From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

I'm John McWater and let's start with Blossom Deary.

Those of you of a certain age will remember her having done some of the schoolhouse rock

shorts and then many others of you will just know her because she's Blossom Deary

and she's singing a song written by Cicolman and Carolyn Lee for a little review called Demi Dozen

in the late 50s, here is part of it.

I feel like Christopher Columbus when I'm near enough to contemplate.

The sweet geography descending from your eyebrow to your toe.

The possibilities are more than I can possibly enumerate.

And the reason I'm using that song other than that it's basically the musical evocation

of a gin and tonic is that word so.

You fascinate me so.

This is going to be a podcast about so.

This is for you Evie and what I'm talking about is that it bothers so many of you that

apparently lately so many people are starting sentences with so.

I would say that that is probably the third or fourth most frequent question that I get.

Why are people doing this?

And the truth is I hit on this a little bit in a very previous show.

But it's getting to the point.

This is my 60 second episode.

And that means that I can't assume that a lot of you or even most of you have been listening

since the beginning and nobody is going to endure 30 hours of me to find out.

...