Mark Zuckerberg on Life, History and Being Human | The Circuit with Emily Chang (Bonus Clip)

Our one-year-old has, like, four words so far. Stop. And for whatever reason, one of the words that we've chosen to teach her is, what sound does a bear make? She just goes, grrr. And we're like, how is this? It's like, this is such a third-kid thing. It's like the first kids, it's like, oh, I'm going to teach you everything about the world. By the time you get to the third kid, it's like, we're going to use one of your four pieces of knowledge to teach you what sound a bear makes. So, like, sometimes when Mark has a fail with the kids, he'll just say, like, not my best work. Not my best work. That's just, like, a thing he says. When I'm braiding Max's hair, every day. You're braiding hair? Yeah, I'm, like, braiding her hair, and she goes, dad, let me guess. Not your best work. Mark Zuckerberg is a lot of things. Billionaire, Silicon Valley Hall of Famer, internet overlord, MMA fighter, meme magnet, and also a dad trying to do his best work. I caught up with Zuck and his wife Priscilla at their summer home in Tahoe, not far from their mainstay in Palo Alto. Is this like your escape, your oasis, from the real world, from your virtual world? The real world. And your virtual world. I don't know. I like being in Palo Alto and out there, too. But it's just kind of nice to spend time up here over the summer and, you know, get the kids out on the lake and teach them some different sports. You've got Tahoe, you've got Hawaii, you've got the yacht. Are you officially sort of embracing your billionaire era? I don't know. Well, I mean, the Kauai thing is really fun. We're doing ranching down there. I want to try to create the highest quality beef in the world, and we have this whole vertical integration plan where we're growing macadamia nuts to feed the macadamia meal, and we're brewing beer because that helps them eat more. So that's fun. You do have a bunker there. Is there something you know that we don't? No, I think that's just like a little shelter. It's like a basement. A little shelter. What are you worried about? It's a basement. No, no, we have the basic house that we build, and we built, like, an office out there because I work out there. And then there's just a bunch of storage space and, like, whatever you want to call it, hurricane shelter or whatever. I think it got, like, blown out of proportion as if the whole ranch was some kind of doomsday bunker, which is just not true. I know you're a student of the Roman Empire, and you're big into history. What sort of lessons do you take from that? There used to be the sense that, like, prior to Augustus, there was not really a sense of, like, a long-term peace. The sense of peace was, like, the temporary period where your enemies were subdued and not currently attacking you, but it was, like, inevitable that they were just going to regain their strength and attack you again. So their whole economy was sort of based on you have all these mercenaries and permanent soldiers, and he thought, hey, well, if we can just get people to kind of reorient more of the economy around building things and building value rather than just this kind of semi-permanent state of war, then we'd be able to produce more, and it would end up being better for people. And it was sort of counterintuitive at the time, and, like, everyone thought it was crazy, and I don't know. I know there are lessons and analogies like that to some of the things that we do that are sort of counterintuitive. We talked a bunch about open source. At some level, people are like, hey, is this actually protecting your interests? But it actually, if you kind of set your organization up to just produce more kind of shared value for society, I think in some ways it actually does just end up creating more prosperity over time. You go all in on everything you do, it seems like. How do you make time for it all? The sports, the side quests, the super-engaged CEO, the being a dad. I actually think having balance between the different things that you do helps make you do all the things better. My parents emphasized that it's important to do more than just academics. Like, they wanted us to do sports. I mean, I used to fence pretty competitively when I was younger. I want our kids to be like that, too. We teach them surfing, jiu-jitsu, and martial arts. I think they're a little young to learn how to strike. I think they need a little more emotional control before they get there. But I want to get there, too. I wasn't ready to step into the octagon with Zuckerberg just yet, but I was open to getting a private lesson from Coach Zuck in a slightly less violent sport. Wake surfing. It's basically surfing on a lake, but every wipeout feels like a fire hose to the face. I heard you're a surfer. No, no, no. I'm from Hawaii, and I have surfed before. Great. But I'm not a surfer. Okay. I hear you're a surfer. Yeah, Priscilla's quite good. Dr. Priscilla Chan, Zuck's longtime partner and thrilled recipient of a seven-foot turquoise likeness, heads up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic effort that's leading breakthroughs in health, science, and education. How excited are you about AI as it applies to science? I think it just changes the way you do science and how quickly you can do science. And that's the exciting part. But now that, like, it's so clear that AI and software is critical to biomedicine, it's really taking advantage of, like, what I have to bring to the table and what Mark has to bring to the table, where we can, like, figure out how to build a compute cluster. What are the right types of biomedical problems that AI can be helpful in? So tell me about wake surfing. Like, how did you get into wake surfing? Is it, like, an adrenaline rush? You'll feel it. Yeah, you'll feel it. You're gonna get in the water. We don't need to explain it to you. It will become obvious to you in a minute. Go for it. Unlike the normal surf wave, a surf wave pushes forward. This pushes a little to the side, so you have to lean into it a little bit. When you get your feet up, do you just hold them there? Your body will know what to do once you get up. That's our family sports motto. Your body knows what to do. We're just, like, screaming at our kids. It's like, your body knows what to do. Get back in there, Max. Ready to rock. Ready, Elohi. Let the board flip. Oh, she's so close. She's so close. What did I do wrong? I think you were pretty close. Yeah. This is the part when people are like, are you sure this sport is fun? There's definitely, like, there's a photo in there of you standing on the board. She's determined. She's gonna want to do it. That's sheer will. That's another family joke. It's sheer will. Well, that's John Wayne. Your body knows what to do, Mark. Yeah. My body does know what to do. All right, go for it. That was epic. All right. I think we're good. Go for it. Awesome. Now point the nose in here. It was worth it. Talk about persistent. When I saw you in that tux, people online were, like, wondering if that was real or AI-generated. Well, I mean, it's a good trick if people wonder if it's AI-generated, but no, it was not. I'm here to say he's human, and he really did it. Do you think tech will change the very essence of what it means to be human? I think if you look over, you know, the last few hundred years, most people had to spend all their time basically farming or working in order to survive. So I guess it depends on what you mean by more human, but it makes us, it frees us up to, I think, be more creative and more focused on living out our values. You know, if technology continues, then we'll get more productive, which means that we'll be able to provide for people's basic needs with a smaller and smaller portion of all of human labor, which means that people will be freed up to do more creative work and more of the stuff that they want, which I think is great. Obviously, there's all these challenges that we'll need to navigate along the way, but I'm pretty optimistic about that kind of grand arc here. So I have an idea. Okay. About how to protect us. I brought you some sunscreen. Because I know you like it. I do. And I just thought this would be good for you. Thank you, thank you. This is like about the amount of sunscreen that I need.