Randi was born on August 7, 1928 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of Marie Alice (nee Paradis) and George Randall Zwinge. He has a younger brother and sister. He took up magic after seeing Harry Blackstone Sr. and reading conjuring books while spending 13 months in a body cast following a bicycle accident. He confounded doctors who expected he would never walk again.

In 1996, Randi established the James Randi Educational Foundation. Randi and his colleagues publish in JREF's blog, Swift. Topics have included the interesting mathematics of the one-seventh area triangle, a classic geometric puzzle. In his weekly commentary, Randi often gives examples of what he considers the nonsense that he deals with every day.  Beginning in 2003, the JREF annually hosted The Amaz!ng Meeting, a gathering of scientists, skeptics, and atheists. The last meeting was in 2015, coinciding with Randi's retirement from the JREF.  James Randi began a series of conferences known as "The Amazing Meeting" - TAM - which quickly became the largest gathering of skeptics in the world, drawing audiences from Asia, Europe, South America, and the UK. It also attracted large percentage of younger folks. Randi has been regularly featured on many podcasts, including The Skeptics Society's official podcast Skepticality and the Center for Inquiry's official podcast Point of Inquiry. From September 2006 onwards, he has occasionally contributed to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast with a column titled "Randi Speaks." In addition, The Amazing Show is a podcast in which Randi shares various anecdotes in an interview format.  In 2014 Part2Filmworks released An Honest Liar, a feature film documentary, written by Tyler Measom and Greg O'Toole, and directed and produced by Measom and Justin Weinstein. The film, which was funded through Kickstarter, focuses on Randi's life, his investigations, and his relationship with longtime partner Jose Alvarez, a.k.a. Deyvi Pena. The film was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, at Toronto's Hot Docs film festival, and at the June 2014 AFI Docs Festival in Silver Spring, Maryland and Washington, D.C., where it won the Audience Award for Best Feature. It has since been captioned in ten different languages, shown worldwide, and was also positively received by critics. The film was featured on the PBS Independent Lens series, shown in the U.S. and Canada, on March 28, 2016.  In 2017, he appeared in animated form on Holy Koolaid, in which he discussed the challenge of finding the balance between connecting sincerely with his audience and at the same time tricking/fooling them with an artful ruse and indicated that this is a balance many magicians struggle with.

what did they do at the conference