Review of "Long Island Breakfast Club Show (December 2025 Episodes)" by Valentina Janek & Friends

Score: 93+/100 (9.3+ out of 10)

We're pumped to revisit the Long Island Breakfast Club Show--a two-time winner for Best Talk Shows & Podcasts (in our 2025 Spring Contest & 2024 Creator Classic)! Lead-host Valentina Janek and everyone involved always impress us with their passion and personalities.

This is a criminally overlooked and underappreciated talk show/podcast that doesn't regularly reach into the hundreds of views. These videos truly deserve thousands of views! And why is that? Well, it starts with heart and purpose. This show has so much heart. And it has such great purpose. Janek's book, From Fired to Freedom, reveals a bit more about that, but the gisp of it is that this show was born out of a need to spotlight and encourage creators, entrepreneurs, and people trying new, different, and exciting things (either concurrently with or in place of standard nine to five jobs). In a strong sense, this is very aligned with the goals and vision of the Outstanding Creator Awards: highlighting creators and innovators, many of whom who have been overlooked and underappreciated. So, this show has always resonated with us, even though most of its hosts and guests tend to be middle aged or above. There's something in here for all generations.

Anyway, today we'll specifically be looking at the exciting December 2025 episodes of the show, largely surrounding the 2025 holiday season. These three episodes are:

1. Episode 40 (December 18, 2025)

2. Opera Night Long Island Episode ("Opera-tunity!")

3. Christmas 2025 Episode

We noticed that these particular episodes don't kick off with the familiar theme song/jingle, which is fantastic by the way. Instead, they kick off with live performances by either a host or a guest, likely to fit the holiday season.

Episode 40 starts with an absolutely phenomenal performance of Irving Berlin & Bing Crosby's iconic "White Christmas" sung by Janek's son, Gerry Ferretti! This truly is a 10 out of 10 performance! Ferretti has a masterful control of his vocals, which are the perfect combination of clean, clear, and jazzed up. His voice is comparable to an Andy Williams or Frank Sinatra. He also performs "Blue Christmas" at the closing of this episode, which helps to frame it in a fittingly seasonal light.

Most of the episode is then built around guest banter and promotion. Lucia Love talks about her work as a fitness instructor, personal trainer, yoga teacher, soap maker, baker, and host of Lucia’s Love Lines. She also discusses acting in The Fontanas, a murder mystery project, and a new series called Spring Cleaning where she plays a female cop. Lenny Fontana talks about his background in music, his song “If You Want Me,” DJ history, performing in Ibiza in the early 1990s, and how the music business has changed from physical media to streaming and social media. Steve Castleton discusses veterans work, filmmaking, the challenges of independent film, his film festival, networking, and current projects in production. There is also repeated promotion of The Fontanas, Jerry’s Elvis performances, and several local creative ventures.

The biggest theme running through the episode is local creative hustle. Almost everybody on the show is juggling multiple roles: music, acting, fitness, baking, filmmaking, community work, or event production. There is a real recurring message of keep going, keep creating, keep promoting yourself, and keep supporting other people in your circle.

As a podcast or show episode, its strengths are personality, warmth, and community energy. It feels authentic. The guests sound like real people, not polished media robots. There is a lot of camaraderie, and that gives the show charm. It also works well as a platform for cross-promotion because each guest gets space to talk about what they do.
​
The conversation does tend to jumps all over the place. There are a lot of side jokes, interruptions, inside references, and unfinished threads. That can be fun if the audience already knows the personalities, but for a new listener it may feel scattered and hard to follow. It is more “hangout show” than “focused interview.”

And that's something that runs through pretty much all of these episode. You know what it reminds us of? A family dinner, potluck, or get-together. Everyone's talking. Everyone's having their own conversation. And you're in the middle of it.

One of the big themes that is spotlighted in this episode is networking. Janek, for example, talks about how she happened to meet actor Tony Danza's brother by random chance, just making herself publicly available and accessible. Another thing that stood out to us is how the guests discussed how challenging it can be to get your work out there so people can consume it. Even directors and producers have difficulty getting their crew to share the very things they helped create and work on. That resonated with us.

It can be especially difficult to get something noticed without having a big and/or recognizable name attached to it. They talk about winning an award for Best Documentary about a famous photojournalist named Chris Hondros who was tragically killed by a mortar attack while covering the Libyan Civil War in 2011.

The Opera Night episode was probably the best and most compelling episode of the three! What made it so engaging were the guests and it being a bit more focused.

Representing Operanight.org are Adam Unger, Steve Loehlein, and Isabella Bernadette. First of all, they come forward with this incredibly clever pun: "Opera-tunity" (a play on the words "opera" and "opportunity"). And what's remarkable is how fitting this is with their primary message: they want to create more opportunities for the general public (as well as passionate operagoers) to experience the wonders of opera and the performing arts.

Their passion for opera and the performing arts oozes from the screen! And a great example of that is how they talk about not wanting to turn anyone away regardless of how much they can afford for a ticket or even how fancy or expensive their clothes are (for context: operagoers have traditionally worn fine ornate dresses and tuxedos). They are committed to charging as little as possible, in this case just $10 per ticket even though it takes place at iconic Carnegie Hall in New York City! It's clear to us that they're not all about money. They're about getting people in the doors and falling in love with opera.

Another example of how they want to make opera accessible to everyone is how Steve Loehlein serves as an interpreter and explainer of different scenes and songs in the opera, which is crucial because many of them occur in languages other than English. In doing this, he helps make the foreign seem familiar, the alien seem accessible.

Oh, and before we forget, something very special occurs during this episode. The hosts and the guests learn that they actually have a mutual friend, Ray! And what's more? Ray actually calls into the show and they all get to talk to him. What a coincidence! What a small world! And it goes with the idea of how forming connections and networking can be so powerful.

The Christmas episode (episode 41) is festive, sentimental, musical, friendly, and very relationship-driven. More than the others, this episode leans into Christmas spirit, personal stories, gratitude, and emotional warmth.

Everyone comes dressed up in their Christmas sweaters and outfits. The table is covered in green, red, Christmas trees, and other holiday decorations.

It kicks off with a beautiful singing of "Merry Christmas, Darling" performed by Anita Starlite. What a cool name, by the way. Starlite is a singer, vocalist, and Barbara Streisand tribute artist. Indeed, she comes blessed with a really nice voice.

This episode is a lot more focused on celebrating Christmas than promoting any particular business or guest. It's also a bit less focused than the other episodes. It gets a bit chaotic and messy. At the same time, it's hard not to buy into the joy and camaraderie between everyone at the table.

This episode also features a nice little surprise: a newly adopted dog named Pebbles, whose presence adds even more warmth and sweetness to the Christmas atmosphere. The little puppy helps give the episode an extra dose of charm and makes the whole show feel even more cozy.

If you have been sleeping on this podcast, it is time to wake up and fix that. Give these episodes a shot on YouTube and see for yourself why this warm, quirky, creator-loving show deserves a much bigger audience.