Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a two-part article. The first installment appeared in the January/February 2026 issue. Banachek originally wrote this tribute to James “The Amazing” Randi for The International Brotherhood of Magicians. We are thankful he let us publish it here as well. The Publicity Genius I was always amazed by how Randi generated publicity. He would do multiple phone interviews in the morning, TV and radio shows in the afternoon, and newspaper interviews in between. Once, Mike Edwards and I were staying at Randi’s house. We were sleeping in the living room attached to his office. In the morning, Mike and I were making a racket while Randi was on the phone in the office. A pen came flying out of the office at full force. Next came a stapler. These were followed by a book and cup. Randi was on the phone in the middle of a major newspaper interview and could not stop to tell us to be quiet. Of course, this was before cell phones. Randi continued …

Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a two-part article. The second installment will appear in the May/June 2026 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. Banachek originally wrote this tribute to James “The Amazing” Randi for The International Brotherhood of Magicians. We are thankful that he let us publish it here as well. It was July 11, 1974, and I was fourteen years old. My two younger siblings and I had been abandoned by our mother in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. At 7:30 p.m. we were sitting by the radio in rapt anticipation. We were listening to Deadline Thursday Night. The show was broadcast on Cape Town’s Springbok Radio, which, although now gone, was South Africa’s first commercial radio station. I was excited as I waited to hear the man the whole world had been talking about—the man with superhuman powers. Every adult I knew claimed this man could bend metal objects, start broken watches, and break and bend rings—using just the power of his mind. On this night, he was going to teach people how …