{"id":11755,"date":"2015-12-01T00:02:51","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T08:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=films&#038;p=11755"},"modified":"2022-03-03T15:50:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-03T23:50:01","slug":"honest-liar","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/honest-liar\/","title":{"rendered":"An Honest Liar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the last half-century, James \u201cThe Amazing\u201d Randi has entertained millions with his dazzling feats of magic, escape, and trickery. Along the way he discovered that faith healers, fortune-tellers, and psychics were using his beloved magician\u2019s tricks to swindle money from the credulous. Fed up with the fraud, he dedicated his life to exposing con artists with a wit and over-the-top showmanship all his own. <\/span><b><i>An Honest Liar<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is part detective story, part biography, and a bit of a magic act itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An acolyte of Harry Houdini, Randi became a famed magician-turned-debunker of psychics and mediums in his own right with a series of unparalleled investigations and elaborate hoaxes. These grand schemes fooled scientists, the media, and a gullible public, but always in service of demonstrating the importance of skepticism and the dangers of magical thinking. Randi was a frequent guest on TV variety and talk shows, most notably <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, uncloaking high profile scams, like the \u201cspoonbending\u201d of illusionist Uri Geller. Eventually Randi\u2019s efforts won him the prestigious MacArthur \u201cGenius\u201d Award. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When dealing with a master deceiver, however, the truth can be elusive. A sudden and shocking revelation threatens to bring down Randi\u2019s own house of cards, and the magician who spent his life exposing phonies may be the victim of a devastating deceit himself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An Honest Liar<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is told through interviews with Randi, vintage footage of his TV appearances, and interviews with illusionists, performers, and skeptics alike, including Adam Savage, Penn &amp; Teller, Bill Nye, Geller, Alice Cooper, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the last half-century, James \u201cThe Amazing\u201d Randi has entertained millions with his dazzling feats of magic, escape, and trickery. Along the way he discovered that faith healers, fortune-tellers, and psychics were using his beloved magician\u2019s tricks to swindle money from the credulous. Fed up with the fraud, he dedicated his life to exposing con [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":11954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1216,1239,1288],"class_list":["post-11755","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-arts-and-culture","topic-identity","topic-lgbtq"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>An Honest Liar | Documentary about James &quot;The Amazing&quot; Randi | Independent Lens | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An Honest Liar is the story of James \u201cThe Amazing\u201d Randi, the famed magician who dedicated his life to exposing frauds.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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