Psychics, like lots of other forms of paranormal and supernatural nonsense, have a strange foothold in Americana. Because Americans totally believe in magic, and angels, and aliens, and pretty much everything else. James Randi, the 86-year-old magician and skeptic, would change that if he could.
He’s been shutting down quacks since the 70s, when bending spoons with your mind was fodder for Johnny Carson. Randi started by emulating Harry Houdini, who died two years before the Amazing Randi was born. But by 60, after sealing himself in a metal coffin in a swimming pool, beheading Alice Cooper every night on tour in 1974, appearing on Happy Days, and writing a bunch of books about magic and fraud, he switched his focus to busting faith healers, psychics, spiritual gurus, and anybody who publicly came out and said they had supernatural powers. He even offered a million actual dollars to “any person who demonstrates any psychic, supernatural, or paranormal ability under satisfactory observation.”
Full Article: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4w7j9j/we-spoke-to-james-randi-about-magic-fraud-and-the-new-biopic-about-his-life-303
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