The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna

The Squeaky Wheel Podcast 🎙️
History, healthcare & stories of people who refused to be ignored.
Question the system. Challenge the status quo. Make some noise.

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

Two things can be true: An older person deserves protection from abuse and they deserve the right to make decisions that not everyone agrees with. Check out our latest episode, "Who's Watching the Watchers?" here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0TGr
#AgingIssues @thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

I almost always have music playing in my head. Right now it's Dance This Mess Around by The B52's 😂 Listen our 5th episode here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0lQT @thewriterme
#NewPodcast #JustTwoPeople #PodcastCommunity #TheSqueakyWheelPodcast

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

There were so many esses, I kept getting tongue-tied! 🤪 Listen our 5th episode here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0TGr @thewriterme
#FunnyReels #IndiePodcast #PodcastChaos #FunnyPodcast #SqueakyWheelPodcast

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

Two things can be true: A family member may genuinly want what's best for someone, but those decisions can take away that someone's autonomy. Check out our latest episode, "Who's Watching the Watchers?" here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0lQT #ThinkAgain #NuanceMatters @thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

Where was that mysterious music coming from? 😂 Listen our 5th episode here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0lQT
#BehindThePodcast #PodcastClips #PodcastReels #BehindTheScenes #TheSqueakyWheel @thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

Reading one thing and thinking about another. Upcoming blooper clips are going to become more chaotic 😂 Listen to the full episode here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0lQT #PodcastChaos,
#WeTried #JustTwoPeople #UnfilteredConversation #RealConversations @thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

@thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

We're playing around with line delivery. Here are some alternate versions 😂 Number 5's alive! Listen our 5th episode here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0lQT
#NewPodcast #IndiePodcast #ProfessionalAmateurs #NailedIt #SqueakyWheelPodcast

[Shannon 🇺🇸I stand with America @thewriterme]

This is why we stick together! 👠

[Shannon 🇺🇸I stand with America @thewriterme]

Believe All Women, But Not All Men.

When a man is assaulted he has to claw his way back.

Brendan Fraser’s Hollywood story is not one clean scandal. It is a pile-up: a real leading-man peak, a body wrecked by stunts, a brutal divorce, and an alleged assault he says pushed him out of the industry for years. The comeback only arrived after fans and a few directors refused to let him stay gone.

The peak

Fraser broke through in the early 1990s with Encino Man and School Ties, then became a genuine movie star. George of the Jungle (1997) and especially The Mummy (1999) and its sequels made him the charming action lead Hollywood wanted. He also had serious-actor credits, notably Gods and Monsters (1998). By the early 2000s he was bankable, married to actress Afton Smith, and raising three sons.

What broke

Three things hit at once.
The body went first. He did a lot of his own stunts on the Mummy films. He has said that cost him years of surgeries: repeated laminectomies on his back, a partial knee replacement, spinal work, and vocal-cord repair. He has described roughly seven years cycling in and out of hospitals. Action-hero casting stopped making sense when he could barely work.

The marriage collapsed next. He and Smith announced a split in 2007; the divorce was finalized in 2009. The settlement required about $900,000 a year in combined alimony and child support, plus a large property payment. He later asked a court to cut the support, citing medical limits and falling income. She accused him of hiding contracts. One of their sons is autistic; Fraser has spoken about that as a reason he stepped back from public life and moved toward a quieter farm life in upstate New York. His mother died in 2016, which he has also named as part of the withdrawal.

The allegation is the part he calls the final piece. In a 2018 GQ profile, Fraser said that in 2003, at an HFPA luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel, then-HFPA president Philip Berk groped him while they were shaking hands — grabbing him and touching him between the legs. Fraser said he felt ill, like a child, and later became depressed and self-blaming. He told his wife, then mostly stayed quiet. His reps got a written apology from Berk in 2005. Berk’s version has always been different: in his memoir he called it a joking pinch; to GQ he called Fraser’s account a fabrication and said the apology admitted no wrongdoing. Fraser said work “withered on the vine,” that he was rarely invited back to the Golden Globes, and that “the silence was deafening.” Berk and the HFPA denied any blacklist. The HFPA said it had no prior knowledge of the detailed allegation and opened an inquiry after the GQ piece. Berk was expelled from the HFPA in 2021, but over a separate email about Black Lives Matter, not the Fraser claim.

The disappearance

From the mid-2000s into the late 2010s he was mostly off studio marquees: smaller films, TV, long gaps. Fans treated it as a mystery — “what happened to Brendan Fraser?” — until the 2018 interview put the injuries, the divorce, and the Berk allegation in one place. Public sympathy turned into a nickname: the Brenaissance.

The return

He rebuilt through television, including Cliff Steele / Robotman on Doom Patrol (2019–2023). Darren Aronofsky then cast him as Charlie in The Whale (2022). The Venice premiere got a long standing ovation. In March 2023 he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He skipped the Golden Globes that season, citing the old HFPA history. He has kept working since, including talk of returning to the Mummy world in better physical shape.

What is documented is a star whose body gave out, whose personal life became expensive and public, and who says a powerful awards-group figure assaulted him and that the industry went quiet afterward. He has been clear that the assault was not the only reason he vanished. It is the reason he gives for why he stopped fighting to stay.

[Farm Girl Carrie™️👩‍🌾 @FarmGirlCarrie]

She was one of the world's most famous supermodels.

Then childbirth nearly killed her.

And instead of simply moving on, she decided to fight for mothers who didn't have the medical care that saved her.

Her name is Christy Turlington Burns.

Born in California in 1969, she began modeling at 14 and moved to New York at 18.

By 20, Calvin Klein had signed her to a reported million-dollar contract.

She became one of the original supermodels, appearing on Vogue covers and working with Chanel, Versace, Prada, and other major fashion houses.

But Christy wanted more than a modeling career.

She returned to school and graduated with honors from NYU.

Then, in 2003, she became a mother.

Her daughter Grace was born healthy after a carefully planned birth.

But moments later, everything changed.

Christy's placenta failed to deliver.

She began hemorrhaging and lost several liters of blood.

Doctors and midwives worked quickly and stopped the bleeding.

She survived.

But afterward, Christy began researching what had happened to her.

She discovered that postpartum hemorrhage is one of the leading causes of maternal death worldwide—and that many maternal deaths are preventable when women have access to trained healthcare and emergency treatment.

Christy realized something that stayed with her:

She had survived partly because help was nearby.

What about mothers who didn't have that chance?

In 2005, she began working with CARE on maternal health.

She later earned a master's degree in public health from Columbia University.

Then she turned her camera toward the problem.

Her documentary No Woman, No Cry followed mothers and healthcare workers in Tanzania, Bangladesh, Guatemala, and the United States.

In 2010, she founded Every Mother Counts, an organization dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safer.

She even ran marathons to raise awareness and funding for maternal health.

More than two decades after the birth that nearly killed her, Christy is still working on the same mission.

She once put it simply:

“I became a global maternal health advocate the day I became a mother.”

The modeling career made Christy Turlington famous.

But surviving childbirth gave her a purpose far bigger than fame.

She could have simply gone home grateful that she survived.

Instead, she asked:

“What happens to the mothers who don't have what I had?”

And she spent the next 20 years trying to make sure more of them survive 👶♥️

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

Reading one thing and thinking about another. Upcoming blooper clips are going to become more chaotic 😂  Listen to the full episode here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0lQT #PodcastChaos, #Unfiltered, #RealPeopleRealTalk, #PodcasterLife, #TheSqueakyWheelPodcast @thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

We're playing around with line delivery. Here are some alternate versions 😂 Number 5's alive! Listen our 5th episode here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0TGr
#PodcastersOfInstagram, #PodcastReels, #Unscripted, #BehindThePodcast, #SqueakyWheelPodcast @thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

Just a bit of goofing off to lighten the mood while discussing a heavy topic. Maybe we're aspiring voice actors? 🤔  Check out the full episode here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0TGr #PodcastHumor #Bloopers #Outtakes #TheSqueakyWheel @thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

Welcome to Lifestyles of the Unrich and Fameless! 😂 
Check out our latest episode, "Who's Watching the Watchers?" here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0TGr
#podcastbloopers 
 #podcastouttakes 
 #podcastlife 
 #behindthescenes  #TheSqueakyWheelPodcast @thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

It's official! All future scripts will be color coded! Our names are too similar and we kept getting lost 😂
Episode 5 is live! Listen to the full episode here 👉https://t.co/EXwJim0TGr
#podcastclips  #behindthescenesfun  #backgroundnoise  #SqueakyWheelPodcast @thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

Who says you can't have fun why working? Noone, I hope! Hopefully our behind the scenes giggles are contagious. 🤣
#funnypodcast  #podcastlife  #funnymoments  #behindthemic  #TheSqueakyWheel @thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

@thewriterme

[The Squeaky Wheel Podcast with Shannon and Shanna @SqueakyWheelPC]

What really goes on behind the scenes? Well, for one, we usually record in our pajamas 😂
Episode 5 is live! Check it our here: https://t.co/EXwJim0lQT

[Shannon 🇺🇸I stand with America @thewriterme]

@SteveInmanClips @nikitabier @allegrajacchia Welcome to my world. I’m truly sorry they jerked you around like that.