4 things to know from Elon Musk's interview with Don Lemon

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Former CNN reporter Don Lemon mixed it up with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in an interview Lemon posted on Musk’s X social network Monday. The interview was supposed to kick off Lemon’s new talk show on X, formerly known as Twitter, at least until Musk canceled the show shortly after the interview was recorded.

Over the course of slightly more than an hour, the two men jousted over subjects ranging from the political consequences of immigration and the benefits and harms of content moderation to Musk’s symptoms of depression and his use of ketamine to alleviate them.

Here are some of the more notable moments.

Musk said he thinks of X as the “player versus player platform,” using a term for video games that pit players against one another, typically in fights to the pixelated death. While he wasn’t particularly clear about what he meant by likening X to a death match, he did bring it up in the context of the occasional late-night posts in which he appears to be spoiling for an argument.

The subject arose when Musk described how he relaxes by playing video games and his preference for these PvP contests — what he considers “hardcore” gaming. It’s one way to blow off steam, he said — and agreed, at least to a point, when Lemon suggested that taking on X opponents served the same purpose. Though not always, he said.

“I use it to post jokes, sometimes trivia, sometimes things that are of great importance,” Musk said of his X posts.

Musk is “almost always” sober when posting on X late at night, he told Lemon. “I don’t drink, I don’t really, y’know....” he said, his voice trailing off. Then Lemon asked about a subject Musk has previously discussed publicly — his use of the drug ketamine, a controlled substance that is also used in medical settings as an anesthetic and for treatment-resistant depression.

When Lemon asked, Musk said he has a prescription for ketamine, although he pushed back, calling it “pretty private to ask someone about a medical prescription.” He described “times when I have a sort of a negative chemical state in my brain, like depression, I guess,” and said that ketamine can be helpful for alleviating “a negative frame of mind.”

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