 Hi, welcome to Spotlight. My name's Anthony Wynn, and it's my pleasure to welcome to the program a most amazing man, James Randy. He stands as one of the premier illusionists and conjurers of the 20th century. For a number of years, Randy has been concerned about the numbers of fakers, con artists, psychics, and other folks with magical claims. Noted author Arthur C. Clark has said the following about Randy. I regard Randy as a national treasure and perhaps one of the remaining antidotes that may prevent the rotting of the American mind. Randy, welcome to the program. To be here, Tony, I must tell you that quotation from Arthur Clark got on the back of my book, the first edition, as not antidote, but anecdote. Bad proofreading. But Arthur has forgiven me since. And it deserves definitely to be on your book, that's for sure. I believe so, yes. Now you wrote something recently on your online column, and I'd like to read this statement and get your reaction to it for the audience. You wrote, reality is where we actually live and rationality is how we try to understand it. We Americans, along with every other human being on this planet, need to get our act together. We're here willy-nilly on the cosmic stage. Our audience is vast. All the generations who will succeed us and the overture has been played, the curtains have opened. We must deliver our lines correctly, stand facing the customers, and exchange the dialogue that makes up history. No, we'll be gone long players, minor characters in the play, but what we do now, how we do it, and what love and dedication we put into it will be experienced for a long, long time. Let us as actors put all we have into it, give a good performance, and know that we've contributed to this exciting drama. Yeah, and I mean it too. I think we really have to get our act together. Our act should be handling our lives and our present situation, and our future situations, with rationality and with logic, instead of depending upon superstitious notions that belong in medieval days. You know, so many people say, and particularly about horoscopes and about psychics in particular, that it's just harmless fun. You know, it's a diversion. Do you believe it's just fun? It's not fun, Tony, when you've seen the results of it. We get people at the James Roundy Educational Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, just dropping by and coming in, and usually I can spot them right off. I take them into the library, we close the doors, and then they let their hair down, and they say, you know, our mother has given all the money from the CDs and the mortgage and whatnot to a faith healer or some evangelist or some prognosticator of some kind or someone who purports to speak with the dead, and we can't really do anything about it. You know, she's an adult human being, but she does have control of these funds. What can we do? And often my answer has to be to them, there's not much you can do because if she's got control of it, if she's got control of your future and your destiny, and she's absolutely convinced that she's right in this decision, you really can't remedy it. So it does do a lot of harm, and I'm not talking just about financial matters now, although that's always part of it. It's a case of surrendering to some sort of superstitious philosophy or belief, and that can cripple you from doing real thinking about the real world. You know, we'll come back to this in just a minute because I want to talk more about this. But you know, I'm curious about your childhood, your background. Of course, for many years and to this day, you're known as the amazing Randy. And I'm curious, how did you get your interest? Where did your interest begin with magic, with conjuring, with illusions? Goes way back when I was one of those strange critters known as a child prodigy. I didn't go to public school. They just said, well, it doesn't really need to. He's a disturbing element in the classroom. A couple of grades ahead of the other school kids. And so I was a disturbing element. I understood that, and I sort of wandered on my own. I had a truant pass and that sort of thing, in case the truant officer caught me. This is in Toronto, Canada. In the year three, I think it was. It was a long time ago. I barely remember it, but it was not a happy time for me. I can tell you that I didn't develop a peer group, and I had problems relating to other kids my age, because I was mixing with adults and with kids much older than I. So I had a peculiar childhood. It was not the standard kind of thing that the average kid goes through. And because of that, I think I developed an independence of spirit, and I began to think about things rather than just accepting them as they were presented to me on the plate. Did you come from a particularly religious background, or have any affiliation in that regard? Not very religious. My family was Anglican, and they sent me to Sunday school and whatnot, but I get into arguments all the time. And I would say, but where's the evidence for that? You know, how can you prove that? You weren't there, were you? No, of course I wasn't there. But then how do you know? It's in the book. Who wrote the book? A lot of people wrote the book, and they would break off at that point and didn't want to argue with me. And they'd send messages home saying, he wants to argue all the time. We're here to tell him things. We're not here to answer his questions. He's here to listen to what we have to say. Well, eventually, I used to get 25 cents to put it in the collection plate. And the 25 cents eventually started to go on a double-deb ice cream Sunday at Purdy's Drug Store. My parents never found out, and since they're both gone now, you up there, folks? Well, now you know that's what happened to the quarter. Now, I've heard you mention that when you were about 10 years old that either something happened or you came to a realization, was that this period, that this happened, or was it a specific event that happened at that point? It's hard to say. That was, as I say, many, many years ago. But there was a point that came along where I realized that I had to make a stand. I had to decide whether or not I was going to believe in all the nonsense that I saw going on around me. I'm not talking about religious beliefs now. All of that was part of the scene, of course. But I am talking about belief in the paranormal and spirit churches and various things like this. And I had to make a stand and decide at that point, that's an early age to have to make that decision, but I did, and I said, no, I'm not going to go for it. I'm going to ask him to prove their case. And since then, and that's been many, many decades have passed by now, I've not seen any evidence of it. It doesn't mean it isn't there. It only means that I haven't seen the evidence and hey, I'm willing to be shown. So if you got it, show it to me. That's right. Now, you developed an interest in conjuring. Yes. In illusions. Do you remember your first, not professional appearance, but your first public appearance or your first time you performed in front of a group of people, perhaps? Yeah, I guess I do. It was one of those experiences which you don't forget easily. I mimed a Frank Sinatra tune, as a matter of fact. But up until then, at the age of 10, I started to develop an interest in conjuring tricks because I realized that people were fooled by these things. And I wasn't against it because it was done for purposes of entertainment. And by the time I was 12, I was rather knowledgeable about how the physicians did these things. And I had developed some skills of my own with card tricks and various things like that, the basics, the fundamentals. And I found out that I was not all that bad at it. I could manage it all right. But I also found out at the same time, and this is the real lesson of the whole thing, it's not so much what you do with the hands. It's not so much the moves with the cards and what not, it's the psychology. Now, for example, if I take a thing, a simple little object, we've got a little piece of black foam here.