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Amazing Randi, Out and Conjuring at 81  June 9, 2010, 12:00 AM
Magician and scientific skeptic James Randi has been performing
magic tricks since he was a kid—though he prefers to call what
he does "conjuring," he explains, "because 'magic' would be
controlling nature by way of spells and incantations ... They
don’t work." In his Big Think interview, Randi chronicles his
decades-long career as a "conjurer," and his beginnings as an
escape artist. He has broken out of 22 jails, and by his early
20s, he had broken Houdini’s record for the longest submersion
underwater in a coffin. Perhaps not surprisingly, he says he has
had some close calls, nearly losing his life at least twice.
Randi also talks about how the willingness of an audience to go
along with and accept illusions is a defining part of its
entertainment value. "Pe