Inside Mark Zuckerberg's plan to 'cure all disease' - and his view on the meaning of life

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went on the Lex Fridman podcast to talk about his plans for the metaverse - but he also explained what he'd say to God and how he plans to spend his billions

Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has always been ambitious. But it seems as if his ambitions go even further than building the 3D 'Metaverse', as he revealed in a recent podcast where he talked about his aim to help prevent or cure all disease.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Lex Fridman podcast, Zuckerberg said he would rather spend his billions on helping sickness worldwide, rather than trying to live forever.

Like Bill Gates, Zuckerberg runs his own philanthropic project, in his case the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Explaining his motivation behind the £59 billion charity, Zuckerberg said:

"It was an intentional decision to not focus our philanthropy explicitly on longevity or living forever [...] it is focused on what I think is a possible goal in this century which be able to cure prevent or manage all diseases."

He told Fridman that he thinks people getting sick and dying is a 'bad thing', and he is dedicating 'almost all' of his money towards research in that area.

"I don't actually ever know if you're ever going to eradicate it but I think you can get to a point where you can either cure things that happen so people get diseases but you can cure them. Prevent is probably closest to eradication or just be able to manage ongoing things that aren't going to ruin your life.

I think saying that there's going to be no disease at all is probably not possible for the next several decades."

Zuckerberg was also asked what he thinks the meaning of life is, to which he said that the meaning of life is for people to create.

He said: He said: "Why does the Bible start there?

"It could have started anywhere in terms of how to live, but basically it starts with talking about how God created people."

"I actually think that there is like a compelling argument that I've always just found meaningful and inspiring that a lot of the point of what, sort of, religion has been telling us that we should do is to create and build things."

Zuckerberg first announced his plans to cure diseases by 2100 back in 2016 with the launch of their £2.2 billion project, BioHub.

More recently, Zuckerberg lost around $24 billion (£17 billion) overnight when his company Meta saw stock prices plummet after Facebook reported no growth for the first time ever.