James Randi has an international reputation as a magician and escape artist known as "The Amazing Randi," but today he is best known as the world's leading investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. From this unique dual perspective, Randi will speak to an audience at Berea College on "Science and Pseudoscience" at 8 p.m. on Thursday, March 13 in Phelps Stokes Chapel.

The presentation is the inaugural Berea College Science Lecture and is part of the College's Convocation program. The event is free and open to the public.

Randi's activities related to "the world of illusion" have spanned more than 40 years. The author of 11 books, Randi also has published widely (articles, essays, stories, book reviews) in national and international publications that include The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Nature, New Scientist, and TIME.

He has been appearing on television since the 1960s and he has had his own TV specials in Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea and the United States. He has appeared in many TV documentaries, interview shows and variety productions in France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the UK and most recently, South Korea, among other countries. He has done three world tours as a performer and lecturer through the Far East, Europe, Australia and North and South America and has also performed at the White House. . In 1991, the series "James Randi: Psychic Investigator" was shown in the United Kingdom, and in 1993, Randi's life work was the subject of a PBS-TV "Nova" presentation.

Randi is a founding fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) based in Buffalo, NY. This organization of academics and other experts is devoted to the examination of paranormal, occult and supernatural claims. In 1996, he established the James Randi Education Foundation (JREF), dedicated to promoting and teaching critical thinking about paranormal, supernatural and occult claims, and as a data source for educators, students, media and researchers. The JREF offers prizes and scholarships to students, and funds carefully selected, original and basic parapsychological research. For more than 25 years, Randi also has offered a prize of $10,000 for "the performance of any paranormal, occult or supernatural event, under proper observing conditions." Although the value of the prize has increased to $1 million in recent years, it has continued to go unclaimed. More information on Randi and the activities of JREF is available at the organization's website: www.randi.org. which includes Randi's weekly column "SWIFT."

A speaker at organizations world-wide that include medical societies and science teachers' organizations, Randy also has taught at New York University and in 1984, was Regents Lecturer at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has received several honors and awards for his investigative work. In 1986, Randi was made a Fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, receiving a grant of $272,000 to continue his endeavors, and in 1989, the American Physical Society presented Randi with their Forum Award. Other honors from scientific organizations include having had an asteroid named after him by the International Astronomical Union in 1996.

Following Randi's presentation, Randi will take questions from the audience and will be happy to meet with audience members who come forward with other inquiries.