Before Shannon Cake said a word on this week’s Pain 2 Power, Dave had already done the math on her. Take Peter Jennings, Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters, he told Mike, add up every Emmy the three of them won, and by his count you get 22. “Shannon has 23 herself,” he said.
She spent the next half hour handing the credit to other people, telling a story about her father and a Chinese interpreter, and explaining how a woman who is on the air by 9 every morning still gets her workout in. That last part is the one most of us can use.
By The First Rehabilitation Team · Reviewed by Dr. Dave Kashuba, Ph.D.
Twenty three Emmys, and she gives the credit away
Shannon Cake is a name most people in Palm Beach County know from local television. Today she hosts News Now on Newsmax 2, weekdays from 9 to 10 in the morning, and she has been in broadcasting for 35 years. Dave’s introduction ran long on purpose. Beyond the Emmys, he pointed out that she won the Edward R. Murrow Award, which Mike, a broadcaster himself, called one of the holy grails of the business.
Her first move was to correct him, politely. “I didn’t win anything alone. We never do,” she said. She started in radio, then worked inside newsroom teams with, as she put it, a lot of folks pushing the buttons. One colleague got singled out: “an incredible photographer partner for a bulk of my career. And he really helped me, helped me see things and become, you know, the journalist I am today.”
Anyone who has worked in a clinic, a kitchen or a newsroom will recognize that. The face on camera is the last step of a lot of work by people you never see.
How Newsmax actually found her
Dave’s version was that Newsmax begged her to come over. She corrected that one too. “Newsmax didn’t beg me,” she said. The owner, who built the company from very humble beginnings into what she called a global news operation, happened to be a viewer of her local work. They were introduced, they connected, and he offered her a position. Dave’s reply was the best line of the opening segment: “It’s nice that you’re humble that way, but I still like my story.”
From a campus radio station in Tuscaloosa to consumer investigations in West Palm Beach
Mike asked what made her want to be a reporter in the first place, and the answer started with her father. He served in the military with an armored cavalry division, so the family was stationed in Germany, and later he moved into the diplomatic and intelligence side of government. The family lived in Singapore and Hong Kong, and China was his specialty. Her brother became an auditor. She became an investigative reporter. In her telling, the way their parents raised them was the common thread: you were representing the nation, and you were supposed to do the right thing.
“And the injustice of consumer work really struck me at a very young age,” she said. Her first job in radio was at the NPR affiliate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, with some sports work in that market on the side. Then a position opened in the consumer investigative division of a West Palm Beach station, and that was the job that stuck.
One story, one evening
The quote that kept her in that arena came from a friend. Dave Aronberg, whom she described as a former state attorney here in South Florida, met her when they were both starting out, she as a young consumer reporter and he as a young assistant attorney general. Years later she told him over lunch that maybe she had missed her calling and should have gone to law school. His answer, as she remembers it: “with one story, one story in an evening, you can do more sometimes than a lawmaker can do their entire career.”
Dave added some of what that looked like in practice. Her investigative work helped expose Medicare fraud and pushed on highway safety, and she has given her time to grassroots nonprofits including Believe With Me, which supports Gold Star families, and the Wounded Veterans Relief Fund. She also helped Remember Me, the early onset dementia foundation Dave has talked about on earlier episodes.
| Stage | What was said on the show |
|---|---|
| Growing up | Military family stationed in Germany, then Singapore and Hong Kong; her father’s specialty was China |
| First job | Radio at the NPR affiliate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, plus local sports work |
| Palm Beach County | Consumer investigative reporting at a West Palm Beach station, including Medicare fraud and highway safety stories |
| Recognition | 23 Emmys and the Edward R. Murrow Award, per Dave’s introduction, over 35 years in broadcasting |
| Today | Host of News Now on Newsmax 2, 9 to 10 AM weekdays |
The interpreter who wasn’t interpreting
Dave knows her parents a little, and he asked her to tell a story he had heard secondhand. After her father retired from government (he finished at the China desk at the Pentagon, she said), he went into the import and export business, silk and steel, with two partners. Going into a negotiation in China, the other side would often offer the visiting businessman one of their own interpreters.
Her advice, passed down from him, was to bring your own. If you accept the kind offer, she said, “You can rest assured that you better check your numbers at the end of the meeting. No disrespect. But it is part of business.” Her father had an advantage most visitors did not. He spoke the language, so he knew exactly what was being said across the table. She would not say much more about how he went in, only that he was armed and ready, and that he came out with a couple of good deals.
Mike, who thinks about words for a living, put it neatly. Change a couple of words here and there, pick one with the same denotation but a different connotation, and watch what happens.
Headaches, and what Dave says therapy can and can’t do
Dave and Shannon have a friend in common, a Palm Beach County neurologist she called one of the most brilliant on the planet, whom she saw a few years back for dizzy spells and headaches. She said they have not bothered her much in recent years. Her main takeaway from those visits was blunt: she used to blame the headaches on allergy season, and he told her a headache is a headache.
That gave Dave an opening to talk about the headache patients physical therapy sees all the time. He was careful about the limits. “We can’t stop the migraine because migraine is actually a systemic problem, but we can stop the triggering to migraines,” he said. He added that “exercise and staying physically fit is key to actually reducing headaches.”
That matches how we describe it on our headache treatment page: we treat headaches that start in the neck, tension headaches, and neck related migraine triggers, and we do not claim to cure migraine. If yours seem to start at the base of your skull, our longer piece on headaches that start in the neck walks through what an evaluation looks for.
Up at 4:30, and 30 minutes on the bike
Then Dave asked the question he had invited her on to answer. How does someone with her schedule stay in shape?
Her answer was refreshingly unglamorous. She learned early that “if you’re gonna get your workout in, do it first thing in the morning.” Nothing about the hour itself is magic for strength or weight loss, she said. “It’s the hour of the day that gets least interrupted.”
Her day now starts at about 4:30, catching up on whatever happened overnight, because the network covers the globe. The first editorial meeting is at 5:30 and she is on the air by 9. So the bike comes first. “If I don’t wake up and get on that bike, even with my eyelids half closed, by the time that 30 minutes is over, I’m definitely awake,” she said. A couple of glasses of water, some cardio done, and then strength gets squeezed into the nooks and crannies of the day.
Teenage boys, push-ups, and honesty
She has two teenage boys, and some days she grabs one and says, let’s go lift a little bit. Other days it is 20 or 30 push-ups and some sit-ups. And she was honest about the rest: “it’s not pretty and sometimes it gets interrupted and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.” She also said strength work is probably more important for someone her age, and that it is the part she has to squeeze in.
Mike’s rule: priorities, not time
Mike took it from there. “It’s not a matter of not having enough time. It’s a matter of what’s a priority,” he said, repeating something he had heard recently. The time is usually there if you stop doom scrolling, he argued, and find something a bit more personally productive than unboxing videos.
A torn rotator cuff, and the workout with Dave’s name on it
Shannon and Dave first met because she got hurt. “I had torn my rotator cuff and was there as a patient,” she said, describing her time at the clinic here on US-1. “Dave was great and pushed me in all the right ways. He and his team both.” What stuck with her was how personal it felt. He knows your kids’ names, she said, and asks after your mother if she has been sick.
While she was rehabbing, the team put her through the workout people know as the Captain Kerry workout, after Captain Kerry Titheradge of Bravo’s Below Deck, a longtime patient and an earlier guest on the show. She liked it enough to do a television story on it. She used to teach aerobics in college to help pay the bills and had done one set intensity training when she had more time for gyms, so the format felt familiar. Her verdict was that “you can do this in about 25 minutes with consistency if you do it the way you’ve laid out,” and the trick is to “move quickly, even between your sets.”
Dave, who had been waiting for this, wanted one correction on the record. Captain Kerry does Dave’s workout, not the other way around. “I studied this for 35 years, putting together a program,” he said, built on neuromuscular work and on what exercise does for pain. As he tells it, that was his reaction when Shannon told her TV audience to try the Captain Kerry workout. The studio enjoyed it. Mike compared it to Hydrox, the cookie that came before Oreo and somehow became known as the knockoff.
If you are dealing with a shoulder of your own, our shoulder pain page covers what rotator cuff rehab involves, and our wellness program is where patients keep training once therapy ends. We wrote about that second step in more detail in personal training with a therapist who knows your injury history.
Two antennas and a reminder to vote
Dave closed with the joke of the week, which he admitted he borrowed from Mike. Two antennas on neighboring roofs start liking each other, get engaged and get married. “I was invited to the wedding, which wasn’t that great, but you know what? The reception was so good.” Shannon’s response was a heartfelt “God bless you, Dave.”
His last word was about the election. If you know someone who always votes the other way, he said, and you go vote, you cancel her vote out. Get two people to vote and you are ahead. “I don’t care who you vote for. People have died to give us the right to vote.” Mike noted that Dave was literally pounding.
Dave promised to have her back. He said he had been asking her since April or May.
Listen to the full conversation on the Pain 2 Power podcast page, watch past episodes in our video library, and catch the show live Saturdays at 8:30 AM on 100.3 Legends Radio. If a shoulder, a headache or a stalled workout routine is what brought you here, call us at 561-624-4263 or request an evaluation.
This article is general information, not medical advice. Every situation is different, so please consult a qualified professional about yours.