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- [00:00]
Mike Pesca
The gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Hello listeners, both Pesca plus and everyone else. Every month we do what amounts to a book club and this month is no exception, although you might think of it as an exception since it's going be exceptionally good. As John McWhorter is my guest. He was on the show, but only I got to talk to him. He was on the Colbert Show. You can't ask questions to the television set. I mean, you can. You're not going to get answers. But at a Pesca plus book club we have on the authors and we have on all the members of Pesca plus who care to join. To ask someone like, or in this case specifically John McWhorter questions. His new book is called Pronoun Trouble the Story of Us in seven Little Words. How do you support the gist and get in on exciting monthly book clubs like this and so many other offerings? You go to mike pesca.com it's all there, all the information. Get the show without ads. Get the show with John McWhorter right there. May 15th right there on your Zoom network. Mike pesca.com May 15th John McWhorter pronoun trouble the story of us in Seven Little Words. It's Monday, May 12th, 2025 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca did the huge news, the huge Trump breakthrough over the weekend. Busy weekend. You'd be forgiven if you let it slip you by. No, it wasn't that the guitaris are giving Donald TRUMP A $400 million flying bribe or a new Air Force one by the Qataris. From the Qataris with I don't know, I hope they promise no listening devices inside or, you know, remote detonation. Seems fine. Everything about it seems fine even if it isn't wired up with booby traps. Just seems great to take a $400 million gift from that somewhat friendly but not always nation. Yeah, it's good they do it with the universities and there has never been a problem there. That's not even what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the breakthrough, the peace deal. Trump got a cease fire. Now ironically or sadly or frustratingly, wasn't a cease fire in the two wars that United States munitions and treasure are very much being spent on. It is in the India Pakistan border skirmish. Think when each side is a nuclear weapons, we have to elevate it to skirmish. You know, skirmish bordering on cataclysm. So Trump announces on truth social. I got a cease fire. And so he did. He's also apparently very frustrated that he can't get a cease fire. He can't get a deal in Gaza. He'll be there soon. He certainly can't get a deal with Russia and Putin. But he got his deal with India and Pakistan. Let me now read you the update on the deal. The Indian military sent a hotline message to Pakistan on Sunday about violations of a cease fire this week and informed it of New Delhi's intent to respond if it was repeated. So it's one of those we got the factory to stay in Indiana or the monument of American heroes. Remember that? No, of course you don't. It was a truth at one point. It was a press conference with Kristi Noem. So Qatari airplane, question mark, cease fire deal. Huge, huge breakthrough. Wrong. Cease fire lasted maybe a day. Got to take the wins where he can on the show today, a spiel for the ages. But first, I'm liking this ChatGPT. I'm finding, and I use that, I use that phrase generically for all the large language learning models that utilize AI. It is overly agreeable and it also keeps telling me things I know aren't true. I've got it to agree to a one month refund. Although that was just with Chat GPT. The friendly guy agrees to everything. Not with the actual business. Office of Chat. I think the man who has to answer for all of this is Sam Altman. He's not here today, but his biographer is. Her name is Keech Hagee and she is the author of the Optimist, Sam Altman, Open AI and the Race to Invent the Future. The future is in a minute. Keeach Hagee, up next. Hey, can we talk about True Work? I'm wearing True Work right now. I guess you can't see me, but if you could, you would see this pullover hoodie. It's good for the sun, but it's just good to wear. And these work pants which are in. I don't know if it's mustard, it's yellow. It says cool, but it says also it's going to wick away moisture. I feel like I'm fooling someone or getting away with someone when I wear True Work. It's engineered for maximum comfort. Check, check, check. Minimum bulk. You know, denim and cotton hasn't changed over 200 years, but true work has elasticity, sweat, wicking, soft shell technology. 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Again, not here to judge whatever is between you and your couch, but what it does is HIMS will give you the ED treatments like Viagra or Cialis, and they'll save you up to 95% of the cost of those brands. Fill out an intake form. A medical provider will determine the right treatment option. You don't have to worry about insurance. They'll send it right to you lickety split. Start your free online Visit today@hisss.com the Gist that's h I m s.com the Gist for your personalized ED treatment options. Hisss.com the Gist the featured products include compounded products which are not approved nor verified for safety, effectiveness or quality by the fda. Prescription required. See website for details, restrictions and important safety information. Prices vary based on product and subscription plan who will be the master of the universe that defines our future? I don't know. Right now in Rome they're talking about a pope, a new Pope. People think he's going to be the spiritual leader. It's of course going to be a tech. Sometimes the word we use is overlord. But really a lot of these tech geniuses have a spiritual dimension to them insofar as they define right and wrong and reality. Sam Altman is such a figure. He is the subject of the book the optimist. Sam Altman OpenAI and the race to Invent the Future by the Wall Street Journal's Keech Hagee. She joins me now. Hello, Keech.
- [07:58]
Keech Hagee
Hi.
- [08:00]
Mike Pesca
Let's start by. Can you situate Sam Altman among the firmament of tech billionaires in terms of his background, his expertise, but also his personality?
- [08:11]
Keech Hagee
So Sam Altman is sort of a new tech billionaire on the scene. Right. For a lot of people, I think he kind of came out of nowhere when ChatGPT launched in 2022. But for people in the tech industry, he's sort of the insider's insider, because for many years, he ran Y Combinator, which is a startup accelerator. It's an investment entity that has launched a lot of the companies that are the most successful in tech. So things like Airbnb and Stripe and things like that. So he had this incredible Rolodex of all the most important people in tech and is a prodigious fundraiser. And he was able to build outside of this sort of monolith of the faang companies. Right. Of the Microsofts and the Googles, a new tech company using this amazing fundraising that came out of nowhere and really challenged the big guys.
- [09:05]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. So was his genius as a finance guy or a coder and product builder.
- [09:10]
Keech Hagee
Guy really a finance guy? He did study computer science and he was interested in science, and he did his own startup out of college. So he is a tech CEO, but his real skill is raising money. You know, he got funded by Sequoia when he was a sophomore in college. He's been doing this for a while.
- [09:28]
Mike Pesca
So he was. But. And he got funded not because at that point he had the connections, because he had the insight, because he had the ideas. And what were his. What was his idea as a sophomore that they liked?
- [09:38]
Keech Hagee
So he had this company called Looped that was from the Flip.
- [09:41]
Mike Pesca
I hope it was spelled wrong. It must be spelled.
- [09:43]
Keech Hagee
Oh, definitely. Right. Lop. T. Right. Everything has the.
- [09:47]
Mike Pesca
And a small letter and two words mashed together. This is how you know it's a good company.
- [09:51]
Keech Hagee
Yeah. So it was basically trying to be kind of like Foursquare. It was like a social network that was map based, but for the Flip phone era, which was technologically extremely difficult. They had to create relationships with every single wireless carrier for it to work. So it was just constant negotiation. So his life was just going in front of these wireless companies, these dudes who were like twice his age, telling them that he could see the future. And over and over again, they believed him and they invested and agreed to partner with the startup company. But ultimately Loop was not successful because, of course, the iPhone came out, and a mapping app for a flip phone was no longer really that necessary, so. But he made relationships during that experience that helped launch his career.
- [10:34]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, in a way, you don't want it to be easy in the beginning. I'm sure it. What do you. What's the phrase about forging harder steel through or steel forges steel? I don't know. There's a forge metaphor that probably applies to how frustrating it was for this young guy to talk to a person who had never even heard of URL.
- [10:53]
Keech Hagee
Totally. And it was a painful experience. He's talked a lot about how painful it was to spend seven years running a company, and basically it was sold for parts or roughly whatever they raised. But out of that came these relationships with venture capital companies and just experience in Silicon Valley, and especially this relationship with Y Combinator. That, again, is the root node of the power in Silicon Valley that he was then able to. To sort of for to. He was able to build a power base that made him a successful leader of Y Combinator.
- [11:26]
Mike Pesca
Right. And it's interesting because the person who's usually in the position to greenlight the hopes and dreams of others, usually young upstarts, is often the seasoned billionaire, but he was the young guy, too. So Peter Thiel, who's his mentor and a billionaire, you can understand how he gets to pick and choose and be an angel investor and have some mentees. So Altman doesn't exactly have mentees, but he's in this position that is unusual for such a young person to be a dream maker.
- [11:57]
Keech Hagee
Absolutely. And it was a little bit because of Peter Thiel's own help that put him in this position. So he does a startup, it fails. He meets tons of people in the course of doing that. And then after he sold his first startup, Peter Thiel actually bankrolled him to the tune of millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars to start his own venture fund. So then he becomes an investor and kind of surprises himself by realizing, like, this is the thing that I'm really good at is investing.
- [12:24]
Mike Pesca
So a. As an idea, is this apparent, that this is the north star of tech, that this is going to be the next great leap forward? Not to quote Mao Zedong, but there are many different tech ideas floating out there. And, you know, for a time, Elon Musk would always try to convince you, and this is what he wanted, X to be the app for everything. But I have sensed that there is a convergence that there was the Internet, and then the next thing was going to be AI and So my question is, when did people begin to realize that and when did Sam Altman begin to realize that? Was he on the forefront? Did he recognize it just from meeting with all these other people who are doing all these companies? And then he said, you know, if we could have a I, this would change everything. How did that come about?
- [13:11]
Keech Hagee
So Sam has been interested in AI since he was a kid. A lot of these techie folks, they read science fiction and this concept of AI and the singularity has been a huge part of science fiction for decades. And that's where it pretty much.
- [13:22]
Mike Pesca
And it's a dystopian concept.
- [13:24]
Keech Hagee
The singularity depends. It depends. He has been interested in it since childhood and when he was actually in college, he wrote down on a sheet of paper, what are the things I really want to work on? And AI and nuclear energy were near the top. So he's had this in the back of his mind for a long time. But the actual technology out there during that time, this is like 2005 just wasn't there. And in fact this was kind of still during the winter, as it was called, when it was really hard to get funding for AI and the technology itself sort of seemed like a bit of a dead end. What changed is there were these huge leaps forward around like 2012, there was this really important paper, the Alexnet paper, that show that this neural network form of AI could really, it could identify images and it could make these leaps that suggested that the dream of AI might be coming true. And because, you know, Sam is very interested in like the forefront of whatever is going on, he saw those little things happening and was able to throughout the year of 2014, 2015, start to gather folks together to go after this new technology. I will also say that a big impetus for all of us, of course, is that it was happening inside Google DeepMind.
- [14:41]
Mike Pesca
So I originally asked you give position him in the firmament personality wise. So I don't know how much this matters. The, the range of different personality types of founders of world changing tech companies is probably kind of limited. You won't find, you know, the kind of the broad range of humanity. They're very driven, they're very smart, they, they probably have ideas about reshaping society that someone who's, you know, takes picks up a lunch bucket and goes to work at the foundry doesn't have. Fine. And then there's also the concept of a lot of them think of themselves as good people. And then push comes to shove and maybe the rest of us wind up not thinking of them as good people or Google, which is founded on the don't be evil ethos. What does it really mean? But as much as you can get at that question, if we met Sam Altman and he was given some sodium pentothal, would you say, okay, this guy gets it? This guy's kind. This guy's extremely egotistical. What we say about him, I mean.
- [15:44]
Keech Hagee
It'S there in the title, right? Sam is extremely optimistic. This is like the real thing that isn't set him apart from the rest of Silicon Valley. Everyone in Silicon Valley claims to be optimistic, but Sam is really unusually optimistic. If you talk to people who are around him, let's say what distinguishes him is if there is something that there's only a 1% chance that it will work, but it will really, really, really work, he will take that bet. He will take on levels of risk that other people just couldn't even begin to stomach. And that especially when it talks, when you start to think about how things work exponentially, the normal average human brain can't really process risk in that way. But he has this intuitive sense that if something is going to really, really, really work, even if it's vanishingly unlikely that it will, he's going to back it.
- [16:32]
Mike Pesca
Is he optimistic and happy? Is he optimistic and hopeful and sunny? Does he have a sunny disposition?
- [16:41]
Keech Hagee
It's a little of both, right. Like he has this public Persona. You can see it from his. His blogging when he was at Y Combinator. That is, it is actually very sunny. Oh, I think this is going to work. AI is going to be great. It's going to transform society for the better. Our lives are going to be better. But there also is a deep undercurrent of anxiety that he has. It really comes from his childhood. His parents marriage was a little tough and they ended up splitting up. And so he will respond immediately if you reach out to him. That's one of the signature things about him. So he's kind of tightly wound. But underneath it all of this is this idea that technology will make the world better.
- [17:23]
Mike Pesca
Is his optimism a question about his optimism? There is a certain kind of optimist, I guess, Elon Musk would call himself optimistic in so far as he thinks his things are going to work, but he also thinks if his things don't work, we are all doomed. Mark Andreessen essentially the same thing. So there's sort of an optimist who thinks they will be able to deliver us from impending doom. What does he think of the general state of the world. If his OpenAI doesn't and his dreams of a techno utopia doesn't come to.
- [17:55]
Keech Hagee
Pass, he does not really share that with Elon Musk. I think the biggest difference between Sam Altman and Elon Musk is, is this sort of like emotional state that they have. You can see in these emails, in the lawsuits between them that Elon Musk is writing to his co founder, Sam Altman in the team there that, you know, he, he has a lot of pain. I think we, we all know, like from his childhood. And he just gets very angry and if something doesn't go his way, he immediately is like, well, we're all, we're all screwed. Yeah, right. And you can see that's Musk.
- [18:26]
Mike Pesca
That's Musk.
- [18:26]
Keech Hagee
That's Musk. Right.
- [18:27]
Mike Pesca
Who goes into demon mode.
- [18:28]
Keech Hagee
Totally goes into demon mode. And Sam is a conciliator, you know, he's, he will say, oh, no, you know, I did, I didn't mean that like, everything's going to be fine. This is going to be great. You know, so he's, he's always sort of trying to nudge everyone back to their happy place. That said, he does have, you know, there are flashes of anger that come out and he has, you know, glint in his eye sometimes about that, but he's nothing. Nothing like the emotional reactivity that Musk has.
- [18:57]
Mike Pesca
I do want to ask about. You had an excerpt in the journal that a lot of people paid attention to because it was about the short period where he was fired from the board. And this is exactly everyone in the tech world and everyone in the business world wonders just what the hell happened. And you fill in the blanks. And I think that I recommend that everyone read it. It's out there for everyone and maybe it'll inspire you to buy the book. But I want to ask a couple of things. Not exactly about the details, but about the structure of the company and what it says about Sam Altman and the people on his side of things. It seems to me, and you lay it out, that there was a board that was down to six people for a number of reasons. And there was this dynamic of the people who are worried about the dangers of OpenAI and Sam Altman says he's one of them versus OK, so the people who are worried about the dangers and are going to do something about it versus the Sam Altman side, which is more excited by the possibilities now, is that too reductive or do I have that about right?
- [19:59]
Keech Hagee
You're right that that dynamic happened. Not Just on the board, but like throughout the entire company. Yes, yeah, yes, that's true. And you know, the big question in everyone's mind is like, how much was that? What was behind the firing? And it's not, not behind it, especially because the people who ousted him, not only were they associated with this thing called effective altruism, but they, they saw that the stakes were getting higher as the technology was getting better. And suddenly what they were perceiving as lies from Sam were a much, much bigger deal if the company was about to embark on AGI, artificial General intelligence, which is this sort of North Star that the entire company was set up to achieve. So in a way, yes, their fear was there and was a driver behind the firing, but the details were not so specifically about safety or anything like that.
- [21:01]
Mike Pesca
My instinct, my predilections are to be more worried than, or to want more caution in this potential world changing technology than maybe the people who are incentivized to make billions of dollars want. And so therefore I would side with the ones who are more into guardrails than glide paths. It's complicated though, because Elon Musk associated himself with the, with team guardrails. And if you look at Elon Musk, not to overindex for the personality of one guy, he doesn't seem to be characterized by caution in much of what he does. And when you look at a lot of what Sam Altman's done, it's. It is for the benefit it has benefited humanity thus far. So I just wonder how, how much our instincts or how much our heuristics of we should want for more guardrails in this endeavor and therefore we're going to root for team guardrails. We the livers of humanity, not the beneficiaries of OpenAI. What are the flaws of thinking that way, do you think?
- [22:09]
Keech Hagee
Well, it's been interesting to see how that whole idea has really gotten quieter since Donald Trump was elected. And the whole debate is not nearly as centered around safety and speed, safety versus speed, like it was in the years leading up to it. And I think part of it is because the technology has just gotten out into people's hands and this, this idea that it could, you know, jump out onto the Internet and kill us all seems far fetched, I think, to a lot of people, not all people. There are definitely many people who still really fear that. But I think a little bit of it is just comfort with the technology that makes people less, less stressed out about the, the safety of it all. And the other thing Is like, well, what are we, what are we talking about when we talk about safety? Like, that word migrates, the meaning of that word migrates around as the company got more. More powerful. So I think at the very beginning, people were talking about existential risk, right? Like, is this going to kill us all or not? That's the big worry. As things went forward, they would change the meaning of it to mean more like alignment just means, does it do what you want it to do? Does it behave properly? Does it say please and thank you? Does it not say racist things? This tension between, are we worried about existential risk or do we just want it to work? Well, that also just a tear at the company.
- [23:36]
Mike Pesca
Are we sure that as people got more used to it, it was. People were making the rational deduction that it's not that dangerous. Are we sure that it was an actual bona fide conclusion to come to or more like, as we played with Gizmo, we got. We thought he was cute and didn't realize that the gremlins were right around the corner. If you'd have fed it after midnight.
- [24:05]
Keech Hagee
I mean, it could be both, right? Definitely. I'm definitely not sure. And it's not like the safety issue is completely gone, but it's a lot quieter.
- [24:12]
Mike Pesca
But the other part of the safety issue is, okay, it won't like rise up. Maybe it won't rise up like T2 and kill us all, but could unemploy most of us. Isn't that part of safety?
- [24:22]
Keech Hagee
Absolutely. I mean, I think the real risks here are economic. Right? Like, how is this going to reorganize our society and how is this going to concentrate power in the way that technology basically has done at every stage so far? Right. Technology has not really served to like, distribute. It's especially in the last few decades, like it has concentrated power in Silicon Valley and among the haps. So I think in many ways that's the big risk.
- [24:48]
Mike Pesca
Who. What happened to the members of the board who wanted him out and then were overruled when he came back quickly?
- [24:55]
Keech Hagee
Oh, they were ousted. All but one. One is still on board, but that's Adam d' Angelo. He remains on the board, but the other three are all removed from the board and are gone.
- [25:10]
Mike Pesca
Name them.
- [25:12]
Keech Hagee
That's Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley and Ilya Sutzer.
- [25:15]
Mike Pesca
Right. So that's. There are two women of this on the board. Both are out. And then another main person in this who was very worried about Sam Altman is Mira Moradi, who is the chief technology officer it does seem to me that you don't have to have taken a women's studies course to see this dynamic where the women were acting a bit, like, cautious or, you know, maybe the men would call them school moms, and the boys were acting naughty and breaking things. But the boys won.
- [25:48]
Keech Hagee
I mean, you're right, that. That did happen. You know, there are women on the new board as well. And the company made. It was. It was a very awkward moment right after the firing when the old board was thrown out. They had. They had a new, much smaller, temporary board, and it was all dudes.
- [26:05]
Mike Pesca
Yeah.
- [26:06]
Keech Hagee
And, you know, they said, well, we're going to get some women eventually. And they eventually did.
- [26:09]
Mike Pesca
But no, real women, not AI generated women, which can happen. Right?
- [26:15]
Keech Hagee
But look, this is a truth about Silicon Valley. Y Combinator, the very first class. So Sam was in the first class of y Combinator in 2005. There were no women at all. None. There are, like eight startups, zero female founders. And, you know, even now, like, maybe 11%, something like that, after all these years, like, it is a massive, massive, massive imbalance in Silicon Valley between the genders.
- [26:42]
Mike Pesca
Just. Just an excellent book and of course, important figure who will be, I assure you, at the center of our consciousness for a long time to come. This is. I've been playing a lot with Chat, GPT and Claude and the Rivals, and it's changing things in a hurry for me, and I think that so many people are having the same experience. So an excellent guide to all of this is key is Keech Hagee, and she has written the new book called the Optimist. Sam Altman, Open AI and the Race to Invent the Future. Thank you, Keech.
- [27:15]
Keech Hagee
Thank you.
- [27:24]
Mike Pesca
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- [29:02]
Keech Hagee
Toured the new plane this past February while it was parked here at the West Palm Beach International Airport, calling it, quote, a flying palace.
- [29:10]
Mike Pesca
He wants his flying palace and it doesn't give a flying flip what anyone thinks of that. In fact, the President says a person would have to be goofy daft not to want to take a flying palace when offered a flying palace.
- [29:23]
Keech Hagee
I could be a stupid person to say oh no, we don't want a free plane.
- [29:26]
Mike Pesca
We give free things that we'll take one too. And Trump is not stupid. Maybe you're the stupid one. You everyone who ever criticized him for anything. Trump truth today. So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a gift free of charge of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One temporarily in a very public and transparent transaction so bothers the crooked Democrats that they insist we pay top dollar for the plane. Anybody could do that. The Dems are world class losers. Maga. Yeah, get it. It's out in the open. The plane will literally be up in the sky. It can't be a bribe. Bribes have to be secret. Like when Clarence Thomas took that RV from the rich guy. Everyone could see Clarence Thomas. They're driving. Beep beep beep. It's justice. Thomas can't be unethical. You know that Trump as President can turn any plane into Air Force One by dint of him stepping inside of it while it is aloft. I mean, shouldn't he bestow this mystical force on flying machines, both foreign and domestic? There are exceptions to the rule. If the President's flying in a marine helicopter, it's Marine One. When the Vice President is aboard, it's Marine Two. When the Secretary of Interior is on board It's Marine eight. No, it's not. I made that up. There was one time when the President wrote in, he actually supposedly took the controls of a Navy plane and then it was called Navy One. That was when George W. Bush took the controls and touched right down before the triumph of unveiling the Mission Accomplished banner. I wonder if President Trump jumps and you slip a piece of oak tag under his shoes, does that become cardboard one. I further wonder if President Trump jumps, how much would you pay to see Donald Trump jumping? An eighth of a Trump coin, I think. So most of the aye are directed at this acquisition and the Democrats are doing their part, launching investigations and so forth. Is at the bribery angle. But what about if you are going to be bribed? Aren't the Qataris far from the cleanest set of hands to do the bribing? I mean, we had a World cup in Qatar. There were about 10,000 stories about how the international soccer community was so immoral because they violated the ethical standards of the international soccer community by choosing to hold a World cup in a human rights abusing place. Now the President of the United States is on board, almost literally. And there's not really that much consternation over the thousands of workers who've died construction, constructing the jewel of the Arabian Peninsula. That jewel being a blood diamond. The Trumps do a deal with the Saudis like every other week. But golfers want a big payday from Saudi controlled live golf and they have to apologize over and over for just wanting money. And they're golfers. They wear slacks to play sports. They're not leaders, they're not role models. The word for what the Saudis and the Qataris do in that case is sports washing. And we wrung our hands over the washing. So here's how sports washing works. The Saudis or Qataris buy into popular sporting franchises. They hold tournaments in their countries. They give out lavish prizes in those tournaments. They put on a good show to make their country seem palatable so that the public softens their stance. And then eventually down the road, possibly a politician might not feel a backlash. So to retrace the steps you go through the sportsman to the public, reflecting on the leaders and maybe after millions of dollars in expenses and weeks or years of fending off bad pr, you get a toehold of respectability or you just give the big guy a plane. He wants it. He'd be stupid to say no. I'd say if the leader of the free world is 30,000ft above it, whoever is keeping him aloft has a credible claim at having some power and control over him. The Democrats should investigate, but not too hard. They should grouse but not quash. This is a great issue for them if you're trying to convince the public that the other party isn't truly the party of the people. I don't know. Flying palace goes pretty far, or not far at all. After his term, Trump says he plans not to use the Flying palace, just to keep it in his presidential library, which is, you know, using it. It will thereafter be available for viewing in the conflict of interest. Wings of the Griftsonian that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produced the Gist. Michelle Pesca CBSO Astro Green does Social Leo Baums Our intern Kathleen Sykes is the doyen of the Gist list. And thanks for listening.
- [34:23]
Keech Hagee
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