Flailing

Two RISK! favorites come back for Latine Heritage Month, handed to guests who know the territory. Brenda González & Delsy Sandoval, Latina co-hosts of Tamarindo podcast, join us to talk both stories through and celebrate Latine lives that rarely get to be this light. Javier Morillo spent his twenties shutting down white men who reduced him to a fantasy. Then country music got its hooks in him, and a conference in Austin put a real cowboy in front of him. Ximena Ospina is seven when her family leaves Colombia inside a month. She starts first grade in Marina, California, able to count to ten and ask for orange juice, and little else. Then story time runs long and she really needs the bathroom. And thanks to Lisa Cantrell & Capital Storytelling, who produced the Sacramento live show where Ximena first told this one! Leave your comments on the stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-hispanic-lives-5  You can find all of our Hispanic Lives episodes at risk-show.com/hispaniclives Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on December 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

Three of the most memorable stories from the last six months of RISK!, back in one place. (Content note: gun violence) Jon Rappoport is on a work call outside Chicago when his wife kicks the door open: their twelve-year-old twins are texting from a mall on lockdown for an active shooter. Tuesday Thomas, a trans woman in Los Angeles with a long record of choosing unavailable men, meets someone on a dating app who is funny and spectacular in bed, right up until he asks her not to look him up. (Content note: child sexual abuse, incestuous family dynamics) LeCount Holmes was eleven when his father promised to introduce him one day to a grown woman who could teach him how to make love. At sixteen, his father came to collect him from school. Leave your comments on the stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-risk-37 You can find all of our Best of RISK! episodes at risk-show.com/bestofrisk  Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in N.Y.C. (December 8) ✍️ 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

Dug out from the RISK! archives, this June 2014 episode goes straight for the seedier side of growing up, getting by, and getting out alive. Brian Cirmo spends his last night in downtown Utica the way he and his heavyset childhood crew always did, at the strip clubs, before his friends pull one prank too many and leave him stranded on a corner. Jake Hart lands in New York with a head full of Bukowski, no plan, and no money, and turns a month and a half of homelessness into a running experiment in how low he'll let himself go. (Content note: attempted abduction) Cathy Smith drops acid, sticks out her thumb across early-1970s Pittsburgh, and climbs into a windowless van that turned around a little too eagerly to pick her up. Leave your comments on the stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/seedy-cre537  Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ New York City on Tuesday, December 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

Three people do something small and stupid, then meet the full weight of the law. Kona Morris spends a four-hour Beijing layover in a customs line that will not move, with a backpack full of rocks and a Tokyo souvenir that reads as an explosive on the X-ray. Victor Ramirez was 17 in the Poconos when a shoplifting friend told him which Walmart aisle nobody watches, and he built a summer business on it, until his Hells Angel mentor set a tire iron on the table. Frank Traynor, 14 and in love, agrees to sneak into a mall movie theater, then hears a janitor's voice on the staircase and leaves everyone behind. And thanks to Frank Traynor’s It's Funny Now, the show where he and Kona Morris both told their stories from this episode. Leave your comments and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/gettin-off-scot-free  Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in December 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

Recorded live at DSI Comedy Theater in Chapel Hill in 2014, this classic RISK! episode brings together three storytellers on the wilder edges of youth. (Content note: emotional abuse) Lauren Patton grows up on a Georgia estate where her father runs a criminal law firm out of the house, cycling young mistresses past her mother. At fourteen, she's ordered to take one of them out horseback riding. Andrew Aghapour arrives at his first teaching gig in three Target polos and fast-food napkins in his armpits, hoping to be the cool philosophy professor. His seventy-student auditorium has other plans, and his salvation may hinge on a Socrates Café at Whole Foods. (Content note: child sexual abuse) Ray Christian grows up in Richmond's Churchill neighborhood and finds an unlikely community among older boys who raise pigeons across the river in Fulton. Their ringleader brags openly about sexual assaults he's committed, and one afternoon Ray is invited fishing. Leave your comments to these stories plus find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-chapel-hill-cre536  Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ New York City on December 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