Impulsive
26 March - 1 hour explicitThree 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 violence)
JJ grew up in 1980s Bushwick, Brooklyn, fought his way into Wesleyan and then Wall Street, but one afternoon a neighborhood confrontation pulled him back to a version of himself he thought he had left behind. He came very close to throwing everything away.
Daniel Lobell sank $2,000 into a hai...
Series Episodes
Fascination
explicitThis 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 ā 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-cre516Ā Be Part of RISK! š See RISK! liveā in [CITY] ([MONTH & DAY]) or [CITY] ([MONTH & DAY]) āļø Pitch your storyā ā¤ļø Support us on Patreonā šµ Make a one-time donationā ā via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] š Shop merch or the RISK! bookā š Take storytelling classes with usā š„ Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hour 7 mins
21 May Finished
Patreon Picks #6
explicitTwo 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 Be Part of RISK! š See RISK! liveā on June 9, 2026, in New York City! āļø Pitch your storyā ā¤ļø Support us on Patreonā šµ Make a one-time donationā ā via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] š Shop merch or the RISK! bookā š Take storytelling classes with usā š„ Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
37 mins
19 May Finished
Live From NYC Podfest 2014
explicitOriginally 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-cre514Ā Be Part of RISK! š See RISK! liveā ! āļø Pitch your storyā ā¤ļø Support us on Patreonā šµ Make a one-time donationā ā via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] š Shop merch or the RISK! bookā š Take storytelling classes with usā š„ Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hour 10 mins
14 May Finished
What the Body Keeps
explicitTwo 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! š See RISK! liveā in NYC on Tuesday, June 9, 2026 āļø Pitch your storyā ā¤ļø Support us on Patreonā šµ Make a one-time donationā ā via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] š Shop merch or the RISK! bookā š Take storytelling classes with usā š„ Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
37 mins
12 May Finished
The Best of Motherās Day Stories #4
explicitTwo 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-4Ā And you can find all of our Mother's Day Stories at risk-show.com/mothersdaystoriesĀ Be Part of RISK! š See RISK! liveā in [CITY] ([MONTH & DAY]) or [CITY] ([MONTH & DAY]) āļø Pitch your storyā ā¤ļø Support us on Patreonā šµ Make a one-time donationā ā via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] š Shop merch or the RISK! bookā š Take storytelling classes with usā š„ Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
40 mins
7 May Finished
The Best of RISK! #35
explicitThis 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-35Ā You can find all of our Best of RISK! episodes at risk-show.com/bestofrisk Be Part of RISK! š See RISK! liveā āļø Pitch your storyā ā¤ļø Support us on Patreonā šµ Make a one-time donationā ā via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected] š Shop merch or the RISK! bookā š Take storytelling classes with usā š„ Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hour 41 mins
5 May Finished
