RISK!

Latest Episodes:

Fascination May 21, 2026

Show notes

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 Wade spent years nursing a Rick Moranis complex, right up until a chance encounter at a pharmaceutical convention gave him an unusual opportunity to put it to use.

(Content note: eating disorder)

Brad Lawrence was 15, overweight, and utterly transfixed by a softcore film called Felicity — until a different movie sent him down a dangerous path of self-reinvention over a single summer.

Lulu left a long, sexless marriage at 44 and spent the next several years making up for lost time, culminating in a nerve-racking attempt to fulfill a very specific fantasy at a kink convention class in Astoria.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/fascination-cre516

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Patreon Picks #6 May 19, 2026

Show notes

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 male presumption that nobody asked to play.

(Content note: Holocaust, genocide)

David Zellnik arrived in Vienna for the first time as a dual US-Austrian citizen, his father having fled the city as a Jewish child in 1939. At a food festival, he ends up in a charged, flirtatious conversation with a tall blond Jewish convert that spins into a debate about Israel, Zionism, and who gets to claim a people's history.

Share your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/patreon-picks-6

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Live From NYC Podfest 2014 May 14, 2026

Show notes

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-collecting operation, until a soldier from Ramstein Air Force Base shares something that neither of them can easily walk away from.

Chemda recounts her first time getting high, which escalated from bong novice to shirtless Hulk impersonation to improvised superhero capes, and ended face-first in a party-size snack mix.

Keith Malley spent months in a baffling odyssey through free clinics and baffled physicians over a rash that ultimately resolved without medical intervention.

Selena Coppock traces her lifelong suspicion of genuinely nice men back to a seventh-grade ski trip, then confesses to acting on that suspicion in a way she is not proud of.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-nyc-podfest-2014-cre514

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What the Body Keeps May 12, 2026

Show notes

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.

(Content note: death of a partner)

Gordon Blitz had been with his partner Scott since 1973, through an informal wedding, years of infidelity Gordon never told anyone about, and the terrifying early years of the AIDS crisis. "Bonded" follows Gordon through an HIV test, a week of waiting, and the long, complicated road of caring for the man who put him at risk.

Leave your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/what-the-body-keeps

Be Part of RISK!

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on Tuesday, June 9, 2026

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The Best of Mother’s Day Stories #4 May 07, 2026

Show notes

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.

(Content note: domestic violence, murder)

Amy Brooks got a phone call one Monday morning about a blue-eyed three-year-old whose father had killed his mother. She said yes before the social worker finished the sentence. What followed was two and a half years in court while raising a child whose trauma was showing up in holes in the walls and phone calls from the police.

For more info and music featured in this episode, visit risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-mothers-day-stories-4

And you can find all of our Mother's Day Stories at risk-show.com/mothersdaystories

Be Part of RISK!

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in [CITY] ([MONTH & DAY]) or [CITY] ([MONTH & DAY])

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🎓 Take storytelling classes with us⁠
🎥 Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos

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The Best of RISK! #35 May 05, 2026

Show notes

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 to Manila for a construction job, ended up befriending a Belgian neighbor, and got pulled into a nightmare when that neighbor's wife turned the Philippine justice system against him. What followed was five and a half years in a maximum-security cell with 300 men, corrupt cops showing up every six weeks with a cash demand, and a family he could only see through a chain-link fence. It is one of the most staggering survival accounts this show has ever aired.

(Content note: addiction, overdose death)

Chelsea Dalsey was a medical student with a photographic memory, a habit she couldn't shake, and a lifelong partner in crime named Alex. Her conversation with Kevin Allison is part confession, part excavation, arriving at a truth she had spent 14 years burying alive.

Leave your reactions to these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-risk-35

You can find all of our Best of RISK! episodes at risk-show.com/bestofrisk

Be Part of RISK!

🎟 See RISK! live⁠

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🎥 Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos

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I'm Okay, You're Okay Apr 30, 2026

Show notes

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 shaped his sense of his own worth.

Dylan Brody has been performing the postmortem on his own victories since fifth grade, and it took competing in a full-contact TaeKwondo tournament at 41, with blood running down his face, to get a piece of advice he hadn't been able to give himself.

Jolenta Greenberg built an entire adolescent identity around the belief that she was a diamond in the rough, and her high school crush Brian eventually put that idea to the test.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/im-okay-youre-okay-cre513

Support RISK! & Get Involved

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Pop Obie’s Vibrator Apr 28, 2026

Show notes

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. This is the story of that education, of what was passed down through three generations of loving men, and one of the most unusual love stories RISK! has ever told.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/pop-obies-vibrator

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in NYC

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The Best of Adventure Stories #3 Apr 23, 2026

Show notes

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 unforgiving, and the day keeps getting worse.

Meanwhile, Marshall York drove solo across the American West, pitched a tent alone in the Grand Tetons, and went to sleep. Sometime in the night, a voice started speaking to him from inside the tent, calm and close and saying something he could not explain.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-adventure-stories-3

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in New York City!

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

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📚 Shop merch or the RISK! book⁠

🎓 Take storytelling classes with us⁠
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Weirdos Apr 21, 2026

Show notes

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 just starts going, putting Larry in an impossible position. And Tuesday Thomas moves to LA fresh from a divorce, meets Alexis Arquette within her first week, and ends up at a film premiere with Danny Elfman, where she personally escorts a legless, increasingly volatile Susan Tyrrell down Hollywood Boulevard in stiletto heels on a Friday night. She thought she had finally made it in Hollywood. And in a way, she had

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/weirdos

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on Tuesday, June 9, 2026

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 Shop merch or the RISK! book⁠

🎓 Take storytelling classes with us
🎥 Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices