RISK!

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  Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on September 8, 2026, in New York City ✍️ Pitch your story⁠ ❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ 💵 Make a one-time donation⁠⁠ via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] 📚 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

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 ✍️ Pitch your story⁠ ❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ 💵 Make a one-time donation⁠⁠ via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] 📚 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

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 ❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ 💵 Make a one-time donation⁠⁠ via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] 📚 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

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 Manhattan, listening to strangers unburden themselves over candlelight. By the end of the week he'd saved $900 for a U-Haul, and on the walk home from his last shift, drunk and carrying a magnum of wine, he felt an arm clamp around his neck and something jab into his ribs. Leave your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-long-shot-stories-1  You can find all of our special series episodes at risk-show.com/specialseries  Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on September 8, 2026, in New York City ✍️ Pitch your story⁠ ❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ 💵 Make a one-time donation⁠⁠ via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] 📚 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

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 apparent break from reality begins accusing Brittany of following her through the apartment building, Brittany finds herself oddly reluctant to shut it down. The woman is unhinged, possibly dangerous, and giving Brittany more attention than anyone in Hollywood has managed in years. Sam's wound runs deeper. His story begins at a dressing room in a North Hollywood strip mall in 1976, where a single word from his mother sets off a decade of relentless bullying. By the time he lands at a commercial casting in the 1990s, surrounded by quarterbacks and cheerleaders, the kid who won a writing contest nobody noticed is just trying to get one person to see him as something other than a problem. Leave your comments and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/negative-attention  Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on Tuesday, September 8, 2026 in NYC! ✍️ Pitch your story⁠ ❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ 💵 Make a one-time donation⁠⁠ via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] 📚 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