took several minutes to reach my eye at the speed of light. Wow! Then as a teen, I was exposed to one of the famous John Satterley Lectures at the University of Toronto, in which he demonstrated the wonders of liquid air by freezing a goldfish so that it could then be hammered into dust. Then he doused his fringe of white hair in a liquid, which I later discovered was a mixture of carbon tetrachloride and carbon disulfide. Don't try this at home. And he literally set himself on fire with a match as he exited. Now that's science, don't you think? But I've only driven by the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, sure that I'd be overcome by a closer examination. And many years ago in Germany, I arrived at the gates of Auschwitz but could not bring myself to enter. I visited both the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials in Washington and stood in awe, as they say, in admiration of these great men. As Jerry Andress did with me, I'll name drop a bit. Backstage at a Mike Douglas show years ago, I sparred with Pearl Bailey and Eartha Kitt, both of whom were thoroughly woo-woo believers. Several times I sat with Johnny Carson in his white corvette following tonight's show appearances. I wish I could share those chats with you. I once had Betty Ford tend to my swollen eye, closely watched by fierce and very unhappy Secret Service men. I recall that when I dared to ask the First Lady if she would kindly participate in my show, given for the children of Washington Diplomats, by offering me a small red handkerchief, a Secret Service officer stepped between us and told me that Mrs. Ford did not take part in magic shows. Mrs. Ford stepped up, accepted the handkerchief, and stuck it in her belt. I'd be proud to wear your colors, Mr. Randy, she said, and glared at the officer. I still have a photo of that moment hanging on the wall here at the J.R.F. And I'll never forget. In the 50s in Buffalo, New York, I met Nat King Cole, a hero of mine. But Nat didn't stay at the same hotel where I stayed, because he couldn't. I believe those days are behind us. Just notice who's staying at the White House now. I've hung out with Barbara Walters, Richard Dawkins, Alice Cooper, Dick Smith, Penn and Teller, Phillip Adams, Ron Howard, and Henry Winkler. Oh, on an episode of Happy Days, I levitated Marian Ross, and she survived very nicely, thank you. That same experience of being levitated left Barbara Walters a little shaken, I recall. And Margaret Hamilton. She was the wicked witch of the West, remember? She used to drop by unannounced after midnight when I did my All Night Radio show out of New York City, and she'd regale us with hilarious details of the filming of The Wizard of Oz. In fact, when during Hurricane Wilma here in Florida, I saw the door of my studio spin off into the trees, I stayed put, just in case Margaret might come by on her bicycle. Do you remember the scene? Sadly, I've also met so many persons who fell for the so-called psychics over the years. Professors John Hasted and Ted Baston in the UK, Dr. Charles Cousard in France, Professor John Teller, parapsychologist Ding in China, so many folks who accepted the lies and deceptions and suffered for having done so. I once entertained the Duke of Windsor and Wally Simpson, but I missed meeting several people I'd have delighted to know. Actress Margaret Rutherford, Peter Yustanov, and Dr. Christian Barnard, for examples, escaped me. And I've yet to visit the Great Pyramid at Giza, the solemn Sphinx, Iceland, Tibet, and the Mayan runes in Mexico. I haven't yet seen those. Well, not yet. But there's still time. I'm James Randy. Until next time.