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Everyone’s talking about what Becky G revealed about her relationship status with Sebastian Lletget on the Call Her Daddy podcast, but I’m still hung up on how good her new song, “Marathon,” is. The music video is one of those that would easily end up on TRL on MTV because of how strong the visual language is.

Ok, let’s dive in. Like In The Hyphen’s YouTube channel, every newsletter explores the hyphen between two things, two issues or two entities. In this newsletter, I’m exploring the hyphen between:

- Fernando

Don’t worry. I didn’t know what that word meant either.

I had one of the most fascinating interviews I’ve had in my 10 years as a professional working journalist two weeks ago.

A week prior, a publicist pitched me an interview with Dr. Jonathan Salinas, an otolaryngologist, an ear, nose and throat specialist who specializes in swallowing disorders and larynx, which is responsible for producing sound and speech in the human body.

The pitch email highlighted how he worked with Grammy-winning artist Anderson .Paak to launch WAM! Mints, a throat-care product designed to coat and protect the vocal tract.

That story was cool, and I thought the story would be about a Latino doctor-entrepreneur, but during the interview, I learned that the Las Vegas-based surgeon is still very much a working doctor who sees some recognizable patients in Latin music, and music in general.

Steve Aoki, Usher, The Killers, Beto Cuevas and Marco Antonio Solís. Those are the ones he can speak about publicly, at least.

“Sometimes we do regular maintenance where we just check their vocal cords, make sure everything is okay before a tour or before they're gonna start a recording,” Dr. Salinas said. “And many times, I do have to go and see them at the venue.”

Dr. Salinas was born in Peru and grew up there before moving to Los Angeles at 13. He attended UCLA for both his undergraduate and graduate studies, before doing his residency at the Department of Head and Neck Surgery at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

“My mom was a professional singer, so I grew up in the music industry. I’m a musician myself. I play the piano, so very early on I had this very deep respect for the arts and, specifically, for the voice,” Dr. Salinas said. “But at the same time, I had a very specific [inclination] toward the sciences.”

That’s how he found laryngology.

“I was very lucky to find a field in medicine that deals with music, taking care of people's ears and people's throats,” he said.

Because he’s in Las Vegas, he sees everyone from casino workers to performers, all people likely to injure their voice. And through WAM! Mints he’s trying to help people outside of Las Vegas.

“Being a doctor in Las Vegas, taking care of performers who perform in a very dry climate, I developed a mint that was able to help a lot of the singers. And once Anderson [.Paak] tried it, he wanted to help promote that, be able to scale that, because he realized that [even though] the mint was designed for performers, it was something that can help anyone that uses their voice, right?”

He says this day and age, he’s also seeing yoga and pilates instructors with voice issues, as demand for those services has increased in the last few years.

“If you want to have a long career, you do need to be trained,” Dr. Salinas said. “So I do feel that training, vocal training, not just for your singing voice, but also for your speaking voice, it's important to make sure that you avoid or decrease the risk of any voice injuries.”

And because I’ve never spoken to a laryngologist before, I had to ask what misconceptions there are about our vocal cords.

“We don't have one vocal cord. We don't have four vocal cords. We have two vocal cords,” he said. “A misconception is that, you know, they're so delicate and so small, but they're able to project huge volume, you know? I mean, if you think about opera singers, you know, they can actually sing above the orchestra, right? A 100 piece orchestra. Our voices are able to project that loud, but they're so delicate. And because of that, I think it's important to understand that we do need to take care of it. “

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Find your adventure

I remember when I first heard of birria ramen. I was like, “What?” But then I thought, that sounds delicious. I won’t say it “makes perfect sense,” but it does sound delicious. I then remembered Sinaloan sushi was also a thing. And birria pho. And I started looking into what other Mexican-Asian fusions are out there, and what I found was chefs all over the United States playing with this specific fusion. So I decided to look into it for my latest mini-doc.

I post a mini-doc every two weeks on my YouTube channel. Subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss the next one.

The New Yorker profiled our generation’s Jorge Ramos, or a version of him, at least. Carlos Eduardo Espina, the 27-year-old content creator who posts about the day’s biggest news stories in Spanish, explains that he doesn’t see what he does as “journalism.” [The New Yorker]

The Latino education gap in California is steep. A new report from the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute looks at the conditions for Latinos in California across different areas. Only 16% of Latinos in the state have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 47% of non-Latinos.

Some other interesting findings from the report:

E! News did what? The news outlet posted about Becky G’s relationship status with Sebastian Lletget on Instagram, and included a picture of the couple. Except it wasn’t a picture of Becky and Lletget. It was a picture of someone very famous I’m guessing E! News thinks looks like Lletget. You can see the same picture on a cached version of the article. [Tomás Mier]

“I Love Lupe,” the show that could’ve been. Talking about Hollywood in the 90s and early 2000s, actress Justina Machado reveals she did a pilot called “I Love Lupe” that “tested so well.” She says the network behind the show called her and said, “It tested so well, but America is not ready for a Latino family.” [Funjelah]

It’s about to get (Electro)lit in the U.S. The Mexican sports drink beverage teamed up with Keurig Dr Pepper for distribution in the U.S. a few years ago, but that’s not the only way it’s expanding its U.S. footprint. [Watch my video explaining what the Gatorade competitor is doing.]

Before Hamilton came 1776. The musical about the lead-up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence won the 1969 Tony Award for Best Musical, and a new version of it is running in Washington, D.C., ahead of the United States’ 250th anniversary. It’s led by Puerto Rican director Luis Salgado, and he explains how his Latino identity influenced some of his creative decisions. [El País]

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This section is a random musing from the week that is not related to my work as a journalist. 

This week’s rant: I got married this weekend! It was the happiest day of my life. I realized I’ve never had a day where I’m celebrating something I love so much alongside so many people I love so much. It’s a winning combination. Most of my family is in Chicago, so it’s not often I get to see them in my “world” here in Los Angeles. I highly recommend it. The weather in L.A. helped, too, of course.

It’s a high I think I’ll be chasing for the rest of my life.