(In his bestselling book Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday, Penn Jillette writes, "James Randi is my hero. Like Harry Houdini, who late in life focused his talents on debunking mediums and psychics, Randi turned his attention from performing magic to exposing magic masquerading as the supernatural. But in the 1970s, his career took a more serious turn. ![]() Now an energetic 84 years old, his face swathed in a wild, white Charles Darwin beard and eyebrows crawling up his forehead like albino caterpillars, Randi was once one of America's most recognizable illusionists and escape artists. James "the Amazing" Randi, is the closest thing the movement-almost everyone I talked to called it "the movement"-has to a leader. Randi made numerous appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” NBC/Getty "It's very rare that people will stand for a complete lack of bullshit in anything." "People like the flavor of bullshit, the aroma," Randi says. Indeed, whether it's feng shui consultants rearranging your apartment's "energies" or alternative medicine advocates pushing dubious internal "cleanses," woo-woo is very big business in the United States. Numerous Americans swear by homeopathy, ingest supplements with no proven medical benefit, or believe, against all available evidence, that genetically modified organisms might transform humans into tumor-covered golems. Television personalities like John Edward earn huge audiences by purporting to commune with the dead. "I'm trying to get it into extensive use.") In 2005, for instance, Gallup found that 73 percent of Americans subscribed to at least one paranormal belief. Probably the majority of Americans believe in some degree of what JREF's founder, James Randi, calls "woo-woo." ("Please use woo-woo," he instructs me. ![]() This turns out to be a surprisingly uphill struggle. The activists of TAM see themselves as waging a broad, multifront battle to drag American culture, inch by inch, away from the nonscientific and the nonlogical. Ingrid Laas/Courtesy of James Randi Educational Foundation James Randi speaks at The Amazing Meeting in 2013.
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