RISK!

Latest Episodes:

Let Him Go Jul 28, 2026

Show notes

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 commitment is really worth.

Then David Hu comes home to the Bronx for Father's Day 2021 and finds his father, deep in dementia, suddenly and frighteningly ill. Amid COVID lockdowns and an overwhelmed nursing home, he and his mother face impossible choices about how to care for a man who is slipping away.

Leave your comments on these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/let-him-go

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Still Dog People: Who Am I Now Jul 23, 2026

Show notes

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 a foster dog, Marilyn stood up to leave. The dog grabbed the lead, she dropped it exactly as she had twice already that afternoon, and every muscle in the dog went tense. The weeks after taught her that the wound in her leg was the smaller problem. She had built a career and a self on being good with dogs, and now she could not be in a room with one she did not know.

Leave your comments plus find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/still-dog-people-who-am-i-now

You can find all of our Conversation Stories at risk-show.com/conversationstories

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Still Dog People: Two Truths Jul 21, 2026

Show notes

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 years since, she has come to hold two truths that don't quite fit together.

Kate joins John afterward for a wide-ranging discussion, drawing on her work in fear and aggression cases and her role as a companion animal end-of-life doula.

Leave your comments plus find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/still-dog-people-two-truths

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🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on September 8, 2026 in New York City

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Mixed Feelings Jul 16, 2026

Show notes

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 she only understands much later.

Kevin Allison hits the bottom of a lost decade with no career, no money, and no plan. He picks up a book about taking dictation from God and starts a notebook of his own, never sure whether the answers are wisdom or just his own voice talking back.

Mollena Williams admits she's an alcoholic and lands in detox, where a four-foot hyena climbs out of the floor and refuses to leave.

Leave your comments and find music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/mixed-feelings-cre523

Be Part of RISK!

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on September 8th, 2026

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The Best of Disability Stories Jul 15, 2026

Show notes

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 meets Andrew on the Plenty of Fish dating app. He's a wheelchair user. Their first months together are equal parts giddy first love and daily logistical negotiation. Then, on the morning of what was supposed to be a landmark day, Mary loses feeling on the right side of her body.

(And thanks to Amy Salloway and Jeff Grell, who organized the Twin Cities RISK! fundraiser where Mary's story was originally recorded.)

• Leave your comments to these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-disability-stories

• Find this and future Best of Disability Stories episodes at risk-show.com/disabilitystories

Be Part of RISK!

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on Tuesday, September 8, 2026

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Out of My Hands Jul 14, 2026

Show notes

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 feral, and the girls keep texting him back, begging him not to come.

Then Robin Gelfenbien takes a small plane out of St. Louis, freshly heartbroken and dreading her return to New York. She circulates a notebook around fifty strangers with an invitation to write a story together, then sets her sights on convincing a flight attendant named Valentino to let her read it aloud before they land.

Leave your comments and find full episode details plus music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/out-of-my-hands

Be Part of RISK!

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on Tuesday, September 8, 2026

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Live From San Diego! Jul 09, 2026

Show notes

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 have," then goes looking for the Vietnam-veteran father he never met.

(Content note: suicide, sexual abuse, eating disorder)

Meanwhile, Gwen Alfheim lands in Los Angeles broke and answers an ad promising pay to meditate, which pulls her toward a guru selling enlightenment by the thousands. And Lesley borrows a coworker's copy of the film Secretary and recognizes a desire she has hidden since childhood.

Leave your comments on these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-san-diego-cre522

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🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on September 8th, 2026

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I Don't Know Jul 07, 2026

Show notes

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 mother appears with a police nightstick and a frank approach to sex ed. Stephen Harder, fresh out of Bible college, arrives for a youth ministry interview at a megachurch and learns the being who scheduled it may not work there.

Nelson, an avowed agnostic, threads it together with his own reckoning with faith and his late father.

Leave your comments on the stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/i-dont-know

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🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on September 8, 2026, in New York City

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Vagina Vagina Vagina! Jul 02, 2026

Show notes

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 massage therapist's humiliating refusal to touch her, lands at a size acceptance conference in Seattle. It turns out she's one of the only straight women in the building and starts to wonder if that's negotiable for a weekend.

And Elna Baker arrives in Hollywood for the pitch meeting of her dreams while her own body quietly sabotages the room.

Leave your comments on these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/vagina-vagina-vagina-cre521

Be Part of RISK!

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on September 8, 2026

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But You Look So Good Jun 30, 2026

Show notes

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: heavy drug use)

Chetter M. Galloway is in deep with crystal meth in 2005, dodging help from his HIV doctor and dragging his family through the collateral damage. His years-long cycle of relapse only screeches to a halt when an unspeakable revelation about his dealer drops a bomb on his life and leaves Chetter praying a stash of compromising photos doesn't drag him down with it.

Leave your comments on these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/but-you-look-so-good

Be Part of RISK!

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on Tuesday, September 8, 2026

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

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💵 Make a one-time donation⁠⁠ via PayPal or Zelle to kevin@risk-show.com

📚 Shop merch or the RISK! book⁠

🎓 Take storytelling classes with us⁠

🎥 Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos

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