Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm Sam for Goso. Welcome to the show.

Welcome to the show. Hey everyone. Thanks for being here. I want to start today's show with an admission.

I don't like Valentine's Day. I really don't and I'm also one of those unusual people that dislikes Halloween, but I'll save that for another

podcast.

Basically, any holiday that tells you how you must spend your holiday is not a holiday I want any part of.

Also the reason for disliking this holiday today and I promise I'll move past this quickly.

I don't like today because it has the potential to exclude people and to that end I know

it makes many people feel very bad and very alone. And in my view, I hardly think we need a national holiday to do that.

We can feel sad and alone all by ourselves, especially right now in this moment where many of you

listening has spent large portions of the pandemic isolated, isolated from your friends, your family, a lover, and it's hard.

I know it's been hard because I've heard from many of you and many of my friends.

It's an unusually difficult period and it will pass,

but that passing that transition back into the world sometimes feels so

far away that we think maybe this is it maybe this is it.

Maybe this is what it will always be.

Sometimes it feels so far away

that you forget what life was even like before COVID-19. I know I have certainly felt that way at time since last March. But that's why today, on this short episode of the show, I wanted to sit with Johnny Mathis, the voice of romance

himself.

Johnny is 85 years old and he's been actively performing since 1956.

He's had several platinum gold records, over 70 songs on the

billboard charts, he's in the Grammy Hall of Fame, he's been mentioned in the same breath as

Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, all of whom he considers influences.

...