-You just got back from traveling. Where were you?
-I was all over the place, but for the last few months,
few months leading up to the holidays, I was in India.
-Yeah, you were in India. -Whoo!
-What were you doing there? Can we say what you were doing?
-I was -- I'm shooting a TV show,
a new TV show for Apple. -Oh.
-An adaptation of the novel "Shantaram."
-Ah. And how -- It didn't really go --
I mean, the shooting went well, and the project is great,
but you didn't have the best time in India.
-No, there were some challenges.
I had a series of pretty significant health issues
that, as they went on, seemed like
a series of assassination attempts.
I got a -- I got a lung infection
which turns into a sinus infection.
And then I got conjunctivitis in both my eyes.
[ Audience groans ] Then I got an ear infection.
Then I got strep throat, then a bacterial gut infection.
And then I got bitten by a mosquito
and contracted dengue fever.
[ Audience exclaims ]
-It is -- [ Laughter ]
-Thank you. [ Applause ]
-They should have put you in a box,
and I had to touch you. I mean, wow.
-It was kind of confounding, 'cause I kind of pride myself
on having impeccable personal hygiene,
but I think some of those things sometimes go against you.
I think my immune system was too delicate
because I'm too clean.
-You're too clean, so you got to get out there and just start --
-You got to roll around in the mud a little bit.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-But you have a weird kind of history of almost dying.
-I do. I do.
This year particularly.
It was a strange year.
-Hopefully it's over with.
-Well, we'll see.
I mean, I had a mosquito in my room last night.
-That doesn't count. That doesn't count.
-But it's New York, and it's January,
and I was on the eighth floor.
-Think he's, like, a super mutant mosquito?
-You know, I was worried, because I don't --
I don't know the ins and outs of dengue fever.
You have it for a period of time,
but then the antibodies stay in your body, obviously,
'cause you have to get tested,
and that's the way antibodies work.
And I wondered, if that mosquito bit me,
does then that mosquito contract dengue fever,
and then the next person who checks into that hotel --
These are the things you got to ask yourself.
These are the things that I stay up late night worrying about.
-You're trying to save lives out here.
-I am. You know, I'm doing what I can for the people.
-[ Laughs ] Wow.
-It was a weird year. It started off getting a --
I went camping, and I got a deer tick that burrowed into my leg,
and I did not contract Lyme disease,
'cause I once had gotten a deer tick
in the highlands of Scotland,
which I didn't even know had Lyme disease,
and I got Lyme disease.
But I didn't get Lyme disease.
But a very strange thing happened to me
when I went camping a few months later.
I went out looking for firewood one day,
and it was end of the season. It was kind of picked dry.
And so I was pretty far from my camp.
And I was just wearing some sweatpants and a t-shirt.
And there were three trees fallen into a triangle,
and in those trees was a mother lode of firewood.
So I said, "Alright, here we go."
And I got up, and I was...
crouched down like this picking up firewood,
and all of a sudden,
wham, like, a snakebite in the perineum.
-Where's -- The perineum, where is that?
-The perineum is that sweet piece of no man's land
between the anus and the scrotum.
-Okay. [ Applause ]
-Alright, so -- -That is a suboptimal place
to get bitten by a snake.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, a snake jumped out and --
-So, I -- That's what it felt like.
And I look down, and there was no snake.
So I was trying to process what could have happened,
and, bam, another shrill pain in my ass cheek.
-Okay.
-Then one in the back of my head,
and then one under my armpit,
and I realized I was under siege from yellow jackets.
I'd kicked over a nest of yellow jackets.
And as I was processing this angry swarm coming at me --
Sorry. I'm very bad at microphone etiquette.
As I was processing this swarm coming at me,
I got stung about another 10 times in about 5 seconds.
So I took off running, as any, you know, heroic figure would.
I took off sprinting through the forest
and ran for about a minute and a half
and stopped to see what was happening
and immediately bam, bam, bam,
got stung about another five times.
Now I'm starting to get really worried, you know?
I don't know much about yellow jackets.
But I assume 20 bites is probably -- or stings
is probably reaching the threshold.
-[ Laughing ] Oh, my God.
-So, I ripped all of my clothes off.
I kicked my shoes off, and I took all my clothes off.
-Yeah. -And then --
And then put my shoes back on and continued sprinting
completely naked.
[ Women cheering ]
And this is all true.
I realized at that moment I was actually inside a nightmare,
a recurring nightmare.
I for many years had had this recurring dream that I was --
a nightmare that I was sprinting for my life naked in a forest.
In that moment,
I was literally inside -- -Living --
-I was living my recurring nightmare.
-Oh, my goodness.
-And I haven't had that dream since.
So it was something of a prophecy or something, right?
So I'm going to start --
I'm going to start taking -- [ Cheers and applause ]
I'm gonna start taking these dreams a little more seriously.
-That is unbelievable. -Yeah.
-So it was not a snake at all.
-No. -But, gosh, that's awful.
Did you have to go to the hospital?
-I did, but I -- Well, you know, it's funny.
I was very sick that day. And my -- I was with my girlfriend,
and she went and got the park ranger.
I mean, we were way out.
And she went and got a ranger, and he came and looked at me.
He said, "You're probably going to be okay."
And I was sort of okay that day,
and then two days later, I got very, very sick.
And I spoke to my doctor, and he said,
"You had probably so much venom in your system
that your body starts to create antibodies to fight the venom."
And then if I got stung again,
because I have those antibodies in my system now,
I could have a bad reaction.
So I'm supposed to carry an EpiPen,
but of course, I'm an idiot, and I don't.
-Maybe you got superpowers for a day.
-Maybe. -Like, maybe you --
-They didn't do me much good in India, let me tell you.
-No, that's true. [ Laughs ]
I forgot about India. Never mind. Yeah.
-So it was a strange year, 20--
But we're in a new decade now.
-Here we are. Yeah. -We'll see.
-Oh, please. It's going to be the best year for you yet.