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"Popoff says that God speaks directly to him because he's an anointed minister," said Randi afterward. "Three things amaze me about that. First of all, it turns out that God's frequency -- I didn't know that he used radio -- is 39.170 MHz, and that God is a woman, and sounds exactly like Popoff's wife Elizabeth." Last year, shortly after Randi published his book The Faith Healers, which included a chapter on the Popoff investigation, donations to Popoff's TV ministry dropped so sharply that he declared bankruptcy.
"We may disagree with Randi on specific points," says Carl Sagan, "but we ignore him at our peril." "He's a national treasure," says Author Isaac Asimov. Randi's targets are less enthusiastic. A Popoff staff member calls him "the devil" and an atheist. He has been the object of hate-mail campaigns by some of his foes. All to no avail. Says Randi: "No blackmail, no threats, can cause me to back away from my chosen work."
Randi has never married. "I was too good an escape artist," he explains. Over the years, however, he has given shelter to young aspiring magicians, taking them in as apprentices and serving as a foster parent. "Kids keep showing up at my door with knapsacks on their backs," Randi says, "offering to work for nothing if I help train them." Today he shares his secluded, cluttered Florida house with his cat Charlie and Jose Alvarez, 20, his latest protege. It was Alvarez who, in a dramatic appearance at the Opera House in Sydney last March, convinced many Australians that he was a channeler for a 35,000-year-old man named Carlos ("Named after my cat," says Randi). One of Channeler Jose's most significant quotes: "All answers are yes, and all questions can be answered thus." Then, on national television, Randi disclosed that he had orchestrated the entire performance as a scam designed to enhance skepticism Down Under. Most Australians were amused, but channeling devotees petulantly insisted that the episode proved nothing.
Randi is philosophical about these and other diehards, recognizing that their need to believe in the supernatural overwhelms their common sense. No matter what evidence of deception or fraud is presented, he concludes, "there will always be people who really don't want to know that there is no tooth fairy."