An Honest Liar

Some people cannot believe that a magician can fool them

in such a way that they can't figure it out.

But magicians can and magicians do.

Swindlers do, conmen do all the time.

They're not magicians, they're fakes.

They are lying to us, they're deceiving us.

It's OK to fool people, as long as you're doing that

to teach them a lesson which will better their knowledge

of how the real world works.

No matter how smart or well-educated you are,

you can be deceived.

Hello, how are you doing today?

Very well, thank you.

- Can I bring you something to...?

- Coffee!

Oh, yes, please. For me, coffee.

- I'll get you coffee in a minute, OK?

- OK.

Oh, my heart just started again, that's good. Always a good sign.

See, I've always had my battle with the psychics, the so-called -

and I use that word in quotations all the time, remember that!

People who are stealing money from the public,

cheating them and misinforming them.

That's the kind of thing that I've been fighting all my life.

Magicians are the most honest people in the world,

they tell you they are going to fool you, and then they do it.

Wait a minute, I have to worship here.

OK.

- APPLAUSE

- James Randi is the author of The Faith Healers

and he's best known as an investigator of psychic

and miraculous claims.

Would you welcome, please, The Amazing Randi.

- Here he is! The Amazing Randi!

- HE SNORES

- What did you...would you tell us who you are?

- The Amazing Randi. Ta-da!

I was born at an early age in a log cabin I helped my father build.

By the time I was seven I was eleven. I grew up very fast.

I am a magician, I always have been a magician...

A conjurer, prestidigitator, legerdemainist...liar, cheat,

- charlatan and fake.

- LAUGHTER

You're a master magician.

Some people have said that you're about the greatest escape artist since Houdini.

Randi has a real deep natural affection

for magic and this love of deception.

A good magician needs to be a little bit of a conman, I think.

He needs to be sort of a criminal type,

but not have enough guts to actually rob banks.

He loves magic. He spent his whole life as a performer, as a magician.

So he really resents anyone applying the techniques of magic

for any purpose other than entertainment.

Especially to convince people that

there is something psychic going on here, he thinks that an abomination.

Tonight on this stage you are going to meet a man

who claims he can move physical objects using the powers of his mind.

APPLAUSE:

Now, you have been touring our country,

- debunking psychics, haven't you?

- I have indeed.

And I think that the solution is rather simple.

Now, what I have here is particles of a white plastic

which will rather conclusively show that Mr Hydrick

is merely blowing on both the page and on the pencil.

- James?

- Ready.

Randi says the public is being fleeced via trickery.

"I am going to tell you what's happening and more to the point,

"this is going to be a crusade to try and change the world."

If there is something to the paranormal,

let's find out what it is, if anything.

And on the other hand let's not be taken in by the claptrap

that is being offered us, and at our expense.

I just ingested six-and-a-half-days' worth of homeopathic sleeping pills.

- Why don't they affect me?

- LAUGHTER

People say, what's the harm? Why do you care about this?

Then I saw Randi's answer, which was,

bad ideas can cause you serious damage or death.

The psychic surgeons, they operate with their bare hands

and profess to remove tumours,

malignant tissue, without any marks at all.

And believe me, the gimmick is so simple

you can buy it for 75 cents in a magic shop.

Now, what you're about to see is a bare-handed operation...

His point isn't to tell you that something isn't true.

His point is to widen your scope of vision so that you will question

the things that happen in front of you.

- Oh, no, that doesn't come out.

- LAUGHTER

Some people think that he's very dogmatic.

It's always some tired person in a shack someplace in Idaho or Iowa

or some place like that

who gets picked up by extraterrestrials

and they have their genitals examined in great detail

and they can't wait to get on Oprah to describe it.

- I'll bet you don't believe in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus either.

- I'm looking into Santa Claus.

He's a great storyteller and like all good storytellers, well,

there's probably some information and detail in there

that may not be appearing in his version of events.

It is, I will say, interesting that a man

who has devoted his whole life to using the tools of deception

to uncover real deception has,

at the centre of his life, a deception.

APPLAUSE And welcome to To Tell The Truth.

Let's meet our next team of challengers.

One of these three men pretended to be possessed by an ancient spirit.

Number one, what is your name, please?

My name is Jose Alvarez.

- Number two.

- My name is Jose Alvarez.

- Number three.

- My name is Jose Alvarez.

Only one of these people is the real Jose Alvarez,

and is the only one sworn To Tell The Truth.

APPLAUSE:

'I first met Jose Alvarez in the Fort Lauderdale public library.'

I offered to explain something

about one of the photographs he was looking at.

This is the actual flower here for the cactus.

- Yes.

- The little ones. And look at this, if this...

Yeah, this is fantastic, look at that.

- Yeah, we need to spread that around.

- See, this is the one I cut for the...

'We end up spending the whole afternoon'

talking about our mutual interest about space exploration.

I remember we looked at books on telescopes and I told him I had

such a telescope at home, the Questar.

I went back to my friends and I said,

"I just met this extraordinary man, and I would like to meet him again."

We were able to go out at night with a tripod

and see the moons of Jupiter and all kinds of good things like that,

which is always very exciting to show somebody,

certainly if it's for the first time.

'I just got very excited and I said, I need to...'

I need to be with him more! HE LAUGHS

'When I first met Randi, I wasn't aware of who he was.'

OK, tomorrow, don't tell me about tomorrow...

And I was there when he won the MacArthur Award.

The gentleman announced, we are calling from the MacArthur Committee

and told me that I had won the prize,

- and I answered in my most intelligible way...

- HE BABBLES INCOHERENTLY

'Then I got a real feel

'of the kind of impact he was having culturally.

'And little by little, I started getting more and more involved

'in the investigation of paranormal activities that Randi was doing.

'And then he asked me to play the character of a fake channeller

'in a project that we end up working together.'

This woman is JZ Knight.

She's also the one they call Ramtha, a mystical male spirit,

35,000 years old, who claims to be divine.

Now, you must understand that the so-called channellers

were claiming that they could contact long-dead spirits.

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