James Randi was born in Toronto, Canada, on August 7, 1928 to George Randall and Marie Alice Zwinge. Identified early as a child prodigy, he frequently skipped school to attend the public library, museums and matinee performances at the local theater. It was at the age of 12, while attending the Harry Blackstone Sr show, that Randi became addicted to magic. Realizing that he can make good money performing magic at children's birthday parties, Randi joins the Hat & Rabbit Club of Toronto as a junior member. At age 17, he dropped out of high school to join a traveling carnival, working as a magician and mentalist under the name Prince Ibis.

He arrived in the United States in 1948 and took the stage name The Amazing Randi. He became famous for his Houdini-style stunts, such as freeing himself from a coffin beneath the surface of the water or from a straitjacket suspended above Niagara Falls.

In 1954, while giving a show in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec, Randi was challenged by police officers to get rid of their handcuffs. Which he does easily. He was subsequently taken to the police station and placed in a cell from which he escaped without problem. The local newspaper headlines “Randi causes a stir by escaping from Valleyfield prison without help.” He is only 26 years old.

Over the next decades, Randi would enjoy a thriving career in nightclubs and on television, but after hearing more and more people said they had squandered their savings trying and failing to locate loved ones who have passed away, Randi began investigating all sorts of psychic and paranormal claims. His targets were people who used tricks to defraud the public.

In 1964, Randi began offering a $1,000 cash prize to any psychic who passed tests he designed himself. The proposed amount was raised to $10,000 for a few years and eventually reached $1 million, managed by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). It would be given to any applicant who can successfully demonstrate a psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability under testing conditions agreed to by both the tester and JREF. The prize was never claimed and the offer ended in 2015.

Randi has become a leading figure in the skeptic movement, through books, television programs and other media appearances challenging the claims of psychics, parapsychologists and alternative medicine practitioners and by carrying out media stunts to denounce the charlatans.

Project Alpha

In 1980, Randi persuaded two teenagers interested in stage magic, Michael Edwards and Steven Shaw, to pose as subjects mastering the bending of metal for an experimental program on psychokinesis conducted at the University's McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research. of Washington. The end goal was to have both subjects tested by parapsychological laboratories around the world, in order to discredit parapsychology as a scientific enterprise. The two men managed to fool investigators in early experiments, but their abilities waned as protocols tightened. No academic papers claiming positive results have ever been published.

In 1986, Randi met his life partner Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteag (also known as José Alvarez) when the latter was 24 years old and an art student. In 2011, Peña was arrested, having revealed himself to be a furtive refugee from homophobia in Venezuela rather than an American as he claimed, and falsely using the name "José Alvarez". Accused of identity theft, Peña faces ten years in prison and deportation to his country of origin. However, a letter campaign launched by him and many of Randi's friends in the art world and skepticism persuaded the court to lessen the charges and allow Peña to remain in the United States. He and Randi married in 2013.

Randi has received numerous awards from skeptic, humanist, and atheist organizations for his work on skepticism, as well as numerous awards from various magicians' organizations for his contributions to the field of conjuring. They include the American Humanist Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, a MacArthur Fellowship, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Indianapolis.

Randi retired in 2015 and until his death in 2020, continued to live with Peña in Florida, giving occasional lectures.