The Amazing Randi Dies at 92

He appears to be somewhat famous, yet I've honestly never heard of him.

I remember how he was able to use his powerful magic to affect the powers of Uri Geller.

Absolute genius. One of his masterstrokes was sending a man in drag to a televangelist revival to be cured of uterine cancer. It got him on the Tonight Show with Carson.

Sad to hear. Loved this guy. He exposed a lot of fraud, even when it made their fans upset.

I had no idea he was gay!

Thanks for posting. OP.

Didn’t know he was gay either. I remember him from talk show appearances in the 80s and 90s. My dad was a fan.

He was the face of skepticism during the late 70s to the mid-2000s, when he basically retired from it and handed over the reins of his foundation. Randi was a professional magician who was thus quite aware of human's propensity to believe, and how easily even supposed experts can be fooled with simple misdirection and other tricks of the trade. Back in the 70s, when labs were doing research on ESP, Randi got himself invited to the labs and showed them how easy it was for their subjects to cheat. The scientists were furious - not at their subjects, but at Randi, for showing that they, the experts, had been taken in by ordinary people.

He was best known for his million-dollar challenge to anyone who believed they possessed or could demonstrate some sort of supernatural ability. The deal was: approach him/the foundation, tell them what your ability was. If they agreed it was not something explainable by rational means, the next step was to develop a mutually-agreed-upon testing protocol and rules for the test. Then the challenger would show up and demonstrate their ability.

Not a single person ever passed their agreed-upon test, and almost every single one later used one of the typical excuses, those being: the skeptical aura made conditions impossible, or the test (that they'd agreed to) was rigged. And it never convinced any of them that they did not actually possess psychic or supernatural powers.

In the late 70s or early 80s, he made an appearance on Johnny Carson where he exposed televangelist/"miracle healer" Peter Popoff as a fraud. Randi had volunteers attend his revival meetings and pretend to suffer from medical conditions, which they'd casually discuss as they found their seats. One guy even dressed up as a pregnant woman and talked about having 'female troubles'. Sure enough, they'd get called up to the stage, where Popoff would announce his miraculous knowledge of their health troubles, put his hands on them, and "heal" them. He never twigged that the pregnant lady was really a guy with a pillow pregnancy. And Randi's expose ruined his televangelist career for a number of years, until a new crop of suckers was ready to believe in the fraud again.

And, naturally, the True Believers retaliated by starting a whispering campaign that Randi was gay. As if his sexual orientation had anything to do with the fact that they were frauds, or believed in frauds.

Oh, no. This is a loss. He was one of my true heroes. I'm pleased to hear he was gay as well.

Good summary, R6.

Wasn't he fighting for a long time regarding his husband being deported? I remember that.

He was 92 - he had a good, long life.

But it's a sad statement that TV shows will bring hucksters on more often than these deniers.