Mark Zuckerberg & Dr. Priscilla Chan: Curing All Human Diseases & the Future of Health & Technology
Huberman LabEpisode mentions
People mentions
Reviews
No reviews yet, be the first!
Transcript
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guests today are Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan. Mark Zuckerberg, as everybody knows, founded the company Facebook. He is now the CEO of Meta, which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other technology platforms. Dr. Priscilla Chan graduated from Harvard and went on to do her medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco. Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan are married and the co founders of the CZI, or Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization whose stated goal is to cure all human diseases. The Chan Zuckerberg initiative is accomplishing that by providing critical funding not available elsewhere, as well as a novel framework for discovery of the basic functioning of cells, cataloging all the different human cell types, as well as providing AI or artificial intelligence platforms to mine all of that data to discover new pathways and cures for all human diseases. The first hour of today's discussion is held with both Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, during which we discuss the CZI and what it really means to try and cure all human diseases. We talk about the motivational backbone for the CZI that extends well into each of their personal histories. Indeed, you'll learn quite a lot about Dr. Priscilla Chan, who has, I must say, an absolutely incredible family story leading up to her role as a physician and her motivations for the CZI and beyond. And you'll learn from Mark how he's bringing an engineering and AI perspective to discovery of new cures for human disease. The second half of today's discussion is just between Mark Zuckerberg and me, during which we discuss various meta platforms, including, of course, social media platforms and their effects on mental health in children and adults. We also discuss VR, virtual reality, as well as augmented and mixed reality. And we discuss AI, artificial intelligence, and how it stands to transform not just our online experiences with social media and other technologies, but how it stands to potentially transform every aspect of everyday life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is eight sleep. Eight sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the fact that getting a great night's sleep really is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. One of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. With eight sleep, you can program the temperature of your sleeping environment in the beginning, middle and end of your night. It has a number of other features like tracking the amount of rapid eye movement and slow wave sleep that you get, things that are essential to really dialing in the perfect night's sleep for you I've been sleeping on an eight sleep mattress cover for well over two years now and it has greatly improved my sleep. I fall asleep far more quickly, I wake up far less often in the middle of the night, and I wake up feeling far more refreshed than I ever did prior to using an eight sleep mattress cover. If you'd like to try eight sleep, you can go to eight sleep Huberman to save $150 off their pod. Three cover eight sleep currently ships to the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eight sleep Huberman today's episode is also brought to us by element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of electrolytes, sodium, magnesium and potassium, and no sugar. The electrolytes are absolutely essential for the functioning of every cell in your body and your neurons. Your nerve cells rely on sodium, magnesium and potassium in order to communicate with one another electrically and chemically. Element contains the optimal ratio of electrolytes for the functioning of neurons and the other cells of your body. Every morning I drink a packet of element dissolved in about 32oz of water. I do that just for general hydration and to make sure that I have adequate electrolytes for any activities that day. I'll often also have an element packet or even two packets in 32 to 60oz water if I'm exercising very hard and certainly if I'm sweating a lot in order to make sure that I replace those electrolytes. If you'd like to try element, you can go to drinklmnt.com huberman to get a free sample pack with your purchase. Again, that's drinklmnt.com slash Huberman I'm pleased to announce that we will be hosting four live events in Australia, each of which is entitled the Brain Body contract, during which I will share science and science related tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. There will also be a live question and answer session. We have limited tickets still available for the event in Melbourne on February 10, as well as the event in Brisbane on February 24. Our event in Sydney at the Sydney Opera House sold out very quickly. So as a consequence, we've now scheduled a second event in Sydney at the Aware Super Theater on February 18. To access tickets to any of these events, you can go to hubermanlab.com events and use the code Huberman at checkout. I hope to see you there. And as always, thank you for your interest in science. And now for my discussion with Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan. Priscilla, Mark, so great to meet you, and thank you for having me here in your home.
Thanks for having us on the podcast.
Yeah, like to talk about the CZI, the Chan Zuckerberg initiative. I learned about this a few years ago when my lab was, and still is now at Stanford as a very exciting philanthropic effort that has a truly big mission. I can't imagine a bigger mission. So maybe you could tell us what that big mission is, and then we can get into some of the mechanics of how that big mission can become a reality.
So, like you're mentioning, in 2015, we launched the Chan Zuckerberg initiative. And what we were hoping to do at CCI was think about how do we build a better future for everyone, and looking for ways where we can contribute the resources that we have to bring philanthropically. And the experiences that Mark and I have had for me as a physician and educator, for Mark as an engineer, and then our ability to bring teams together to build know. Mark has been a builder throughout his career, and what could we do if we actually put together a team to build tools, do great science? And so within our science portfolio, we've really been focused on what some people think is either an incredibly audacious goal or an inevitable goal. But I think about it as something that will happen if we sort of continue focusing on it, which is to be able to cure, prevent, or manage all disease by the end of the century.
All disease.
All disease. So that's important, right? A lot of times people ask, like, which disease? And the whole point is that there is not one disease. And it's really about taking a step back to where I always found the most hope as a physician, which is new discoveries and new opportunities and new ways of understanding how to keep people well come from basic science. So our strategy at CCI is really to build tools, fund science, change the way basic scientists can see the world, and how they can move quickly in their discoveries. And so that's what we launched in 2015. We do work in three ways. We fund great scientists. We build tools right now, software tools, to help move science along and make it easier for scientists to do their work. And we do science. You mentioned Stanford being an important pillar for our science work. We've built what we call biohubs, institutes, where teams can take on grand challenges to do work that wouldn't be possible in a single lab or within a single discipline. And our first biohub was launched in San Francisco, a collaboration between Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UCSF.
Amazing. Curing all diseases implies that there will either be a ton of knowledge gleaned from this effort, which I'm certain there will be, and there already has been. We can talk about some of those early successes in a moment, but it also sort of implies that if we can understand some basic operations of diseases and cells that transcend autism, Huntington's, Parkinson's, cancer, and any other disease, that perhaps there are some core principles that would make the big mission a real reality, so to speak. What I'm basically saying is, how are you attacking this? My belief is that the cell sits at the center of all discussion about disease, given that our body is made up of cells and different types of cells. So maybe you could just illuminate for us a little bit of what the cell is in your mind as it relates to disease and how one goes about understanding disease in the context of cells, because ultimately, that's what we're made up of.
Yeah, well, let's get to the cell thing in a moment. But just even taking a step back from that, we don't think that it's CCI that we're going to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases. The goal is to basically give the scientific community and scientists around the world the tools to accelerate the pace of science. And we
To see the rest of the transcript, you must sign in