So, the Amazing Randi's passed onto the great beyond. The magician-cum-skeptic-psychic hunter is, I suspect, already taunting mediums everywhere. 

I first encountered his work in high school, when our religion teacher of all people, showed us one of Randi's PBS specials. I'd never believed in all that psychic flim-flam, but I'd never seen it debunked so thoroughly before. Deep down, I think I figured that if there were anything to it, it'd be spoken of more often - maybe in places like science class, rather than dusty books my local library crammed in-between stories of UFO visitation and ghosts. In this way I explained away the occasional telepath or astrologer who apparently got it "right". The idea they were all just magicians was mind-blowing, and made so much obvious sense, I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before. 

Some true-blue believers insisted - usually through tears of rage - that Randi hadn't actually disproven anything. Just because he could duplicate these tricks didn't mean psychic powers didn't exist. Perhaps not, but he certainly made them irrelevant: even if they had powers, so what? Randi could do everything they could without those magic powers. Real or not, psychics became boring. 

Perhaps seeing that PBS documentary (or was it NOVA?), made me a little less susceptible to quack claims growing up.  Perhaps it made me that much more receptive to my third-year anthropology prof who taught us skepticism. Maybe it was the mental tools imparted there that soon turned their gaze to the more entrenched forms of "woo" doled out by certain Seperate School Boards. . .

  James Randi was no saint by any means - there were ethical questions surrounding his more intense investigations. He said some pretty unpleasant things about Social Darwinism. There were times he seemed a bit more contemptuous of certain people - victims of, if not perpetrators of nonsense - than was he needed to be. But, unless you're a Catholic theologian, I don't think you should be looking for saints. 

Almost no one takes psychics seriously anymore, and James Randi played him part in that. But health quackery is more widespread than ever, and thanks to a president who's not ashamed to spread it in a pandemic, more dangerous than ever. In politics and academia  as well as health, the very concept of reality itself seems under attack. People believe whatever pleases them, and make enemies of whatever doesn't. In some places, Democracy itself is crumbling. 

This was not a good time to lose James Randi.