Joe Rogan podcast - live: Zuckerberg complains he gets millions of bad emails and has no time for Facebook

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who oversees Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the Metaverse, is making a surprise appearance as a guest on controversial podcast host Joe Rogan’s latest show.

Rogan has been a lightning rod since his Joe Rogan Experience, the world’s most popular podcast, was bought by Spotify in a $100m deal.

Earlier this year Rogan found himself at the centre of controversy when he was accused of spreading Covid-19 misinformation and hosted a guest who claimed that Americans were “hypnotised” into wearing masks and getting vaccines.

Musicians such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell also removed their music from Spotify recently over concerns about Covid-19 “misinformation” being spread on his popular podcast, exclusively available on the audio streaming service.

Zuckerberg says that 3.5bn people use Meta’s platforms

21:03 , Graeme Massie

He told Rogan that “there is always stuff to work on” and that he had to “maintain control” of his time so he was not just reacting “to things that people throw at me.”

“You could spend all your time reacting to that but what creates the ability to be successful long term is carving out the time that is proactive, that is both taking care of yourself and being physical and getting out there and spending time with my family and my girls,” he said.

Zuckerberg says he wakes up to ‘a million messages’ and ‘its usually not good'

20:51 , Graeme Massie

“My sort of day is, you wake up in the morning look at my phone, get a million messages that have come in, its usually not good,” he told Rogan.

“People reserve the good stuff to tell me in person, right? So it’s like what’s going on in the world that I need to pay attention to? So it’s almost like every day you wake up you are punched in the stomach.

“Then it’s like okay, well f**k, what do I need to do to go and reset myself and be productive and not stressed by this? How do I do that? I basically read I take in all the information and then go and do something physical for an hour or two and reset myself.

“I used to run a lot but the problem is you can think a lot when you are running, the last few years I have gotten into things that require full focus.”

Zuckerberg says he does not have time for social media

20:39 , Graeme Massie

He was asked by Rogan if he limited his time on social media, or if he controlled his children’s access to it.

“Me personally I am just doing so many things that in practice that there are not (enough) hours in the day,” he said.

“My kids, I have not really had to think about it quite as much as they are pretty young, six and five, so they use it. I want them to use technology for different things, I teach them how to code, it is an outlet of creativity.

“Max likes building things and Augie thinks of it as art. I try to do bedtime with them religiously each night. I ask them what activity they want to do, read, or wrestle, and Augie says she wants to do code art, she thinks of it as making the computer make art.

“It is good for them to get that exposure, everything you are doing on a computer or screen is not the same. are you engaging with someone, building relationships, or just consuming?

“If you are just sitting there and consuming stuff, it is not bad, but it is not associated with the benefits you get for actively engaging with people and building relationships.”

He added that he does a “bunch of messaging” but that he does not watch much TV as it puts him in “a weird mental state”

Zuckerberg teases Elon Musk over brain computers

20:17 , Graeme Massie

“The super hard part is having a computer give you information straight into your brain,” he said.

“Some people, like Elon, and Neuralink and those companies, that is taking it super far-off and maybe it’ll be ready in a couple of decades,” he said.

“There will probably be interesting use cases in the near term for people with injuries, but normal people in the next 10 to 15 years are not going to want to get something installed in their brain for fun is my guess.

“You want the mature version of that and not have to get your brain chip upgraded next year.”

Zuckerberg says company spending $10bn on research this year

20:09 , Graeme Massie

“You go across all these things and it this incredibly wide amount of technology that needs to get built,” he said.

Surfing during the pandemic in Kauai, Hawaii

20:01 , Graeme Massie

“I spent a lot of time down in Kauai early on. I got really into surfing and hydrofoiling and I would get up early and go and do that and then be really refreshed for my day of meetings,” he said. “That is not something I could do in Palo Alto.”

Zuckerberg says he ‘sees' people every day

19:58 , Graeme Massie

“You will never be able to do all things you can do in person but you will be able to do more and more. You will be able to work remotely, live wherever you want, and show up in any place, that is going to be pretty awesome,” said Zuckerberg.

Rogan said no one would ever want to be in an office again if that was the case.

“Being present with people and feeling a sense of presence is pretty important,” added Zuckerberg about having staff in an office.

He then told Rogan he physically sees people “almost every day.”

“I see people in person almost every day, sometimes I probably do more meetings at my house now than I would do before, but I do think that seeing people in person and having that sense of presence makes a big difference.

Rogan said that people preferred to work from home after the pandemic.

“Oh yeah, I agree with that toot that. Our company is pretty forward leading about remote work, some types of work, like software engineering you can do from many kinds of places. I have this thing where I will be in zone-flow concentration and my wife will ask me some basic question and I lose my flow, and from her perspective, it is not a big deal, but that is not how it works”.

Zuckerberg admits he “hates” sitting at his desk

19:45 , Graeme Massie

“I hate sitting in front of my desk, I feel that if I’m not active I’m just wasting away,” he said as he predicted that VR headsets could change fitness regimes and said he enjoyed playing boxing games.

“My energy level and mood and how I interact with the world is based on...its so physical. I don’t believe we are just brains in a body, our physical being and actions we take there are as much of kind the experience of being human.”

Metaverse aiming for glasses not VR headset

19:33 , Graeme Massie

“You want them to be a normal-looking pair of glasses,” he added saying they were working on “waveguide” technology that could be made out of plastic or glass.

He predicted that in five years they could be doing the interview using AI glasses and a hologram version of the Facebook boss would be talking to Rogan.

“So few of the physical things we have in the world don’t need to be physical. chairs and food need to be physical, but most entertainment, like TVs, don’t need to be physical, it will just be an app on your wall and you will snap your fingers and a hologram of a TV will appear.”

Fully immersive VR suit?

19:27 , Graeme Massie

“I think there will be opprortunities to wear things to augment the experience further,” said Zuckerberg, highlighting gloves the company is working on that will allow the user to “feel” objects.

“But I want to design this where you do not need to do that. You don’t want a set-up where you have 10 pieces. Ultimately people will want versions of this they can bring around, take on anairplane, in the office or in a coffee shop.”

Zuckerberg says new Metaverse equipment coming

19:25 , Graeme Massie

The tech entrepreneur told Rogan that the new equipment was being released in October and that it would allow avatars to mimic users facial expressions and allow avatars to make eye contact.

“Virtual reality really convinces your brain you are there. You have to convince your brain that this isn’t real and that you are not actually there,” he said.

Mark Zuckerberg makes surprise appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast

19:18 , Graeme Massie

This is a live blog covering the Meta CEO’s three-hour appearance on Joe Rogan’s Spotify podcast.