Hansen feels as though a great terrifyingly peppy windup toy, the sort of indefatigable salesperson you could decide to purchase things of simply to make your disappear completely. “However are located in eg an excellent cyclone,” remembers Kamalski, Chicken Soup’s former captain operating manager, while you are Canfield do remain also-keeled: “They have been yin and you may yang.” Canfield is more “analytical,” Hansen way more “innovative.” Canfield are suspicious out of structured religion, preferring occult way of life such as for example Kabbalah, if you find yourself Hansen means an excellent nondenominational, prosperity-gospel-adjoining Christianity. Even after its moody differences, the 2 dudes turned into friends and you will began which have food all Tuesday during the Beverly Mountains Resort.

When we speak into the mobile phone, Hansen bombards myself with factoids and you may anecdotes, many of which – like the lady exactly who aided twelve billion students “escape punishment” – have a look overstated at the best. Now 76, Hansen relates to himself given that a good “visionary” who has “read everything you” and is coping with “most of the most readily useful AI men globally.” During the one point the guy says a current communication with “the newest queen regarding Mali” and you may claims, “Think about, there are no bookstores from inside the Mali.” (There’s not already good monarchy from inside the Mali, plus the nation has a lot out of bookstores.)

Canfield tells me the guy considers Hansen’s hyperbole the merchandise off an excellent bad memories and excessive passion: “Outline wasn’t their strength, let us place it like that.” When i discuss Canfield’s testing so you can Hansen, he measures up himself in order to Mark Twain. “I’m a great provocateur,” he says. “Some people go, ‘He’s loaded with crap.'”

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