Comment by technothrasher
5 months ago
> Sadly, we've lost Sagan and Randi.
I had the privilege of meeting both Sagan and Randi at different points. Along with Paul Kurtz, also sadly gone now, these were some of the most in influential people in the beginnings of the modern skeptical movement. If you aren't familiar with Prometheus books and CSICOP (now CSI), look them up. You'll find years worth of groundbreaking skeptical reading material.
> I had the privilege of meeting both Sagan and Randi
If the story is even remotely interesting and something you'd be willing to share I would really appreciate the read.
Will definitely look into those books. Thanks for the recs.
The stories aren't all that interesting. I met Sagan at a talk about SETI that he gave in, oh, it must have been about 1981, at the MIT Haystack observatory. He did a meet and greet session after the talk, and was very gracious. Randi, I met in 1990 when he gave a talk about skepticism at the University of Rochester. Like Sagan, he had a meet and greet afterward. He was very quirky and funny.