Muse

this show is supported by odoo when you buy business software from lots of vendors the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing odoo solves this it's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way you can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at O-D-O-O dot com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

Okay, so, in my house, trying to feed my family, I'm not one of those planner people with the list, menu, shopping reminders. No, in my house, for now what's for dinner is an adventure. I get home the other day open the fridge take stock couple ears of corn cabbage what is it shrimp the mushrooms have maybe one more day in them and I think these are peppers tiny bit of leftover chicken it's a random assortment of what have you but the clock is ticking everybody's hungry so I figure it's time you see Every culture has a version of throw everything in the pot. In Japan, it's called okonomiyaki. And the best way to describe it, and this is not a fair description, but the best way to describe it is as a savory pancake. Mix up some batter, throw whatever in, pour it on a hot griddle, flip it over, top it with a little sauce, and voila! Okonomiyaki. Never ever the same thing twice. But crazy as it sounds, I promise you, 98% of the time, it is delicious. And today on Snap, we're mixing it up. Chop it, stir it for a brand new flavor you've never tasted before. Snap Judgment probably presents movement. My name is from Washington. Well, Glenn, you said it works 98% of the time. What about that other 2%? That, my friends, is what pizza's for when you're listening to Snap Judgment. Okay, so I have a friend who is an artist in every sense of the word. TED Talks, sublime, music albums, storyteller, fashionista. That is her, born with a spotlight. And what I love so much is that she points that light toward people and stories that would otherwise go unnoticed and unremarked. Today, we're featuring a story from a Cleet Hedero from a podcast, Movement, which lives on the edge of story, migration and music. I think you're going to dig it. In today's episode, it chronicles the story of another artist, Sanchar, that I think is about to become one of your favorite artists as well. Snap judgment.

Can you tell us about your name, Sanchar? Yes. And what it means and why you chose it.

So Sanchar, as one word, means mistress.

but her artist name is two words san cha i separated it because i wanted it to be like

a saint like san francisco and i wrote the name down and it was just something that like struck me because if you call someone a sancha it's basically like calling her a or something like okay it's really derogatory and i was like i wouldn't call myself that and then also thinking about how like the role that saints play and especially in mexico like sometimes people go to them for very specific things like this is the saint that helps us cross the border that's the one by my mom's town you know like you go to them for something right um with the name sancha i was

like people would come to me for something and what would they come to you for for the drama yes the drama let me tell you what i mean by that on stage

Sancha is a revelation in rhinestones, fur and feathers, with plenty of dewy blue eye shadow to boot. Her roots as a San Francisco drag queen show up in this bountiful costuming. And then, underneath it all, Sancha's love of ranchera, in its full complexity, shines through. My name is Matvith, and this is Movement, a music and migration remixed.

My parents are both from rural Mexico. They don't have an education further than sixth grade. But then they did all their sacraments. like they're baptized, they're confirmed, they did their first communion, they got married. So the catechism is there, you know, like, so they're taught by the church. And rancheras really affirm those beliefs, like of monogamy of like, the way your family's supposed to be the way you're supposed to love with your entire heart, or else you die, you know, Like, that person is for you, and they belong to you forever. And if you don't have them, your life is miserable, you know? And having, like, lived a different life in San Francisco, and being queer, and not Identifying with that made it scary to go back into those tropes, you know?

So I was wondering if you could tell us about your auntie's farm and your rediscovery of Ranchera.

so the farm is the farm that my mom grew up on with her 12 siblings so it's my grandparents farm and and this aunt that's there my tia luz is the only one that didn't get married in the family and so she worked the farm the longest out of 12 kids there were seven girls the men as soon as they were 16, wanted to come to the US to make money. So that left the women at home to do the men's jobs. The farm had like 25 cows. So that was a twice a day kind of thing. So it was at 5am, they had to milk them, and at 3pm. And so my mom said that like half of them would do the house chores, and then the other half would do all the men's chores, and then they would switch. so everyone could do everything yeah everyone could do everything so i started going to mexico when i was two i think my mom was undocumented for the first like until i was like six or something so we'd go every two years and she'd come back on her own wow during those times and leave us with an aunt or something um so yeah so the farm i remember the bath being like a room with a big rock on it that you'd sit on and you'd have to heat up water and stuff like that and there's like the oldest room in the house is made out of adobe and so it's always like oh where's this thing they're like el cuarto de adobe you know the adobe room and it used to have like one of those old ovens that you had to fire with like wood and my aunt was like I don't want that anymore like it's too much of a mess and sometimes like I'll go to like one of these fancy pizza spots with the oven and I like it's that same smell

sometimes I think like how far back do any of us have to go before you reach the farmers you know right it's like it's not that long for anybody not that long you know um so you started going to the farm when you were two yeah and you returned a few years ago in a kind of transformational way yeah um it was gonna be my 27th birthday and

at that time I think I was getting tired of of working so much in the bay and not having anything to eat. eat you know like it was just it was a lot of work for nothing and I was like I don't see how this would get better I just want to do music you know and I was like it's about to be my Saturn return and I I need a change and my mom at one point like a couple months before that had joked that I should just go keep my aunt company on the farm because she was by herself. And I was like, oh, you just want me to be reformed. And like, you know, what is reformed? Yeah. Like, cause I was basically a drunk drag queen. So she was like, when are you going to get better and not be so crazy? And so she thought she could send me to basically a reform school with my aunt. And then I was like, actually, that's not a bad idea that would be like a writing retreat or something right and and when i was into the idea she was not into it anymore what she she flipped she changed she flipped why all of a sudden mexico was dangerous and well that that's interesting um but i at that point i was like oh that's not a bad idea i should go to my aunt and my friend actually bought me my plane ticket so i like went to Mexico City for a couple days, partied because it was my 27th birthday. And then I took a bus from there to my aunt's farm. It's like a nine hour bus ride. Yeah. And then the first kind of month was really hard because my aunt, like they're still really religious. And at that time it was like September and they take the town's Vidhin and they take like this doll and like a glass case and they take her to all the different farms so my aunt was following her around to the different farms and praying like three rosaries a night having mass on each farm wow and at that time when I got there I had like lavender hair I had no eyebrows and I still had all my clothes that I wore as a little club kid in San Francisco so you stood out a little bit big old platform shoes and my aunt would say things like you know that they kind of insinuated that I was in a bad place or you know things like that so I had such a rough time in the beginning with her because she never left the town so she has these ideas of like how things are supposed to be

and doesn't actually have experience with like dating anybody even you know like she's lived a very sheltered life um so she didn't know what I was like didn't know understand me you know but then we also have like have always had like a really good relationship so at a certain point like it it just like shifted to where we could talk about things like Like, we'd sit and have coffee at lunch, and then, like, we'd come out understanding each other a lot more, you know?

What changed? What do you think that shift was between the kind of distance between you and the coming together?

I don't know. It just, it started happening just naturally, like, and I think that she was appreciating the fact that I would help her around the house. And we'd come together for telenovelas and, you know, mutual things that we liked together. And then we would talk about really honestly about things, like maybe even more honestly than I would talk to my mom, you know, like people calling me a witch or saying that I was crazy. And I'd be like, you're here and you see me every single day. Like, what kind of brujerias do you think that I'm doing? Right, right. And I found more acceptance with her than I have found with queer communities at times, you know. and so like people are ignorant no matter what you know and my aunt really helped me see that even though she's sheltered and has lived a different life I could find acceptance with

her and understanding that's beautiful yeah and how did rancheras figure into that was that part of the telenovelas and the things that you could share with each other it wasn't it was like I went

there to write these songs that I had had before. I had Logic on my computer, I had this microphone, and my aunt would hear these songs as I was working on them. And she'd be like, you came here with like torn clothes. You don't have any money. You're sad. obviously whatever you were doing is not working out don't hold back don't hold back yeah right and she was like um you should start singing rancheras like and and i was like no i've never been able to sing rancheras like i didn't think that i had the capability like the vocal capability And I was like, watch, I'll show you. I can't do this, but I'll show you.

Oh, you're going to want to hear what comes next. It is not what you think. Snap Judgment. You know, I often think about that younger me, the guy who would howl in front of the ATM at the treachery of having his paycheck devoured by withdrawal fees, banking fees, fees on fees. That poor guy could have used Chime because Chime is fee-free banking that changes the way people bank. fee-free, and you get savings that grow faster with a 3.75% APY, nine times higher than the national average. Did I mention Chime Spot Me, which lets you overdraft up to $200 fee-free? I could have so used that. Chime is not just smarter banking. It's the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee-free today. Head to chime.com slash snap that is chime.com slash snap it only takes a few minutes to sign up chime is a fintech not a bank banking services for my pay and chime card provided by chime banks partners optional products and services may have fees or charges stated annual percentage yield and cash back for chime prime only no minimum balance required checking account ranking based on a jd power survey published october 20th 2025 for more information on apy rates my pay spot me and travel perks, go to chime.com slash disclosures. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the movement episode. When last we left, with one click of an iPod, Sun Cha is about to push open the door to the world of ranchero music and step inside.

I took her iPod with a little circle and was looking through songs and then she would listen to the radio every day and I heard Pedro Infante doing Historia de un Amor and I was like, oh this song is gorgeous. so i just was like picking songs and then she also gave me requests like do this song it makes me think of your grandparents um and i was like i'm gonna record it all for you and i had a cd burner and i did that for her and as soon as i did that um she started trading it around like oh the priest wants a cd oh your uncles in the u.s want a cd and then when people would come over she'd be like where's the guitar bring the guitar and i was like oh i guess i could do this convincingly

and while I was doing it

I was like let me like remake these little trumpet sounds with synthesizers and whatever I have with me I think that was my moment of like seeing the darkness like where I come from you know like all the repression like that It's the birthplace of it, you know, of all the things I'm afraid of, all the things I'm taught I'm supposed to be. The rancheras kind of represent that too, but then I could do it in a way that's mine. In reality, like, even if we're queer, like, you still feel that love that's so intense that, like, you're going to die if you don't have it. Or when you're heartbroken, you think you're just going to absolutely drop dead. So it's like it's all the same feelings and they all come from the same place. And we're more like than we want to think, you know. So how did you end up coming back to the U.S.? Well, my mom went to Mexico and she was like, she really convinced me. She was like, you need to come back and stop ignoring the things that you're running away from. and specifically taxes like the reality started seeping in that even on the farm and in the town like to send songs to people and share things would take days uploads and like wi-fi speeds yeah yeah and at one point i had this fantasy that i would just stay on the farm and teach kids music and, you know, like things that I, they're not me, you know, but I had that little fantasy. And then the reality started seeping in that I wasn't going to be happy doing that, you know, and that I really wanted my music to travel. And I was like, oh, I do need to come back. And I had friends living in LA and they were, they were like, we'll make it really easy for you and it was just i i never thought about moving to la but since they made it really easy for me i was like okay i'll try this out and it became home like instantly really yeah say more about just what was it that made it home it was just like everything like i felt like in the bay

nobody understood the intersectionality of all the things that i was doing and in la it's like we've been doing this for years decades girl welcome home i love that oh you mean punk and cumbia like that's been done so it was yeah it was really refreshing so when my parents started hearing the rancheras they cried really yeah but they also because they felt because they felt what what were they tears of i think like oh maybe she does have something and we've just been ignoring it you know and I even had this moment where I I did a music festival in San Jose and my parents went to see me for the first time and at that that time I had like nine bandmates or something and they all went with me I got an Airbnb for half of them and half of them stayed with my parents and my mom made food that night and she stayed up till 4 a.m with us and we were all just singing rancheras the whole time boleros like songs that they knew they'd request songs and we'd just like play the chords for them and they would sing and like it became this like big melting pot of like cultures and worlds because it's all like my bandmates were all queer and super gay and like trans. And, you know, my parents being from this very traditional background, like experiencing joy with all of us, you know? And, you know, sometimes like with the rancheras, I'll add the screaming, I'll add like the high drama and things like that. But, you know, when I'm at my parents' house, I'm at my parents' house and it's for them, you know it doesn't become a performance for me it's like this is for you guys this is my gift to you guys like i might not

be everything that you wanted me to be but I understand you you know and I understand your needs and I also understand that I'm something that you never would have imagined you know and I feel like that was probably the moment where my parents were like oh she's not gonna stop this is this is her thing that she's gonna keep pursuing forever There's a song I released that I actually wrote on the farm. And I, so it was a demo for a long time. And I had named it Hijo Prodigo, the prodigal son. Then when I started sending it out to people, they started calling it Oveja Negra, which is black sheep.

The song is about like being on the farm

and knowing that I always cry that like I'm not what my mother would have wanted and acknowledging that like my mom prays every day that I'd be good and be okay even when I've been in places that are really dark and feeling like the you know when I went to the farm I was the prodigal son like I came back to them and how much they celebrate me now so the song is about returning to them but returning as myself

For me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

this story is produced by McLeet Hedero and Ian Koss as part of their podcast Movement the show was co-created by Julie Kane you can find all of Sancha's music and projects at churchofsancha.com we'll have it at snapjudgment.org if you want to find more stories at the crossroads of music and migration search for Movement with McLeet Hedero wherever you listen to podcasts

Now, after the break

We're going to an underwater world Made of dreams For real When Snap Judgment continues Stay tuned

Adios, que un día yo sea normal.

from snap judgments orbiting hollows justice you're listening to snap judgment my name has been washington and now we're going to take you somewhere where you've probably never been before snap producer liz mack has a story what are you doing right now just suiting up camera this will be yours when you get underwater and just turn it like this If you lose it, I'll find it.

Don't worry. Not today, another day. Okay. So you got your slate. You got your flashlight. You got your air. I have my pencils.

You got your underwater camera. Yep. Here's my extra pencils. We have to get this down to a fine size. Bingo. We're ready.

For years, Roger Hansen has been building a secret underwater kingdom. a few yards away from a busy street in Long Beach. Today, he's taking me there to see it up close.

And this is an official night dive because it's, by science, it's after sunset, officially. Okay. So this is a night dive. You have to go by the rules.

Roger actually carries a logbook with him everywhere, recording dates and times.

We can rinse our mask off in the water tonight, which we should.

After this dive we're about to take, he'll pick up his pen and his colored pencils and add one more dive at the bottom of a long list. All right, any last words? What's the plan?

We're going to go down to number seven and see if we can find deep blue. That's our best chance. And yours is going to be 8. 21, we're going to try.

We're going to a world that Roger finds both quiet and calm. He's taking me to see what he considers to be his underwater family. And while I'm his dive partner today, his story really starts with his favorite dive partner, Mike.

Mike and I, we were both just about like twins. The reason we were best friends, especially underwater, was we both knew where the other guy was. All we'd have to do is go eight feet to the left because we knew he would be there.

Back in the day, Roger and Mike dove constantly.

Oh, a hundred times a year. For 30 years, I've averaged 221 dives every year, average. Yeah, I could call him up in the middle of the night and go, Hey, it's snowing. Want to go scuba diving? And he goes, sure. And so we kept doing things that were on the edge, dumb, but we would have so much fun doing it.

It was a sunny day in May when Roger and Mike were out on Geneva Lake, diving for the millionth time together. They were on their boat when they heard a call over the radio.

Mayday, mayday, we have a diver down. Are there any experienced divers on the lake?

A young man was lost somewhere under the water. The Mayday callers were asking for any experienced divers to help find him, more than 90 feet under the lake's surface. They joined the search and rescue mission, and Roger dove down, First 10 feet, then 20, then 90.

It was like wading through molasses. My chest was very tight, breathing it. Like every muscle was just really stiff. So I was trying to avoid fixating on anything other than the normal sequence that I would do underwater, checking all my gauges.

Roger remembers feeling the pressure on his body underwater And then he remembers the pressure he felt from above

Can we save them? Do we get them before they get too much brain damage?

Roger couldn't find the missing young man But some other divers did Roger remembers watching as they pulled him out of the lake

I assumed that he was going to be okay People were cutting away the suit. My friend immediately started to do mouth-to-mouth. I was in shock, just staring. We did not find out until later in the day that he didn't make it. He was 19 years old. My friend Mike was a physician. And we talked about what happened. And, you know, he was already in the 99.9 percentile for safety to start with. So he, you know, kept speaking.

Thinking about, I did everything right. Kind of wanting to orally hear a checkmark by each one. I did that, I did this, I did that. You know, that he had done everything he could do.

That night, Roger took out his logbook. And like he did every day he was out in the water, he recorded that day's dive. But instead of marking start time and end time...

I have a picture drawn of that day, you know? It's not very descriptive, but it's there. And I don't have his name. I just had where it was. It just shows a person laying there without any facial features.

After the incident on Geneva Lake, for Roger and Mike, scuba diving became less of a hobby and more of a mission.

I became an instructor because of that day, matter of fact.

The two of them began learning about rescue diving together.

I said to myself, I am going to train people so this doesn't happen again.

It was eight years later when something did happen. One morning, Roger woke up in a panic.

I just woke up one day and said, something's wrong. Something's wrong. I just knew. And I called the police department. I said, would you go out and check on my friend? And he wasn't there. And about a day after I had called, they found his vehicle parked over along the coast. And his boat was gone, and they never found the boat. The only thing they ever found was his scuba tank, and it floated clear across the other side. at one of the Great Lakes.

And while they searched and searched for Mike's body in the water, they came up empty.

So I went to his house, you know, go into his bedroom and see his, like, slippers laying sideways in the bed, and you almost could see the contour of his body pressed into the mattress and the pillow. It was like it was a negative. And do you know where that doctor is, who is my best friend? Do you know where he is? Lost on the bottom of Lake Michigan. That's where he is right now. How does it affect me? It just shattered me, shattered me. He was my best friend. We went and had, we had a big ceremony at a place we used to dive.

It was a quarry where Roger and Mike had found a safe deep underwater years ago. They liked to practice there.

We got together about 40 of his various friends. It's like we were in a big circle and down by the shore. and we each just took a minute to say something nice about our friend. And we took some of his trophies that were at his home and they were long, tall, gold figurines on the top.

And a handful of them went down to the water in their diving suits, holding onto Mike's trophies.

And we took them down to leave them in an area where he always was as a memory.

Roger and his friends planted the trophies deep into the sand.

I've reviewed in my mind what I felt like would have been his final minutes and things. And I've thought about it a lot of times. And, oh, let's move on.

After Mike's death, Roger lost his appetite for diving. He went from going hundreds of times a year to...

16. I kept track. I didn't hardly dive at all because I was so upset that my best friend passed diving. It lost its luster.

So first I want to ask you, you know, like 20 years ago, did you ever think that you would be, could you ever have imagined yourself as like a custodian of seahorses?

No. Never, ever, no. I didn't even know they hardly existed 20 years ago. No way.

Yeah. All right, any last words? What's the plan?

Uh, we're going to go down to number seven and see if we can find deep blue. That's our best chance.

Today, 14 years later, Roger's back in the water.

Today I did seven dives.

Because now he has new friends to dive with.

They're cute, they're sweet, they're nice, and they model the kind of behavior that humans should model.

He met the first one on January 30, 2016.

And I saw an orange seahorse swim by. I knew that's not normal. At first I thought someone must have probably just thrown out of a fish tank. Well, I followed it because I was totally curious.

He started coming back a couple times a week to try and find the orange seahorse again and to see if there were any more.

I started to see more seahorses coming into the area. They'd just pass by, kind of checking things out. I ended up seeing about 16 different seahorses.

He even started to recognize some of them by their coloring.

I followed one who I named Solomon, who after I studied my photography and learned more, he was actually a girl.

His underwater life was coming back to him, and he'd get into his wetsuit and strap on his air tank more and more to visit his new friends.

The seahorses are like your best friend pet.

But as the days got shorter and cooler, and Roger was still visiting his new seahorse friends, he had a kind of terrifying thought.

The first winter, I thought, they're all going to leave. These rare creatures that everybody thought was fantastic.

He got more protective of them.

I measured the area. I put yellow plastic tent stakes down in front of 10 areas with numbers on them so I could keep track of who was going where. Then I had to learn Seahorse 102 to identify each seahorse, which I can do. We're submerging and going through fields of tall, green, thick eelgrass. Below the eelgrass, we'll run into our first biome with sticks and palm fronds and pine branches. And then we'll take our light and shine in there to see if anybody is home. And if not, we'll move down another 15 feet across some bare sand areas to the next...

If you dive down underwater with Roger, you'll see that he's constructed a sprawling complex of 10 different biomes, which are kind of like different neighborhoods in this massive world he's made for his seahorses. Each section is marked with yellow stakes and filled with sticks planted into the seafloor so seahorses can latch their tails onto them, like the way that land horses do at an old-timey hitching post. From there, they'll swim up sideways and into the palm fronds that Rogers planted, knowing that seahorses need a place to hide.

A little deeper to an area called the Redwood Forest, which is made up of 1,500 sticks stuck in the sand that run along the shoreline underneath these homemade beds.

Right now, there are four seahorse friends who have stayed behind this whole time. Bathsheba's tall and orange. When we pass by her, Roger takes my hand so I can pet her back.

But Sheba I've seen like 833 times. So do you think she knows me? She's very cute. She can get any man she wants, okay? Is she a black widow, I wonder? Because her husbands keep getting rubbed off.

Then there's C.D. Street, her boyfriend.

C.D. Street's new. I've only seen him 21 times. He's just that 5 1⁄2-inch guy who's got a 10 1⁄2-inch long girlfriend. He looks kind of like an 18-year-old dating a 45-year-old. I'm not judging. And Deep Blue, who's more petite? Deep Blue, he's a boy. He's often pregnant. He's pretty chill. He doesn't mind you coming around as long as you understand And when he's had enough of you, he's going to rotate around on his stick.

And then, of course, there's Daphne, the loner.

Daphne's this wild card. She's way different of a seahorse, I'll tell you. Usually I...

about 40% of the time when I go.

Roger does everything he can to keep his seahorse kingdom safe from harm.

Compared to our outside world where we have such terrible things happening as people hurting other people, you don't see that underwater, ever. You know, things may have to eat because they have to eat, but they don't just kill to kill.

He knows that there's always the threat that his seahorses could be eaten by another creature. or that they could die of old age.

Well, I know the time's going to come where this rare experience that I've been blessed to have will end. This spring, Bathsheba and Daphne, two of the four seahorses, are four. They don't look like they're slowing down, but I would like to find out what happens in this last chapter. I'm sort of in my last chapter, too, so... And then we would scuba down, come back up.

The very first time I met Roger, he told me he was a C-minus on land. And Mensa leveled genius underwater.

And we do that after 20 minutes so we don't scare the seahorses. Take a break, talk, and then go again and see who was moved or who's gone where.

That's because he says there's something about being underwater that makes him feel safe, at peace.

Underwater, it is quiet. It is a quiet world. It's a slowed down pace. You see all different kind of things. You feel differently because of a difference in pressure that's on you. It doesn't hurt at all.

Now, recently, Pregnant Deep Blue stopped showing up. Roger thinks he was eaten by an octopus. So he's moved any remaining octopuses in the area and resettled them elsewhere. It's good thinking. Thanks so much to Roger Hansen and keep an eye out for his forthcoming children's book, It's a seahorse of a different color. To find out more about Roger and his work, along with photos of his seahorses, go online, snapjudgment.org. The original score for that story was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Liz Mack. Now then, you know tis the season. Let me tell you a secret. None of your friends, your spouses, your family None of them want any more plastic junk Instead, let them know you care with the gift of story Send them your favorite episode of the Snap Judgment podcast Ho, ho, ho! It's a compliment to them Their good taste, superior intellect, and winning smile Stories galore Available right now at snapjudgment.org On Team Snap, the union-represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, Local 51. Snap is brought to you by the team that always looks on the bright side, except for the Uber producer, Mr. Mark Ristich. He's not fooled because he knows his enemies lurk everywhere. There's Nancy Lopez, Pat Macidi-Miller, Anna Sussman, Renzo Gorio, John Fasile, Shana Shealy, Taylor Ducat, Flo Wiley, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge, David Exame, and Regina Mediaco. Of course, this is not the news. No way is this the news. In fact, it's been around in circles, hoping to find enlightenment. And when you wake up after hitting your head on the floor, you would still, even then.

not be as far away from the news as this is but friends this is PRX