I’m Damiano David and this is my “Last Meal”. Every person has exactly two things in common, we all gotta eat and we’re all gonna die. Today’s guest is a certified platinum recording artist who has sold out arenas across the globe as a lead singer of Måneskin. His debut solo album, “Funny Little Fears”, is out on May 16th and if you lived in Rome a decade ago, he might have knocked on your door and tried to sell you a pillow. Damiano David, welcome to the show. That’s… It’s crazy that you know that. I think it’s crazy that you sold pillows door-to-door. I did it, I was also quite good at it. Were you really? Yeah, yeah I was quite good. Yeah I was… It was not legal ’cause I was 16 and I was not allowed to work but I think it’s because I was like this nice little kid, you know, wearing a suit and people tend to trust kids more than adults. Interesting, are you sure that those pillows were only pillows or were there other illegal things inside the pillows? You don’t have to admit to any crimes here. No, I’m pretty sure. But we sold like every type of thing. Like it was pillows, and mattresses, and creams, and coffee pots. So I bet that at least one of these items were… It was like, you know… Like itchy. Well, thank you so much for being here, man. I’m super, super excited. Have you thought about your last meal before? Honestly, no. Honestly, no but it was fun to do it. Were you surprised by any of your own picks? I think I’m surprised that I included many like American Delicatessen in my menu but I think my transformation is happening. I’m not gonna lie, I was a little surprised too because Italians maybe are the most heavily opinionated people about food in the entire world. As we should, yeah. How often do you think about death in general? Mine, not much. I have like this kind of superhero complex. I’m a smoker and I don’t think it does any damage to me. Yeah, I get that. Don’t do it but… He’s not a role model. Yeah, no but it’s the Mediterranean blood but others people death it’s something that, yeah it scares me and when I had to deal with it, it’s not my strength. I struggle to like live in that moment and reflect, but especially as a songwriter, do you use writing songs to actually be able to reflect on those events that you can’t process in the moment? I found myself really understanding what’s going on through writing music. It’s like, my head is very chaotic with feelings and very intense, and sometimes it’s hard to pick like, which is the main thing going on and what it’s like just noise. And when I write music it’s like I truly not think about it and it’s really like steam of consciousness, and it’s like I read back the lyrics and it’s like, “Oh that’s my main thing right now.” You know so it really helps me to see the picture clearly. I think I do that with food, except you can communicate a lot less in a bowl of pasta than you can a song. Probably. Speaking of which, you ready to get eatin’? Yeah. Let’s do it. Damiano for the first course of your final meal, we have a true American delicacy, this is the In-N-Out cheeseburger with fries and a vanilla milkshake. Yeah, very Italian of me. Truly a man of impeccable taste. No, this is… This has been I think my first like starstruck moment with American food ’cause there’s a whole thing like as a European and then like especially Italian, you come here with like the bougiest mindset. And everybody’s like, “Don’t eat too many burgers, you’re gonna die.” And everything. They’re telling you that before you get on the plane. Yeah. In Italy to America. Yeah, yeah but then this is incredible. This is incredible, I cannot even explain it how good this is because this is exactly how you would make a burger at home. This is beautiful, cheers. I love that this is my breakfast. The first food to touch your lips today. First meal today. You are truly American. In-and-Out place that brings everybody on the same level. Everybody looks like shit and I think they make it on purpose because next time you go there, look at the lighting of the room and look at the lighting of the kitchen. Wait, I’ve never noticed that. What’s different about the lighting? It’s so much brighter and so much more like intense and they look like crystal clear white, and all the ingredients that you see are like bright and beautiful. Yeah. And then you turn around and everybody looks like… You know? Looks like they just had their mug shot and is waiting there with their like tickets in the hands and everybody’s so ugly and I think it’s a marketing thing. A hundred percent. It’s the last bastion of true democracy in America, Yeah. That’s where everybody goes. I think so. I had a couple roommates in college who are from Rome and they taught me a fair amount of Roman slang. I was wondering if I could run them by you and you could tell me what they mean and how to use them in a situation. Go with it, yeah. Okay, okay. It’s very early 2000, we don’t use it. You don’t use anymore? It’s like chill. Okay, okay. Okay, okay what about… Is the moment when you start feeling like sleepy and so you have the… It’s like you bring this sleepiness with you. This next one, I don’t know how offensive it is, but they showed me a video of Francesco Totti yelling this at fans at a Roma match. My only true God. Yep. Okay I was told I cannot cuss so the translation, it’s F-U and your dead ancestors. Oh God. Italy don’t play. Don’t mess with an Italian, you know? There’s one more that was pretty much every other word said in our home was simply… Who cares? What does it literally translate to? These penises. Michelangelo came from the same country, Damiano. Yeah, yeah I think he invented the saying. No we put art in everything. Truly. You know? Speaking of which, you have your debut solo album, “Funny Little Fears” coming out. What are your emotions leading up to this album coming out versus when Måneskin album was coming out? I think my whole like story with the band was moved by like enthusiasm and even just the… Having the chance to make albums and have tours was like enough of a fuel. While in this case I was super, super, super scared at the beginning because it was like, there was a lot of self-doubting, like I never did it on my own so am I even capable of doing it? And then like, how are people gonna take it? How am I gonna take it? Like ’cause this job is extremely isolating sometimes and so doing it alone was kind of a scary thing. But now that I did it, I really think it was the right thing to do for my persona, like for my own growth. Yeah and there’s like different levels of vulnerability now with your new music. There’s the one level of you physically don’t have other members of the band to shield any sort of blame or even take any of the praise. But then also your music is a lot more vulnerable both in terms of the lyrics and the sound. So that a lot of your earlier music was angrier. You look at songs “Lividi Sui Gomiti”, “In Nome del Padre” there’s some angst there. This is knowledge guys. Even “Coraline”, it’s very sadden forlorn but also there’s like a deep amount of pain. You said you use that as a shield against emotions, what were you shielding yourself from? I think I started doing this job at 16. I’m the Italian Justin Bieber. I was growing up with it and so it’s kind of like myself was distanciating from… Sometimes from what I was putting out and people of course always have an opinion on that. And I think that I felt like I didn’t care at the time but I did and you know, this character and the type of music that we were doing, I think that for me worked a lot as an armor against like people judgment. And like, I was sad of how people were portraying me, but at the same time I knew that a huge part of it was my fault because they didn’t have any other element to it. In what way were they portraying you, do you think? Like, I’m not superman and I don’t wanna be. In any situation of my life, I’m a failable person. I make mistakes, I doubt myself. I am sometimes insecure and the fact that my job puts me on a stage and puts me in front of a lot of people doesn’t mean that then in my personal life or even before getting on stage, I don’t have those emotions. And I felt like a lot of the judgment that people were giving me was not including the fact that I’m a human. Måneskin had such a kind of retro sound in the sense that they were, you know, a four piece band playing live instruments and I think you were really painted as like a rock god, a bit of like a savior a Messiah figure in a way. And if you look back to say like the 1980s, I’m sure a lot of the front men of bands dealt with similar feelings as you and being portrayed this way but they just seem to drown themselves in a lot of drugs and misery. How did you deal with that? Oh, I don’t know. Like, I think the whole like drug thing and rock and roll savage lifestyle, like it’s something that it’s very gone. Because today we have like awareness of how dangerous it can be. And the thing is like at a time you were very under the spotlight if you were like number one, like really topping the charts. Now I’m not topping the charts but if I do something messed up, people are gonna see it anyways. So in this record it was really like a liberating act for me. It was really like feelings that I had kind of shut down for so many years and doing the album was really fulfilling for me. So there was no need to, you know, influence myself. Sure, in your song, “Born with a Broken Heart” off the new album, it speaks to this very human feeling of feeling very not human, right? Feeling like you’re alienated from people around you. That you’re kind of born inherently cursed and broken, and like not being able to love. Where did that feeling come from for you? The album process came in between the end of a relationship and the starting of the one that I’m still in today. And the end of the first one was very, very like messed up and very significative for me. And so when I met my current girlfriend, I was holding back a lot because I was so scared that like, what if I am not really reading my feelings? What if I’m really not reading good her? What if I don’t know, make her suffer, make myself suffer? Am I ready, do I want it? Like all this self-doubting and the song it’s really about feeling guilty of not letting myself go because I could recognize like extensively that on the other side that was probably the nicest person I’ve ever met. I was feeling like I was deficient in a lot of things. And I was not fair and again, like music for me is a way to pinpoint what’s the matter. And after I played her the song and saw her reaction, I kind of knew that okay, she’s a great one. You have all these irrational fears and you just have to look at yourself and say… They make no sense. It’s a new Italian phrase. Yes. Damiano for course number two. Yeah. We have this stracotto di manzo. Yeah. With polenta, we have the trenette al pesto, we have the patate a rosto, and then we have a nice glass of Brunello di Montalcino. You asked for a nice Italian wine, we got you a nice Italian red wine, can I pour you a glass? Yeah, sure. Please. Tell me about why this food’s special to you. Okay each one has a different spot in my heart, the stracotto is my comfort food for when I’m like sad on tour. The pasta al pesto, it’s like my… That’s my Italian thing like, my mom never wanted… Like doesn’t allow to buy pre-made pesto, also because it literally takes like five minutes to make it. Yeah. You don’t do like the mortar and pestle. And this it’s, I think what I make the best. Yeah? Like when I cook, I think this is like my thing. Please can I serve you up some pasta? Yeah but we gotta… Oh… Chin, chin. Chin, chin, salute. Let me serve you some pasta. Okay. Yeah that’s the right order. There are many rules in Italian cuisine. There is actually a governing body of pesto called the Consorzio del Pesto Genovese. Yes. They’re very specific about- How you should make it. What kinds of tools and the ingredients. Take it bite though, I wanna see how we did. We tried to follow it as closely as we could. It’s not real Genovese basil, this is California basil. This is right. Let’s go. No, this is actually pretty good. I’ve actually seen you make pesto before and talking about the appropriate tools to use, Damiano, can you tell me about these tools you used to make pesto? These are Italian cooking tools that I’ve never seen before. And if you could tell the audience about them, I think they’d love to learn about food. Okay. I don’t know, okay. Honestly, I don’t know why we had an anal plug. Wait, how do you say it in Italian? It must sound way more beautiful. No . Oh that’s way grosser, go back to english. Why did we ha was it our merchandising? Yeah, we sold it as a merch. And I had the grinder because that’s what I do all day, I smoke weed all day and I have it with me. We just wanted to make… It was one of our first approaches with TikTok. We were still trying to be funny but yeah. So you go from busking on the street then to “X Factor” then to “Eurovision” but even had to win Sanremo before “Eurovision”? It seems like a lot of your early music journey, it was almost like a constant talent show for years on end, where it was having to seek people’s approval. Does that fundamentally change the way that you make art? No, I think we never saw it that way. I think “X Factor” initially for us, was just the fastest way to build an audience because in Italy we have way less live music culture. We don’t have many like ballrooms where the budding artist can play. So like it’s either the talent or at a time there was no TikTok, or anything like that so that was really the only way. And Sanremo, we don’t perceive it as a talent show also like nationally it’s more… It’s more, I don’t know, it’s like… It’s kind of like the Grammy’s for us. Oh really? Yeah it’s more than the competition itself. It’s like already being part of it. It means that like the industry is giving you the recognition of being like a top tier artist. Oh incredible. So then the competition is kind of… Falls in second place also because usually the song that wins is not the most streamed. Not in our case. But you know, it’s like the competition is not the main thing, it’s the actual event. It’s like a week where every day you play your song, you get to like hang out with all the other artists, all the press is there. So it’s more like this big event where you get to participate. Yeah. Then “Eurovision” I always perceived it as an event and the competition is not really the thing itself. Also because it lives with its own rules, it’s like a super weird place. It’s very political in terms of the judging and the scoring and- But it’s not even… Like it’s something that it’s so hard to read. And also even being European as an Italian, it’s so far away from my culture in the way of like consuming music that it’s not something that like you get to understand, it’s more like you get to participate. It’s extremely fun because it’s like this super colorful, and loud and funny place. And if you get it goes well, good. If it doesn’t, you still like made a little step towards a bigger audience so it’s like only good. It was always just about getting your music in front of more people and not really caring about the venue, except there’s people there, you’ll play for them. And dig into the stracotto di manzo it’s getting cold, wow. Congrats to the chefs by the way. They really are talented, this is incredible. This is insane. Wow. So the first time that I ever saw you and Måneskin was 2021 “Eurovision”. It was the first time that it was ever broadcast in America and I think there’s something about the American mind that can’t quite comprehend what “Eurovision” is per se. I think nobody can. I knew Abba and I knew Celine Dion, and I’d seen the occasional clips. And then the first music video that I watched before the song contest that year was “Zitti e Buoni” and I was blown away. I was just like, this is what “Eurovision” is now? I didn’t realize that you guys were very much an exception to the rule. But what do you think it says about your music that you did win and not only won, but you destroyed the fan vote? The public was just completely obsessed. I think that that confirms I think, the only never ending rule in music, you can do whatever, but if the music is good, it’s good. If the music is not good, it’s not good and there’s no amount of money. One song can work, two songs can work but it’s not gonna last in time. Sorry, potato. I have to try the potatoes, I haven’t tried it yet. And also like as an artist, you don’t have to adapt to the stage. You have to own the stage and we went to the last… To the least to feeding stage for us. And I think that’s what made us win ’cause we were like… The show like makes sense one act after the other, and then there was us this, like weird thing. We were not weird but in that context, we were so different that it was like… I think like if you don’t know who to vote, you vote the the guy that stands out. Yeah. And we were the guy. So much of what made you unique in that, is that you are playing instruments live and you had a very rock sound. Now that you’re coming out with your solo work, you know that aggressive sound with live guitars, it’s kind of going away. Do you feel any obligation to your fans to like keep that heavy sound that sort of brought them in the door? Or do you not think about that? I don’t feel any obligation towards anybody with my music. I feel like a huge respect for what I did with the band and what the band identity was. So if somebody is like, “I was a fan of the band and I don’t like what you’re doing now.” I totally see where it comes from and I don’t take it personally, but if someone thinks that I should do something, that’s exactly the moment I don’t do it. Like it’s also like a pride thing. I’m five, I was like, “Don’t tell me what to do.” But yeah, no and also I think in this case, if I had made a record that sounded even kind of like Måneskin, I would feel like I’m stealing from my own, you know craft and from my friends. Yeah and it wouldn’t feel very good like I think that it’s necessary actually that the two projects sound very good because they both need the same care and the same novelty, and they shouldn’t like fight with each other in any way. And it’s interesting seeing like the music that Vic has been putting out, right? Which is also very different from Måneskin of course. And you know, you’ve said the band can be stronger if everybody sort of goes off and finds themselves, and comes back. Definitely, yeah. We’ve certainly seen a lot of bands where people go do the solo projects and come back together. We’ve also seen a lot of bands where people do solo projects and don’t come back together. How confident are you that we haven’t seen the last of Måneskin? No, confident. Confident? Yes, yes, yes, yes. There’ll be more Måneskin albums? I need like… Yes, yes, yes, yes. This is legally binding, More Måneskin for sure. Legally binding. No more Måneskin for sure. Damiano for course number three, we have the turkey sandwich from Joe and the Juice. Yeah then we have the butter chicken with garlic naan, and an ice cold Diet Coke. I’m not familiar with the delicacy from Joe and the Juice. I’ve somehow never been to one. That’s crazy. Please tell me. No, I’ve never been to one either, it’s like my delivery thing. Nice. And like I’m a newbie to American places. So when I was here the first times, especially in New York, I didn’t know what to eat and I literally survived out of this. Also because it’s quite organic, like it’s quite healthy. So it was like my safe zone, you know? That’s how their sandwiches come? It’s like a hot pocket. But also very like practical, you know? Sure. It’s like a dumpling. Oh they cut it in half for us. We can share in our beautiful romantic Joe and the Juice date. Damiano, this? This is it? Yeah, no, no, this is sad. This is quite sad. But… Okay, no that’s the thing, us artists… Go ahead. We have a very hard time eating food because I spend so much time in venues or radio places, and they don’t have kitchens. So you like order, like 90% of my meals are out of a carton. And out of cartons, if you don’t wanna eat like burgers every day, this is quite okay. And I think that’s beautiful. Just you could have had like A5 Wagyu, sushi. It’s crunchy, it’s healthy, this is good. It’s pretty nice though. That’s what you would make at home, you know? You said that if you weren’t a musician, you would be in the restaurant industry in some capacity. Can you pitch me your dream restaurant? Okay my dream restaurant is where the menu changes every day based on what we have. You client, don’t get to make changes. Very few items on the menu, not like super fancy, that’s what it is. As somebody who’s devoted a lot of their life to cooking and food, like I’ve always loved that because to me food is an art. Like I wouldn’t ask you to change a note in your song. Why would you ask somebody to change something in their dish? I’m wondering how much of that Italian food culture you’ve brought back, especially to your girlfriend, Dove Cameron. It’s an act of love and in general, like I don’t know like, “Did you eat today?” Yeah. Like, “Are you hungry?” Or like when maybe there’s days where she works and I’m off. And so I always try to make sure that by the time she’s home I cooked already. It’s like a way to communicate that like, I care about you, I care about your health. Yeah. And sometimes it’s also like just fun to go to the grocery shop and be like, “What do you fancy tonight?” And she says something and I’m like, “Okay, I’m gonna do it.” And I’m gonna try to do it and it’s like a game, you know? You learn new things, it’s very bonding. You try to teach the other person some things and it’s fun, it’s a beautiful I think sharing moment. When you started writing this album, you were coming out of one relationship and then going into another, did you notice your own emotions and the tenor of the songs change based on how you were feeling in that relationship at the time? Yeah, no definitely, definitely. Like the album, if you put the songs chronologically, they start like sad and self-doubting and they get more and more color. And even more confidence in the lyrics like the last song on the record says, “No one understands me but I do.” Which is such a weird thing to say, but it’s a statement of of like, I don’t need anyone to like what I’m doing, I’m doing it for me. Yeah. And this is something that like two years ago, I would’ve never said out loud because it would’ve felt, I don’t know, cocky or wrong in any ways. But yeah, I think you really see how much my relationship brought happiness and color, and confidence, and joy into my life. Butter chicken. We haven’t talked about the butter chicken. Where does the butter chicken come from? This is freaking delicious by the way. My parents are both… Were both flight attendants. Were ’cause they’re retiring, they’re fine. Like it was very normalized for me to go out and eat like, I don’t know, Vietnamese, and Indian, and try African cuisine, which here is more normal because you’re more like multi-ethnical. And we have no American cuisine really, yeah. Cheeseburgers. Cheeseburgers. No, no brisket, brisket. Brisket. Like one day my mom talking about an ex-girlfriend that I had, she was like, “You know what’s wrong about her? She doesn’t eat anything. And a woman that doesn’t eat anything is never gonna be good in bed.” That’s my mom. Because it’s like you lack of curiosity, you lack of like you know spirit, of trying new things. Adventuress, have a gusto. There’s a gusto to it, you know? And this is when I think that I knew that I loved Dove ’cause she’s like super passionate about especially Indian food, which is also like my favorite foreign food. And so it was like, “Where should we go eat?” And da-da-da-da and Indian came out, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this girl… This girl, she knows.” There’s a line in “Born with a Broken Heart” where you say like, “You can’t fix me.” I think a lot of people get into relationships and they end up codependent, thinking that you can fix each other, which certainly isn’t the case but also your partner can help you heal yourself in a lot of ways. How has Dove helped you heal and how have you helped her heal? It’s very hard for me to let other people get into my life. Even people that I like, I don’t get close to them, if not like after a huge amount of time. And she’s the exact opposite of me, like she’s very smart on how she gets people in and out of her life but she always has like… She always tell me, you have to assume that the person in front of you is great, then maybe they prove you wrong but you have to start from that place. While I start from the place that nine out of 10 you’re an asshole. Yeah. And it’s really like it’s so inspiring and again, like our relationship started in a very dark place for me. And it’s like by doing that, she really… She literally, it’s like a color book. She really colored every space of my life and now I see everything way brighter than I used to, and I have way more like hope and trust in people. And even in myself and in my ability to, I don’t know, like make someone lighter with just like a smile or a nice word. I don’t know if I did any healing, I just think that I try to be grateful. It’s for me it’s truly like a blessing, it’s someone, something that fell from the sky. I was not expecting it, I was not planning it, and I really found myself rediscovering love in a way that I never experienced in my life. And it feels like something so much bigger than any other feeling I felt into my life and I just try to be grateful. I think a lot of people would look at your life of having millions of people screaming at you, telling you that you’re the hottest guy in the world, you’re a god, all this stuff. I think a lot of people think- Which I am. Which of course he is, cigarettes are not going to kill him. He’s literally an Italian demigod over here. But like, you know what I mean? People think that that would make them happy because they’ve never experienced it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think as Jim Carrey who said, “I wish everybody could become rich and famous in a day just to show them that it wouldn’t make them happy.” Can you explain in words why that type of validation isn’t the same as having the love of somebody who truly sees you? Because that’s something that has an expiration date, that’s something that you constantly have to reconfirm. Yeah. If you’re first on the charts, you have to be first the next song, if you’re top 20, people are gonna see it as a failure while it’s not. And you always have to be on top and you have to not miss any opportunity while if you have a person that truly loves you, that type of love that you don’t question and that you don’t really need confirmation of, it’s like, I know that the sun is gonna rise tomorrow. It’s like that type of thing, I think it gives you… For me it also gives me like a place in the world and it’s like no matter what happens… I also wrote a song about it, so it’s “Mars”, it’s like about the world ending and I’d be like, “Okay, who cares?” Like let’s let everybody go on Mars and we stay on the earth, and we enjoy this last few days with no one, and we can like hang out and go every type of place. And I think that’s what it is. It’s like, you know that no matter what happens in the outside, you have your life partner with you supporting you. Damiano for the final course of your final meal on this earth. We have the apple pie a la mode, this is fresh honeycrisp apples baked inside a butter crust, the real vanilla bean ice cream on top, and then of course fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. These are so good. Yeah. This can, this can change a day. I think these were only invented in like the 1930s in America, I think. Like these are still new to us. Insane now guys, wow. Oh my God. When I feel spicy, I do In-and-Out and like either Insomnia or Levain, like insane cookies. I can feel the abbiocco sort of creeping its way up after the last- That’s why you gotta… Smoke a cigarette, boosts your heart rate, and you’re ready to go. One or two, huh? This has been Italian nutrition with Damiano David. I wanna ask about your expectations and how they’ve changed, because you used to say that having a number one song is really important to you, and then you had it with “Beggin’”. How did you feel when you finally got that number one song? Was it everything you imagined? I felt like, I think the first time you have sex, like cool but… Yeah just scared and wet? No, it’s like that was cool but they told me that was gonna be better, you know? It’s like, you know? No, it was beautiful. It was beautiful, of course it felt insane. The number one song or the sex. The number one song. Oh okay. Also again, like being an Italian artist, having a number one global song is like, how? Do you know when the last time that happened is ever? I don’t think it ever happened. Holy shit. Yeah. I don’t know, don’t… Please if you find out that it’s not true. I don’t know, I think. But yeah, no, that was insane. And it was like, again like either once in history or like very rare in history. So like, it felt extremely special but at the same time it felt like it kind of put shade on other things. And then we got the Grammy nomination, we didn’t won the Grammy. And so that’s when you start for like real, it always felt like the new start of something new. And at one point in I really felt like I was drowning and I couldn’t find any, you know, hook. But yeah, it felt good. If you just cut from one part of that story, it felt good, it makes sense. No but when you put material goals on yourself like that, there’s always another goal. You move the goalpost deeper and deeper, and deeper- That’s the thing. And then you realize the paradox. So what do you get that gratification from now? Like when this new album drops, what is going to be a success in your mind? I think that I already had that, like listening to the record top to bottom, truly like it. Like if this album was from someone else, I would be obsessed. I got to know myself better with this music, I have a label that supports me and let me do all the creative stuff, which is what I really care about. Rather than going to 3,000 radios in one day, I really love to like write music videos, and write how the event is gonna go, and the stage, and I don’t know, this photo shoot, like that’s very moving for me. And I don’t know, like just having the chance to do it and having the maturity now to, instead of focusing on the numbers, focusing on the actual act of doing, it’s a big victory for me. One of my favorite phrases that originates in Rome is “memento mori,” the idea of remembering that you will die. Do you ever like take that concept into your own life? Like some reminder that, hey this will all one day fade? I think I live with an awareness that I have a limited time on earth, but it doesn’t necessarily scare me. I don’t necessarily feel like I have to be a great man of my times and be remembered. I would very rather be a good man and be remembered by few people as a good loving person. Yeah, no I don’t do things thinking one day you’re gonna die. But I do think, do things thinking like you’re 26 now and you’re not gonna be 26 again. And from 16 to 24, for me it’s been all the same. It’s like I jumped and there was no in-between, it’s like I’ve never been a young adult. I went to be a teenager to an adult with like full responsibilities and a bank account. And so it’s like I’m trying to… I’m kind of trying to get it back and that’s why chocolate chip cookies. What do you think happens when you die? I like to think that like time is in pockets. And so like we are in 2026 now, but also like the 1800s are happening right now. We just don’t see it. Like a multiverse string theory. Exactly like “Lost”. I’m just rewatching it guys, it’s so good. And so maybe when you die, you go back to your other timeline. Like you were, I don’t know… Like Napoleon. You think I was Napoleon? He was this big, you think I was Napoleon? Maybe it’s like you were very short, so now you’re a big guy you know. It’s like just a random, like you were Leonardo Vinci. Better, no? I like that one yeah, yeah. And maybe you relive your loops over and over, or your life is a loop. So when you die, you just reborn in your body and that’s why we have deja vu’s. Maybe nothing happens, you mold, apple, eat you. Like trees eat you and worms, and you just give back to the ground. I don’t know, I don’t think about it. You got all that from “Lost”? No like, no, no it was just like a metaphor. Dude like “Lost”, it’s so crazy. Do any of those theories like give you more hope than one another? You’re like, “I hope I just get eaten by a tree.” Honestly, no I hope that reincarnation is a thing and like I reborn as a tiger. You know, this cool thing very like manly but I truly don’t know, it’s not something that keeps me awake. You ready to get the lightning round? Let’s do it. Who’s the one person dead or alive, you’d wanna share your actual last meal with? Leonardo da Vinci for real. Yeah? Yeah, no insane, the biggest brain in human history. What song do you want to be played at your funeral? ♪ I’m so excited ♪ ♪ And I just can hide it ♪ Pointer Sisters. Beautiful, I’ll be there dancing on your grave. Who’s the greatest Italian basketball player? Bargnani or Gallinari, the ones that made it to the NBA. It’s not Fontecchio? Fontecchio, yeah but they are too recent. Like I grow up with Gallinari. Sure, sure. I grew up with Gallinari, honestly. Who’s your dream musical artist to collaborate with? Many, I would say Bruno Mars because he has the highest rate of hits. So if you have a featuring with him, you kind of made it. What happen to doing things for yourself? You don’t really have have to work anymore. No, I would say… But my serious question is as now Lana Del Rey, like in this record Lana Del Rey. What’s the biggest difference between Italian food in America and Italian food in Italy? The amount of ingredients, and garlic and onion never go together. Who’s your dream eulogize at your funeral? That guy that does the Italian podcast. The guy, “Do you put the yanis on pizza?” That would be very funny. What’s his name Mario what? Look it up, Growing Up Italian, great guy. Would you rather only eat fettuccine alfredo for the rest of your life or Pizza Hut pizza for the rest of your life? No Pizza Hut pizza, fire. Yeah, fire? Fire. It’s a sandwich with tomato and mozzarella, it’s good. You don’t… It’s the perspective that matters. You don’t have to… It’s not Naples, you know? Like you’re in LA you’re not in Naples so what do you expect. What’s your biggest fear? Being unhappy and lonely. What’s your greatest regret in life? Having rushed so many things, I wish I took it easier and I started maybe like two or three years later my career, at 16 you’re not ready. Finally Damiano, are you happy? I am very happy, yeah. You seem very happy, I feel that very deeply. Thank you. Truly, thank you so much, man. This was an incredible meal. I was a big fan before an even bigger fan after and everyone check out “Funny Little Fears” out May 16th Damiano, if you wanna deliver your last words to that camera right there. I think my last words would be like a big burp and be like, “I’m ready, take me.” Could you summon one right now? Wait, how much Diet Coke do you have left? No, I have to keep the Italian elegance. We all gotta eat and we’re all gonna die but in the meantime you can wear our “Last Meals” tee and hat available now at mythical.com.