EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,208 words- 0:01 – 3:09
British vs. American English: “Herbs,” spelling, and accents
- JRJoe Rogan
Three, two, one. Boom, and we're live. How are you? What's going on?
- EIEddie Izzard
I'm good. I'm pouring coffee in the first seconds...
- JRJoe Rogan
Perfect.
- EIEddie Izzard
... of our chat.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the good way to do it.
- EIEddie Izzard
With a cafetiere-
- JRJoe Rogan
Good way to-
- EIEddie Izzard
... cafetiere, I think it is. I think that's f- f- named in a French way.
- JRJoe Rogan
A French press? That's what they're called?
- EIEddie Izzard
Is it called... Well, it's called a, I think it's called a cafetiere, but it's probably called a pot of coffee. But, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
That makes sense.
- EIEddie Izzard
But you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
That there's a French word for it that we just ignore here in America. (laughs)
- EIEddie Izzard
I know, 'cause they, they did invent a lot of the food. You know, 'cause you have, um, herbs. You know herbs?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
And I used to do this bit of material, which I really enjoyed saying, you know, the difference between British and American, you say this, you say that. And, uh, you say herbs and we say herbs because there's a fucking H in it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EIEddie Izzard
And I used to... (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EIEddie Izzard
I used to say because there's a fucking H. But, and I thought, "Well, why has the H dropped off for America?" And I think it's because put, a lot of French guys would have come over, immigration, and they would have done a lot of cooking, you know, so now these French guys know about cooking.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- EIEddie Izzard
And they do the herbs, and they, they cut the H off totally. So I think that was an influence from that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Probably Julia Child.
- EIEddie Izzard
Julia Child? Is she French?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I think. Wasn't she?
- EIEddie Izzard
She is now. I think she's-
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, she's into French cooking.
- EIEddie Izzard
Oh, right. Okay, but that, that-
- JRJoe Rogan
That was her thing, right?
- EIEddie Izzard
... Lafayette, maybe Lafayette is sitting next to Washington saying, "We will use herbs with the stuff here."
- 3:09 – 7:40
Travel, passports, and seeing common humanity across cultures
- JRJoe Rogan
You've spent a lot of time over y- I've only... The only, the only time I've ever spent in, uh, England is working. Uh, like, a little bit of, you know, downtime, doing standup and, and hanging out over there, but most of it's just been working.
- EIEddie Izzard
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Either working for the UFC or... I've never even really get a chance to really spend time in England. I'd like to. I'd like to do that just to kind of understand you folks.
- EIEddie Izzard
Well, I think-
- JRJoe Rogan
You're a different breed.
- EIEddie Izzard
When... I think at the base, having played 45 countries now, I think everyone is actually the same when you get down below a level. But, you know, if you're gonna reach for you, there's got to be a number of things which would make it seem different, and brand names will all be different and your sports stars, you know, everyone's a sports star to everyone, everyone has politicians and everything, that kind of thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
But underneath it all, it's gonna be, there's gonna be more mainstream people, there's gonna be alternative people, there's gonna be-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
... and the whole spectrum now. Like in the old days, it used to be everything was mainstream, then a bit of alternative. Now, we, I think your country and my country, we have a whole spectrum of what interests people. It's much more open in that way.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
See what I'm saying?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, no, I, I, I certainly agree. We, yeah, it's the, the, the collection of people is very similar. It's just they're operating in a different environment, a different theater, right?
- EIEddie Izzard
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
And, uh, you know, we're tightly smashed together. What are we? 65 million and you're 300 million, and you're such a large, your country's so large compared to us.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
Um, 'cause there was this thing of 10, only 10% of Americans have passports, but if you look at the area-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that real?
- EIEddie Izzard
Something like that. But then if you look at where the 10% can go in America, it's just so huge.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EIEddie Izzard
So it's slightly more understandable why a lot of Americans say, "I don't need a passport because I'm just gonna go to that place which is miles away."
- JRJoe Rogan
That's understanding of you, but I think, you know, I think it would do everybody good-
- EIEddie Izzard
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to go somewhere like, like Asia. Like A- every time I go to Asia, I always think, "Okay, people are like this too."
- EIEddie Izzard
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, this is-
- EIEddie Izzard
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... this is an interesting thing to experience.
- EIEddie Izzard
Travel.
- 7:40 – 14:08
Military mindset, long-term strategy, and Eddie’s gender fluid identity
- EIEddie Izzard
... they can run it however they want to run it. But, um, yeah, it's, it's tragic the things the world's getting in to. I was gonna be in the military when I was a kid. That was one of my ... I wanted to be in Special Forces. And when you look at me now, being a transgender guy with that ... but yeah, that was where I was. I know Trump wouldn't have let me in the-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EIEddie Izzard
... Forces right now if I went and applied right this second. Um, but yeah, so I follow everything, I, I kind of run my life on, on a military ... That sounds a bit weird. I run my career on a military thing, 'cause it's quite difficult to, you know, any career putting it together is kind of weird, what's your next move, what's this, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
How so? You like, you like strategize and that?
- EIEddie Izzard
Oh, yeah. Strategy out the wazoo. I plan 50 years ahead.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- EIEddie Izzard
Oh, yeah. Well, if you think about it, you come out as tr- I came out as transgender 34 years ago. That's not the first good thing that an agent wants to hear. "You're transgender? That's 85."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EIEddie Izzard
This is such a hot thing. This is, even now, they would say, "Okay, well, it's got a little better than it was for f- uh, five, 10 millennia. It's a little better now, but it's still not the hottest ticket that everyone's ... We want transgender guys in here for this, that, and the other." It's not the top of the list.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EIEddie Izzard
And I've also got boy mode and girl mode, and I do ph- drama- dramatic films in boy mode, and then I'm touring in girl mode and doing standup, and I campaign for politics in girl mode. And I just s- switch back-
- JRJoe Rogan
How do you do that?
- EIEddie Izzard
I just switch, change, you know, take off heels, flat shoes, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, because if you were just talking, like if you, you didn't have makeup on, and you didn't have the heels and the nails, you just seem male.
- EIEddie Izzard
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
Well, it's, uh, it's, I think it's genetically inbuilt, you know, there's some, I think there's quite a lot of people maybe who were, um, uh, the, the way their li- they live their lives, they have their own personality, they're not particularly male or female-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
... I feel. But I feel, I've always felt since I was four or five I wanted to express this side of myself, and it's built in, I think it's genetic. Um, and if you analyze masculine and feminine, if you really get down to it, you ca- I, it's, I find it impossible to come up with anything that was particularly masculine, particularly feminine except for the ability to build muscle mass is easier for men, in inverted commas.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
That's it, but you know, great footballers, so soccer players, men and women, athletics, runners, men and women, strong character mens, weak character-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- EIEddie Izzard
... men and women, um, mathematicians, whatever, whatever it is, there's nothing that you can really say, "Ah, that is only ... Good shot and with a gun." No, anyone could do that. It's, uh, we're all humans, and so ... And we get fixated by the masculine and feminine.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
Whereas if it's a tiger, if a tiger's attacking you and trying to kill you, you don't go, "Now, is this a girl tiger or a boy tiger?" We don't care about it, and they don't care either, the tigers.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you've always felt g- like you gravitated towards feminine things, towards-
- EIEddie Izzard
No, gravitated towards both. I, I, I had-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
I gravitated towards playing soccer. I was in the first team for two years when I was a kid, was planning to do Officer Training Corps and then go Marines or Paras and then go into the Special Forces, RSAS, which would be the equivalent of your Delta Force. Um, and that was a distinct plan, I knew a lot about that. And I thought, "Which war are they gonna send me to? Actually, which war will they send me to? And it could be the idiots that I'm at school with will send me to the wrong war."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- 14:08 – 18:24
Early backlash, street confrontations, and resilience
- JRJoe Rogan
When you w- first started wearing women's clothes and dresses and makeup on stage, did people think it was a gimmick? What did-
- EIEddie Izzard
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What did they think?
- EIEddie Izzard
They did. I don't e- I d- I decided not to call them women's clothes, just, um, ............................ I just say they're-
- JRJoe Rogan
Feminine.
- EIEddie Izzard
... they're my clothes. I would just wear dresses.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EIEddie Izzard
You know, like women can wear trousers or pants.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
And we used to call that, "Men's pants." And I said, "Oh, they're pants, fuck it." So, um, but yeah, they fi- I first started talking about it and not wearing anything. Uh, again, looked kind of boy like and male like and-
- JRJoe Rogan
And you were talking about it like-
- EIEddie Izzard
I, I had a first joke. This is my first ever joke. I had this about two years before I did it. I said, "Look, you're doing stand up. Um, so if you're from a minority, it's kind of a good thing. So if you..." In standup terms. So if you're from, uh, a lower in come background, you could say, "Rich people, God, they're, uh, uh, so easy for them." If you're a woman, you say, "Men, ah, men." If you're an ethnic background, you say, "White people." "Oh, those white people." So if you're a white male middle class standup, "Oh, it's useless." So thank God I'm a transvestite.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EIEddie Izzard
That was my first laugh. And everyone thought, "He's making jokes about something that he's not." You know, and they, and they wouldn't believe me. And journalists were going, "I don't know why he's doing this."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EIEddie Izzard
"'Cause he's doing pretty well now, but this is, I don't know, is this a joke?" So I thought, "I better wear a dress as, you know, put some makeup on." And then they said, "Okay, he's doing this. He is serious, but he looks a mess."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EIEddie Izzard
Um, this kind of baby elephant thing I was doing. It was, okay, gotta get your weight under control.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
You should get a better haircut than that. And you just gotta fail a lot. And there's a humiliation period. I mean, this is the weird thing about coming out, that it, it's kind of humiliating. People will say, "You look like..." People will say h- horrible things. What do they say? "Uh, what the fuck is that?" Somebody said to my face right there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- EIEddie Izzard
As I was walking out of a restaurant. So I thought, "That's not very nice." And you have to be able to deflect it and go, "Well, you're obviously a scumbag, so fuck you, man." So I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it mostly men?
- EIEddie Izzard
Yes. And occasionally women.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
Occasionally women, but, uh, yeah. I mean, you know, it's low, people of low, lower character they are-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
... or lesser character. If you're a strong character in yourself, you, you don't care. Live and let live, what the hell?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- EIEddie Izzard
You know, people, "Okay, doesn't quite look together, but you know, life's tough enough." But if, if you wanna put someone down, you raise your own status by doing that.
- 18:24 – 24:33
43 marathons in 51 days: pain, adaptation, and the “zen” of endurance
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I saw, uh, we were talking before and you were trying to tell me that you were lazy. I'm like, "Fuck you." I saw that thing that you did, that documentary where you ran a series of marathons in a row-
- EIEddie Izzard
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... with no training at all. And I remember thinking before that, I had this opinion of you. And the opinion of you was you're a funny guy, you're a funny comedian, um, you, you have good stand-up, you obviously work hard at it. But then I saw that and I was like, "Oh, okay, there's something going on there." Like, you're, this is a different kind of human being.
- EIEddie Izzard
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The kind of human being that can push themselves into doing that day after day after day. And I looked at your feet where your skin was literally falling off and you're taping everything up. And, um, that's a, that's a person that's got... You have an iron will. Like, that's a very unusual will for, uh, a comedian who doesn't really exercise. Like, when you were doing them, you were... I mean, you maybe exercised a little bit, but you weren't in shape.
- EIEddie Izzard
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you decided to run how many marathons in a row?
- EIEddie Izzard
W- was it the UK one? Was it the, the first-
- JRJoe Rogan
What are-
- EIEddie Izzard
... one. Yeah, that was 43 in 51 days.
- JRJoe Rogan
43 marathons in a row in 51 days with no training.
- EIEddie Izzard
At a def week. I did have training though, six weeks training.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
Which is not a lot. But they did, they said that, you know, sometimes if you run a marathon you should train for nine months before that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
And I thought, "Well, if I'm gonna do 43, that's gonna be, I'm gonna be training forever."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EIEddie Izzard
And I can't be bothered with that. So I, but, you know, and this happened in your civil war, in maybe in any war, uh, I, I, I'm quite, somewhat encyclopedic about your civil war and, and revolution more to a bit and, but, World War II, but tr- on the spot training. You know, training as you go along.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
That's what I did. The first 10 marathons trains you for the next 33.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was it like when you got over the first day, though? The first marathon, you must have been like-
- EIEddie Izzard
First, first day's okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
... "What the fuck?"
- EIEddie Izzard
No, first day is okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- EIEddie Izzard
Because, well, it's, it's, it's all in your head. There's a, um... I- it's more mental than it is physical. And so the first marathon, I've heard of people running marathons, run, walk, stagger, not very fast, blu, blu, blu, get it done, boom. The second marathon is weird 'cause you go, "I've done one, I'm on the second." And you can't really rejoice, you can't punch the sky, you can't put a medal around your neck. You're already, you got up at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning and you're, it's midday and you're, you're going through your second one. And then you're through the third one, and then you're through the fourth one. And then it was raining and my feet were shredding, and I thought-
- JRJoe Rogan
From the moisture?
- EIEddie Izzard
Uh, it was, yes-
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause the, the-
- EIEddie Izzard
... it made it too soft-
- 24:33 – 27:07
Rhabdomyolysis, statins, hydration crises, and risk management
- JRJoe Rogan
Were you experiencing rhabdo? Is that what it is?
- EIEddie Izzard
Rhabdomyolysis. You know about rhabdo.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
Yeah. You're the first person I've ever talked to who's known about rhabdomyolysis. (laughs) Yeah, I got rhabdo in 2012, um, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
How'd you get that?
- EIEddie Izzard
I was on a, a anti-cholesterol drug, just a sort of health drug. Your cholesterol's a bit high, take this thing once a day. And side effect is rhabdomyolysis.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus.
- EIEddie Izzard
Which I couldn't spell, being dyslexic. And I was peeing brown pee.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
And, and, uh, did it, there was no real pain, a lot of lethargy. I was really tired. I thought, "This is a bit weird."
- JRJoe Rogan
And this is without exercise, you were getting it?
- EIEddie Izzard
Uh. (coughs) I was on marathon three and marathon four, so I had trained... Had I trained before that? I'd done some training before that one. I'm a bit weird with my training. But yeah, so there wasn't a huge amount of training before that one, but, uh, my third marathon and I started peeing a bit of brown pee.
- JRJoe Rogan
This was not through the whole series of marathons, or it was?
- EIEddie Izzard
No. Well, I, I tried to do South Africa twice.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- EIEddie Izzard
So 2012 was my first one. After day four, on a, an anti, um, cholesterol drug, uh, trying to control my cholesterol and, and I started broiling brown pee. And then they said, "You've got to go to a hospital now." The guys there, "You, we've got to put fluids through you." You have to go see a specialist. The specialist said, "You can't continue this 27 thing because you have to get all this stuff out of your system. Otherwise, the kidneys..." Because the, it shreds the mu- you know this.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- EIEddie Izzard
It shreds the muscles into the bloodstream.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
Clogs up kidneys, kidney failure.
- JRJoe Rogan
Very dangerous.
- EIEddie Izzard
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
A lot of fighters get it.
- EIEddie Izzard
Really?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah, um, a fighter died from it, um, recently in Boston, in the Massachusetts area. Yeah, it's, uh, it's apparently, um, something that happens when fighters overtrain as well. Like sometimes they're not doing it scientifically, so they're not analyzing their heart rate, their heart rate variability.
- EIEddie Izzard
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they don't know that they haven't really truly recovered and they continue to push themselves because they, they want to prepare harder.
- EIEddie Izzard
Yes.
- 27:07 – 1:04:33
Running in South Africa: safety escorts, wildlife, and intense conditions
- EIEddie Izzard
It goes to a scary place. But 2016, day five, bloods were looking a bit weird, day off, so day 27 I did double marathon, and that was kind of a interesting day. So you run one marathon and you- so last day of your run, you've only done 25 marathons, and it's the day 27, so... And when you go through that finishing, the, the final flag where the w- you know, you should be waving flags, you've got another marathon to go. And it's just, yeah, I, my brain, I thought, "This is kind of good, but you've got a- it's 90K you're gonna do today."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EIEddie Izzard
Ignore it, carry on, and it was a rough, rough old day.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's, uh, five hours, then another five hours. Five hours plus-
- EIEddie Izzard
It was-
- JRJoe Rogan
... and another five hours plus.
- EIEddie Izzard
In the end it was six... Uh, I, I took 11 hours and 50 minutes to run 90K.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oof.
- EIEddie Izzard
So I did double marathon in 11 hours 10 minutes.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's damn good.
- EIEddie Izzard
Yeah, it was good enough. And there's, they've got a, they've got a Comrades Marathon in South Africa, which is 90K and they've got a 12-hour cutoff. So I said, "I will do 90K in 12 hours."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
The double marathon was 84, and then I did another 6K after I'd finished.
- JRJoe Rogan
(coughs) That last moment must have been orgasmic. When you finished, it must have been incredible.
- EIEddie Izzard
Finishing the 84 was beautiful. You finish at the steps of Nelson Mandela's statue where he was made, uh, president, and that was beauti- and, and rough. I'd had to speed up in the last hour because of complications, so I actually got faster. If y- I don't know if you've ever done the thing where you're knackered and knackered, so now go-
- JRJoe Rogan
Why'd you have to speed up?
- EIEddie Izzard
There was a wind- it was a, a, a thing called Sport Relief I was doing it for, so I was raising money and, and I wanted to finish inside the camera window. They had a window till 3:15 South African time. Um, police escorts were needed at certain bits, otherwise you would get carjacked, thing, and, and it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus.
- EIEddie Izzard
And you won't survive this bit. So I said, "Can't we just ignore the, the carjacking thing?" "No, you can't ignore it."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- EIEddie Izzard
So I said, "Okay, stop the clock. Put me in the thing, drive me to Pretoria, stop me off, and then I'll run there and we'll just continue it on there." So we had to do that, so we got behind because I wasn't running 'cause I had to be driven across this dangerous period of r- uh, par- point of road to be dropped at Pretoria, then I just had to run the, the kilometers off.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they have like a carjack area?
- EIEddie Izzard
Yeah, they have certain areas where there's, it's kind of out there, there's no one really out there, and you just go along there and they'll, you know, anything can happen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- EIEddie Izzard
So, um, my f- my film producer fixer, he was just saying, "We don't do this. Just, you can't go there." So I said, "Well, just get me closer to the finishing line and then I'll just run and run. It doesn't really matter where I'm running now. We know it's Pretoria, we know we need to finish, I need to just run that distance." So I, I ran the distance off, but the time had got behind, so I had to speed up from 7.5 kilometers an hour to 10 kilometers an hour, so an extra third of the speed-
- JRJoe Rogan
Woo.
- EIEddie Izzard
Which was kind of evil.
- JRJoe Rogan
Woo.
- EIEddie Izzard
And I, I moaned a lot that day.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- 1:04:33 – 1:05:05
Politics and optimism: elections, Brexit toxicity, and a “radical moderate” agenda
- JRJoe Rogan
So, you are running for something now? What are you doing?
- EIEddie Izzard
Um, I'm gonna g- I've said that for nine years, quite consistently, I would like to say, uh, that I was gonna run in 2020. We, we had set terms in our, in our politics, like you always had. You've had a four-year, we had arranged into a five-year, but then we've gone back to the old system, which is where the Prime Minister of the country can choose when they have an election. And it can be anywhere up to a day, you know, the next day after the election or, uh, up to five years later. So, we have no idea when that-
Episode duration: 2:56:58
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