RISK!
RISK! is a storytelling podcast where people share true, uncensored personal stories they never thought they'd tell in public. Hosted by Kevin Allison of the comedy group The State, the show features hilarious, heart-wrenching, and remarkably real tales. It's for fans of The Moth, This American Life, and Snap Judgment who want a wilder, more daring experience.
Episodes
Second Wind
This episode first surfaced back in June 2014, presenting three people who’d run out of road and somehow had to find more.
Daniel Lobell is broke enough to be applying for Medi-Cal, sitting in an LA social services office, and privately deciding his comedy career is finished, when an offhand habit turns the whole waiting room's attention on him. Joe Mulligan, a stand-up whose marriage and career
Giggles
Three stories about laughing at exactly the wrong moment, and finding out it was the right one all along. Three ways of getting through it sideways.
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Live from Boston!
Three wildly different stories from a night RISK! recorded live in Boston at the Nameless Coffeehouse back in May of 2014, pulled from the archive and dropped back into the feed.
(Content note: attempted suicide)
Josh Poirier grew up as the kid every bully found, singled out for years by an older boy named Paul. At his lowest, broke and checking himself into an inpatient psychiatric ward, the
No Harm, No Foul
At twenty-four, Allen Fetters is blindsided by the worst gallstone attack of his life. Too stubborn to call 911 or even a friend, he decides to drive himself to the ER, floors it down an empty road of green lights, on a collision course with a man on a bicycle crossing the intersection ahead of him.
Then Richard Velazquez rewinds to Christmas Eve, 1989, eighteen and riding shotgun in his mentor's
The Best of RISK! Inanity
Back from November 2021, this episode is just bonkers: original songs, sound collages, audio easter eggs, and other inanities stacked one on top of another.
We’ve got stamps.com jingles, a goth lament about needing a public toilet, TS Madison hollering about a good dick, a Cinderella scene that curdles into filth, and a thank-you number built entirely out of Kevin’s orgasm noises. Bits by and fro
The Best of School Stories #2
Two classic RISK! stories about walking into a room that codes you as wrong from the second you open your mouth.
Tara Clancy commuted from working-class Queens to a Manhattan college, where a classmate mocked how she said "huge" and a writing professor slipped her a bag of third-grade grammar workbooks.
Susan Kent moved to segregated Fitzgerald, Georgia at age six. By high school her closest fri
So Long, And Thanks For All The Jeff: The Jeffisode
Kevin Allison sits down with Jeff Barr, RISK!'s longtime editor, for a farewell conversation almost two decades in the making. At its center is a story they've never told on the show: the mushroom trip Kevin took at Jeff's home in Colorado, when what began as a pleasant walk turned into hours of screaming panic, Kevin convinced he was dying and pacing with 911 half-dialed while Jeff pleaded with h
Live From Pittsburgh!
Back in May of 2014, RISK! hit Pittsburgh for the first time, and this classic episode brings the whole strange, sharp-edged night home.
(Content note: sexual assault)
As a counselor at a Pittsburgh women's clinic, Stacy Keene believes she's found her calling, until a frightened teenage patient and an openly hostile doctor put her in the middle of a confrontation she hadn’t expected.
Then Matt
Is It Her?
Two New York men take the long way through heartbreak.
Brad Lawrence arrives in the city to become an actor while his girlfriend starts Columbia Law School, and their seven-year relationship goes cold almost on contact. Working two jobs and desperately lonely, he builds a nightly ritual of drinking far across town and riding the subway home drunk in the small hours, until one 3 a.m. ride lands hi
Death Defying
An episode from May 2014 with more comedy than the alliterative title would suggest.
Dave Hill wanted to frighten himself on purpose, so he flew to northern Mexico to stay with an old college friend who had become the chaplain of a prison the cartels were running themselves. There is a pizza party, a borrowed guitar, and a man with a machete.
(Content note: suicidal ideation, suicide)
CJ Hostet
Exposure Therapy
Two comedians with two very different things to stop hiding, expose themselves in turn:
Calvin S. Cato is queer, twenty pounds lighter than he used to be, and willing to do almost anything to perform for more than three people and a sad disco ball. When a friend suggests the Naked Comedy Show, Calvin signs up on the strength of two words: "sells out." He does not ask a follow-up question. By the
Live From Reno 2!
This one comes back from April of 2014, the second night of a RISK! live run in Reno, Nevada, and it swings hard between the filthy and the tender.
Josie Spadoni is working an afternoon at her Los Angeles dungeon when a client walks in with a request most people would refuse on the spot. She says yes.
(Content note: suicidal ideation)
Emily Reese grew up dreaming of a picket-fence Christian mar
The Best of Sex Stories #5
Let's dig into two people’s lives where physical desire set off completely unplanned-for chain reactions.
Ceara Lynch is a teenager when a stranger online suggests she bottle and sell her urine. She does it on a dare to herself, he pays $250, and what starts as a joke becomes a career in fetish work and verbal humiliation—one she has to hide from the people who raised her. (Shout out to The Myste
Non-Ethical Non-Monogamy
Fox Emerson moves to Milan with his husband for a fresh start, then lets a charismatic man he met in Atlanta follow him there. The man settles into the apartment, grows colder and stranger by the day, and one late-night argument escalates until Fox is the one in handcuffs, alone in an Italian jail cell with no idea why.
Patrick Holbert convinces himself his marriage is quietly open, books an appo
Live From Reno 1!
Live from Reno in April 2014, three first-time RISK! storytellers turn a single night into a run of proposition, prophecy, and psychedelic reckoning.
Virginia Munsterman is a 20-year-old college student scraping by as a barista when a new job as a chiropractor's assistant lands her at a business conference in Clearwater, Florida. The company's multimillionaire CEO zeroes in on her immediately, an
Trying It On
Kenice Mobley grew up on a 1999 movie fantasy of the woman who travels the world, says yes to everything, and never flinches. As an adult she follows that ideal into a Paris sex club, a single shared baguette, and a straight-faced argument about whether taking your clothes off makes anyone free. It’s all fun and game right up until it turns into a question about who a room actually wants.
(Cont
Freedom
From April 2014, five people finding a way out.
Sean Crespo signs up for a sleep deprivation study to escape the worst summer job in Boston, then spends ten days plotting one act of privacy. Kate Greathead, dumped and displaced, discovers she can cry on the subway every night and nobody will stop her.
(Content note: suicidal ideation)
Jeff Simmermon loses a testicle to cancer and gains an imagi
Let Him Go
Two people confront what it means to stay bound to someone who keeps letting them down.
Tuesday Thomas, a trans woman in LA with a lifelong pull toward unavailable men, meets a charming match on a dating app. The chemistry is undeniable, right up until he looks her in the eye and warns her not to Google him. Her response becomes a very funny, surprisingly pointed argument about honesty and what c
Still Dog People: Who Am I Now
Marilyn Gilchrist is a professional dog trainer, and "Who Am I Now" is her conversation with Michael Shikashio, lifted from his podcast The Bitey End of the Dog. Kevin Allison sets it up and returns at the end with his own thoughts. This is a companion episode to Still Dog People: Two Truths, released earlier in the week.
(Content note: graphic dog attack)
An hour into a routine welfare check on
Still Dog People: Two Truths
For the first of two Still Dog People episodes this week, John LaSala guest-hosts with his wife Kate LaSala, a professional dog behavior consultant.
(Content note: graphic dog attack on a child)
Jill Karliner watched her four-year-old twin sons head into the neighbors' backyard to play with the big kids. Minutes later, she heard a scream that changed how her family would live with dogs. In the y
Mixed Feelings
A classic RISK! episode from March 2014. Three live storytellers, three very different voices in the head.
Vicki Tollemache spent her teens as the careful kid orbiting a wilder crowd. The summer before she turns 16, she decides to get her first kiss over with and arranges a late-night meeting with a boy she barely knows. The kiss becomes something she spends years trying to forget, for reasons sh
The Best of Disability Stories
Kevin launches a new classic RISK! series for Disability Pride Month, revisiting stories about life with a disability from episodes past.
Amy Salloway takes a job as guest playwright at Entropy, a theater program for adults with multiple disabilities. On her first day, a charming client named Aaron falls at her feet. The interview quickly becomes something Amy knows is off-limits.
Mary Gossett m
Out of My Hands
Two people learn something about protecting and being protected, one at a mall in lockdown, one on a plane full of strangers.
(Content note: gun violence)
Jon Rappoport is on a Zoom call in his home office when his wife bursts in with news that their twelve-year-old twin daughters are texting from a nearby mall about an active shooter and hiding in Macy's. He drives there in flip-flops, half fer
Live From San Diego!
This classic RISK! episode first aired in March 2014, and the four San Diego storytellers behind it cover a remarkable range, from white-knuckle confession to gleeful filth.
Tommy Galan traces a drinking habit that began at age eleven and nearly cost him his family, until three little words from a bar owner reframe everything. Justin Hudnall grows up on the motto "you don't miss what you don't ha
I Don't Know
Radio producer Jon Nelson curates and guest-hosts an episode built from three listener submissions RISK! never quite knew where to file, all circling childhood faith and the certainties grown-ups pass down.
Jana Fisher is eleven and the most devout girl in her friend group until a sleepover becomes a contest over who is truly saved. Jesse Bradley-Amore is twelve and watching cartoons when his mot
Vagina Vagina Vagina!
Back in March 2014, RISK! tripled down on a single subject, and this classic episode was the result.
Josh Healey is 17 and smitten with his drama club co-president when she casts him, a boy, in the first ever co-ed production of The Vagina Monologues. The soccer team has questions, the college feminists have objections, and the cast is heading toward open revolt.
Amy Salloway, fresh off a massag
But You Look So Good
Two people who look fine on the outside, and the very different storms going on underneath.
Ande Jackson is years into rebuilding after ovarian cancer. But one afternoon mid-treatment, immune system flattened by chemo, she decides to open her door to a neighbor holding a casserole. The woman means well, and reaches for a thought about mortality that does the opposite of comfort."
(Content note:
The Best of Long Shot Stories
Long shots don't always pan out the way you hoped. Sometimes they catch fire. Sometimes they mug you.
Shauna McGarry, a TV writer who can't shake her mother's thrift-store instincts, talks herself into a $2,500 used hot tub from a shady Craigslist dealer named Dan. Things don’t turn out so great.
David Crabb waitered through the days after 9/11 at one of the only open restaurants in lower Manhat
Negative Attention
Brittany Ross and Sam Feirstein are both hungry for it in this episode: the moment someone finally looks your way and says, yes, you.
For Brittany, that moment arrives in the least expected form. She is in her early 20s, grinding through acting classes and princess gigs and bar shifts, desperate for anyone in Los Angeles to see her as the star she knows she could be. When a neighbor with an appar
My Old Man
This one originally aired in August 2013, and the fathers in it tend toward the unexpectedly generous. And heck, this episode may as well be part of our Fathers Day Stories series!
Chesley Calloway grew up in Baton Rouge largely without his dad, a Gulf Coast redneck-hippie who was always in the woods. At 15, a familiar smell triggers a memory and opens an unlikely conversation that changes ever
Something Wild
Kambri and Evan arrive on the same episode from opposite ends of the spectrum, which turns out to be exactly right.
Kambri Crews grew up poor in rural Texas with a deaf family, spending her adolescence riding horses to the corner store, smoking cigarettes, and managing a fireworks stand at age 13. When she finally gets her own horse, he goes mysteriously missing one afternoon, circling the prop
Live From San Fran 2014
In San Francisco, 2014, four great storytellers took the RISK! stage at SF Sketch Fest:
Stephen Tobolowsky was directing the New York premiere of The Miss Firecracker Contest with Holly Hunter in the lead and a stalker with a ticket for opening night. The question of whether to go on becomes a different question entirely when Holly disappears into the basement holding what looks like a butcher kn
Captives
Two stories from people who found themselves in situations they didn't choose and had to figure out what to do from inside them. Guest-hosted by the captivating Cyndi Freeman.
(Content note: references to torture)
Sofia Javed is a Pakistani-American interpreter hired to work in Uzbek and Russian at Guantanamo Bay, where she is ordered not to sympathize with detainees and then immediately put t
Live From Seattle!
One chilly Seattle night in February 2014, four storytellers on the RISK! stage said some things they probably wouldn’t have otherwise said out loud.
Dan Savage told the story of his early days writing Savage Love in Seattle, doing drag to hide his identity, and one late-night encounter that left him genuinely bewildered by his own desire.
(Content note: murder, sexual assault)
Kelleen Conway
Love, Death, and Dad’s Pee
It's summer 2014, and Bailey Swilley has a boyfriend she's been trying to leave for months and a father who is about to make that the least of her problems. When her dad goes into cardiac arrest, the family descends on his hospital room in Memphis, and her Taiwanese grandmother, who has never previously mentioned being a healer, begins issuing instructions from a witch she met on a Carnival cruise
Into the Mystic
This one goes deep. "Into the Mystic" first aired in February 2014, and it brings together three accounts of the uncanny from three storytellers who had no map for what they were experiencing.
Christine Lee, an Episcopal priest, has spent years navigating the gap between the faith she teaches and the faith she actually feels. When a parishioner with a seriously injured knee agrees to be prayed
Brutal Authority
Guest-host Taj Easton is in the chair this week, presenting these two stories on the long shadow of patriarchy with a particular attentiveness, repeatedly asking the same leading question: Are straight men okay?
Cassidy Krug arrives at Stanford a diver of moderate ambition, then spends nine years being screamed at by a coach whose legendarily ruthless style drives her to the Olympics. Fifteen y
Fascination
This one goes back to February 2014: a live RISK! episode built around the theme of fascination, meaning the things that get under your skin and won't let go.
Ryan Britt was a self-appointed porn expert at age 10, thanks to his father's very open magazine policy and to a darkroom box labeled "Do Not Open" that turned out to contain something far more interesting than photographic paper.
Adam W
Patreon Picks #6
Two storytellers, two very different ways of inheriting the past.
Shauna McGarry throws a Halloween party with her newly single roommate, hoping for a fresh start after a breakup. A drunk coworker zeroes in on the roommate, her little brother in a Charlie Brown shirt enters the mix, and the night expands into something Shauna has been watching her whole life: the strange, exhausting game of mal
Live From NYC Podfest 2014
Originally recorded live at NYC Podfest in January 2014, this is one of those classic RISK! episodes where the theme, confession, actually delivers on its promise.
Kevin Allison opens with a story he has told for years, then stops midway to admit he has been leaving out the best part. What he adds reframes everything.
Alex Edelman turns a power strip at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport into a secret-co
What the Body Keeps
Two stories about what the body holds onto and what it eventually gives back.
Ali Mac took a job in crypto after two years of Nazi death threats courtesy of Fox News. At the Miami Bitcoin Conference in 2022, she finds herself escorting her boss down a hallway and comes face to face with Tucker Carlson, broadcasting live, sitting very low, blissfully unaware of what is about to happen to him.
The Best of Mother’s Day Stories #4
Two mothers' days that look nothing alike, but hit just as hard.
Jobim Santos grew up watching his mother Linda lose her battle with ALS piece by piece, from cane to wheelchair to hospice bed, all while praying at church each week that she would just live long enough to see him turn 13. She didn't quite make it. What he didn't expect was that grief would take another 13 years to fully arrive.
The Best of RISK! #35
This episode brings together two of the most gripping conversations in the show's recent run: a man who survived an extended stint in a Philippine jail on fabricated charges, and a medical student whose addiction and grief turned out to be more entangled than she had ever let herself understand.
(Content note: accusations of sexual assault, child abuse, false imprisonment)
Scott McMahon went t
I'm Okay, You're Okay
From the RISK! archives, this January 2014 episode gathers three storytellers around a theme that sounds simple and turns out not to be: actually being okay with yourself.
Joel Kim Booster grew up as a gay Korean adoptee in an evangelical family, and it wasn't until he fell for a man who specifically desired him because of his race that he realized how thoroughly someone else's rejection had shap
Pop Obie’s Vibrator
Guest-hosted this week by Taj Easton, stepping in for Kevin to present a story by LeCount Holmes Jr., now Taj’s surrogate pops.
(Content note: explicit sexual activity involving a minor)
LeCount Holmes Jr. grew up with a father who told him he loved him, hugged him, cried in front of him, and believed that teaching his son how to love a woman was one of the most sacred things a father could do.
The Best of Adventure Stories #3
Two RISK! stories pulled from the archive, and both are worth your time. "The Best of Adventure Stories #3" is funny and unsettling in equal measure, sometimes within the same story.
Winter Tashlin was 16 years old, at a Jewish summer camp in New York, and desperately wanted one good day. The plan was the Empire State Building and a performance of Les Mis. He has Tourette syndrome, the city is
Weirdos
This episode is a love letter to people who are magnificently, irrepressibly, sometimes accidentally weird.
Larry Dorsey Jr. opens with the true account of his first day teaching standup comedy at Northern California's top improv venue. He has TAs, a curriculum, a strategy. None of it survives contact with a visibly high student who, roughly fifteen minutes into class, pulls out his ding-dong and
Today's the Day. Welcome to RISK!
Think you've heard it all? You haven't.
People pull over because they're laughing too hard to drive. People cry on treadmills. People share episodes with new friends thinking: if this person loves these stories as much as I do, they're my people. That's RISK! — the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. RISK! has been the world's most surprising, most human,
A Hard Landing, Revisited
JP Michael first told "A Hard Landing" on RISK! in the summer of 2016, and it became one of the most talked-about episodes in the show's history. Now, a decade later, he's back with Kevin Allison to listen to it together and reckon with everything that's happened since.
(Content note: self-harm, suicidal ideation)
The original story follows JP shortly after he relocated to New York City for a jo
Bad Medicine
Bad Medicine brings together three storytellers whose bodies, doctors, and circumstances all conspire against them in very different ways.
Pam Stepansky throws out her back on a spin bike, ends up bedridden at her father's apartment, and asks him to do something she never imagined asking any parent to do. What follows is a five-day hospital stay where she's dosed with narcotics she explicitly r
Backfire
Two RISK! veterans deliver stories about plans that—you guessed it—backfired.
As a teenager Nate Runkel built a satirical website that sexualized cartoon characters as a parody of how guys talk online. It got a million views, landed in Complex Magazine and a Maureen Dowd book, and earned him more attention than he ever wanted. The people he respected weren't laughing.
(Content note: conversion
The Best of RISK! #12
For the first time, we’re putting a Best of RISK! episode back on the feed. Originally released in July 2017, #12 remains one of the most epic compilations of RISK! stories ever: it’s funny, filthy, tender, and at times almost unbearably real, sometimes all at once.
Richard Cardillo spent 14 years in a Catholic monastery before leaving his vows and landing in Lima, Peru, newly out and profoundl
Into the Moving Dark
(Content note: sexual assault, justifiable homicide)
Annie Carnrike spent years close to her cousin Michael, a man of fierce loyalty and an equally fierce temper. When he showed up at her home one Thanksgiving night, drunk and out of control, what began as a familiar crisis turned into a fight for her life.
What Annie faced that night was devastating enough. What came after was its own ordeal: a
Fighting Back
This is a classic RISK! episode from January 2014, and it holds up with a particular kind of ferocity.
(Content note: sexual assault)
Ellie Jackson spent 12 years convincing herself she had moved on from being raped at a college party her freshman year. She'd built a careful system for managing intimacy, or avoiding it, and mostly it held. Then a routine visit to Planned Parenthood, a persistent
The Best of RISK! #34
Three stories so worth your time, from darkly funny to devastating. Our 34th compilation of some of our favorite recent stories shared on the podcast.
(Content note: sexual assault) Fixxy starts a summer in Pittsburgh doing sex work for quick cash before a move to New York City. One night a client seems different, with an unusually easy request and a ride out to the suburbs. Things escalate in wa
Impulsive
Three stories about snap decisions and what happens next: a classic RISK! episode from December 2013 that still hits hard.
Lauren Cook found her date for a stranger's New Jersey wedding on Craigslist Casual Encounters. She showed up with a fake identity, a room full of people who knew nothing about her, and a night that kept escalating in directions she did not plan for.
(Content note: gun viole
Males of the City: RISK! Reacts
Kevin hears Timothy Vaux's "Males of the City," a story from So Say We All, for the first time. In RISK! Reacts episodes, there's no preview, no prep, just Kevin listening along with you and sharing everything the story brings to his mind.
The story: Timothy is a happily single gay man living in the heart of North Park, San Diego, where a buzzy Saturday night out ends with a casual wave to a stra
Presenting True Crime News: The Podcast
True Crime News: The Podcast is your weekly dose of real-time updates on the most gripping true crime stories, current cases, investigations, scams, and schemes. Host Ana Garcia is joined by crime experts, police officers, defense attorneys, and other leading authorities in their fields as they cover murders, scams, investigations, and unsolved crimes from across the country. Join us each week as
Live From Philly 4!
First released in December 2013, this live RISK! episode from Philadelphia's First Person Arts pairs two storytellers with a lot to say about losing control and getting it back.
Dawn Jewel Fraser's "Brasilado" follows a young American woman deep into an immersive year in Rio de Janeiro, learning Portuguese street by street from her chain-smoking instructor Marcy, until a late-night taxi ride home
Quid Pro Quo, Revisited
(Content note: child sexual abuse)
In 2016, Ed G. got on stage at RISK! and told a story he'd never told anyone. Now, ten years later, Ophira Eisenberg sits down with him to go places that story couldn't: the FBI, the Pope, the survivors who found each other decades later, and the hard-won question of where shame really belongs.
Ed's story begins in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where a boy abandoned by hi
Where It Hurts
In this crossover episode with The Story Collider, Karen McCaffrey and Mary Cyn share stories that illustrate the importance of compassion in healthcare.
🎤Live Story: More than Survival by Karen McCaffrey
(Content note: sexual assault, rape) After surviving rape and a traumatic hospital experience afterward, Karen transformed her pain into purpose. Decades later, she directed a sexual assault fo
Metamorphosis
Michael McFadden and Adrianne Frost share stories about evolving feelings about their bodies over time.
🎙️Radio Story: Growth by Michael McFadden
Michael is a child swimming prodigy trapped in a grown man’s body who fails a humiliating puberty test, loses his athletic destiny, and ultimately redefines masculinity and self-worth beyond the pool and beyond his penis size.
🎤Live Story: Smoochin'
The Best of Coming of Age Stories #2
Byron Bowers and Amy Salloway share experiences from their formative years. A part of The Best of Coming of Age Stories series.
🎤🎙️💻Live Story: My Father's Son by Byron Bowers
At 10, Byron goes to visit his dad's crack-addicted father near the projects. Four years later, Byron is selling crack, and he breaks down, wondering how he let his life become like his father’s.
🎤Live Story: Sister Act b
Private Parts
Ria Spencer, Mindy Myers and Josh Connors share stories about learning to feel at home in your body.
🎤Live Story: The Only Girl by Ria Spencer
Six-year-old Ria is diagnosed with severe cradle cap and must enter an all-male Arkansas barbershop to have her beloved locks shaved. It might have been traumatic, but the men were supportive and encouraging.
🎙️Radio Story: Ample Package by Mindy Myers
Family Secrets
A Classic RISK! episode from our early years that first ran in November of 2013, when Kitty Hailey, Christine Lee and Josh Healey share stories of surprising family situations.
🎤🎙️💻Live Story: Rollin’ With Grandma by Josh Healey
Josh's Grandma-in-law gets a pinched nerve and requires medical marijuana. The hilarity ensues of him buying pot for this little old lady and helping her to smoke it.
🎤
Catastrophe
Emma Yarbrough and Joel Gonzalez share stories about learning and growing from hard times.
🎤Live Story: Searching for Blue Sky by Emma Yarbrough
Emma believes an intruder has broken in her home but it’s a false alarm. It triggers memories of her PTSD following the murder of her beloved Aunt Day. Emma cherishes her aunt’s memory and is stronger for it.
🎙️Radio Story: Keeping Us Safe by Joel Gon
Live from Brown/RISD
A Classic RISK! episode from our early years that first ran in November of 2013, when students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design shared true stories at a RISK! live show on campus.
🎤Live Story: Over the Limit by David Jacobs
As a kid, it took David a while to realize he had anger management problems. After a few unfortunate outbursts, a therapist helped him get a hold o
Lights Off, Pants Down
David Zellnik tells Kevin Allison about a moment of sexual liberation in a dark back room at a gay bar in the early 90s. Check out all of our Conversation Stories!
🎙️Conversation Story: Allowed to Look by David Zellnik
David has a transformative night at a gay bar in the early 90s, during the ongoing AIDS crisis. It felt risky but it also helped him to feel more visible and confident in his iden
The Best of Love Stories #4
Reba Sparrow and Smith Galtney share some of our favorite unusual love stories from our 16-year history.
🎙️LIVE Story: Pleasant Mountain by Smith Galtney
Smith had the perfect husband, house and home... till he returned to the crystal meth habit of his younger years. His husband was able to support Smith in getting to rehab and putting his life back together again.
🎙️LIVE Story: Baby Love by Re
Unrequited
Connor O’Donoghue, JC Cassis and Jay Michel share stories about crushes and rebounds.
🎙️Radio Story: I Was the Appetizer by Connor O'Donoghue
A virgin with body shame issues, Connor falls for a straight guy he befriends in a psych hospital. He has a threesome with his crush and a girl, knowing the guy is only into the girl. Decades later, Connor sheds his sexual anxiety.
🎤Live Story: Never Ag
Live From LA Storytelling Fest
A Classic RISK! episode from our early years when Brian Finkelstein, Carrie Wade and Matt Oberg told true stories at the live RISK! show for the 2013 LA Storytelling Festival.
🎤Live Story: She and I by Brian Finkelstein
(Content note: miscarriage, suicidal ideation) Brian’s anxiety around marriage and fatherhood lead to a panic attack at a grocery store just before he learns his wife is pregnant
Come and Go
Ezra Holmlund and Sarah Adelman tell stories about things involving coming... and going.
🎤Live Story: Things Are Going South by Ezra Holmlund
Ezra and his brother are at home when they begin to suspect a stranger has broken into their house upstairs. When the police arrive, the two brothers are mistaken for being the criminals.
🎤Live Story: The Long And Winding Road (To Semen Analysis) by Sara
The Riverside, Revisited
In memory of Jan Scott-Frazier, we revisit her 2011 story called “The Riverside” and, until now unreleased, her conversation about the story in 2021 with narrative therapist David Newman.
00:00 Introduction
01:34 The Riverside by Jan Scott-Frazier
(Content note: suicide) At 22, Jan moved to Japan, but was lonely, as foreigners often feel. She began to notice a woman who visited the same riv
How Can I Tell You?
Stella Mayerhoff and Rebecca Heron tell stories about the unbearable weight of truth.
🎙️Radio Story: In Ways I Never Could Have Imagined by Stella Mayerhoff
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, out in the field studying bonobos, Stella has to get a local man back home by lying to him, saying his baby is sick, when in fact, his baby has already died.
Keywords: Congo field research, bonobos, prim
Casualties
A Classic RISK! episode from our early years that first ran in October of 2013, when Janine Latus, Scott Whitney and Dan Telfer told stories about brushes with madness that left scars.
🎙️Radio Story: Revelations by Scott Whitney
(Content note: cults, suicide ideation) A Jehovah’s Witness struggling with his faith, Scott knocks on the door of a traumatized recluse to attempt to convert him. The b
Sexploration
Shem, Nonye Brown-West and JC Cassis share stories of sexual discoveries.
🎤Live Story: Shem's Guide to Sexuality by Shem
As a joke, young Shem's frenemy gives him a sexy book, but it's a feminist book and he learns less about eroticism and more about the emotional needs of middle aged American women.
🎤Live Anecdote: The Joy of Toes by JC Cassis
JC marvels at the outsized role that men’s big t
Live From Chicago!
A Classic RISK! episode from our early years that first ran in October of 2013, when Stephanie Douglass, Shannon Cason, Lily Be and Jim Padar were at our very first show in that toddlin’ town.
🎤Live Story: You Don’t Know Jack? by Stephanie Douglass
A high school erupts in laughter over a mysterious name on the morning announcements, sending a well-meaning teacher on a frantic mission to protect
Create My Life
Ms. Aishia tells Cyndi Freeman about the time she navigated a complex, emotionally abusive relationship, and ultimately found the strength to prioritize her own happiness and independence. You can also watch this episode on YouTube.
Check out all of our Conversation Stories!
Conversation Story: Create My Life by Ms. Aishia
EDITOR’S SYNOPSIS: After leaving an abusive relationship, Ms. Aishia ent
The Best of Funny Stuff #7
There’s nothing but laughs in our Funny Stuff compilations of classic RISK! stories on the lighter side. This week, Kumail Nanjiani and Alecia Altstaetter share about penile injuries and barf boats.
🎤Live Story: Pure Fuckmachine by Kumail Nanjiani
Kumail learns how to masturbate and is so excited that he zips his pants too quickly afterward and cuts his penis on the zipper.
🎤Live Story: That N
Holiday Blues #3
Michael J Bennett and Jessica Piscitelli Robinson tell holiday stories that are new, true and kinda blue.
🎙️Radio Story: Santa's Revenge by Michael J Bennett
Michael is a shopping mall Santa when his worst teacher from High School comes in with his kid. The rule of a store Santa is make no big promises the parents have to fulfill. Michael promises this kid the moon and a pony.
🎙️Radio Story:
