Still Dog People: Who Am I Now

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

Twice a year we gather the best of the best from the last six months. This round holds three. (Content note: suicide) At fifteen, Richard Velazquez steps onto a 1986 Lower East Side corner for his first crack sale, carrying the demon-fear of a Jehovah's Witness childhood and a father who has started smoking his own supply. His first customer changes everything in a heartbeat. Cassidy Krug dives nine years for Frank, a coach who throws his aviators and screams until the vein in his forehead pops, all while swearing he can put her on an Olympic team. She still wonders whether it was abuse or the only road to greatness. (Content note: sexual assault, homicide, suicidal ideation) Annie Carnrike and her cousin Michael are close as siblings, and when Annie comes out as trans, he is the one who loves her with no "but." Then one drunken Thanksgiving night, Michael breaks down her door, and Annie fights for her life. Support Annie in overcoming her ongoing struggles with the justice system and in her campaigning for the legal rights of trans people by leveraging her story at https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-and-dignity-for-annie-g Leave your thoughts on the stories, and find full episode details and music credits, at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-risk-36  You can find all of our Best of RISK! episodes at risk-show.com/bestofrisk  Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City (Tuesday, 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

"Stung" is a set of four live stories from June 2014 back in the feed, each about someone caught off guard. Matt Kirshen, 18 and backpacking through France with two sisters from Berkeley, plans to sleep in a Bordeaux park until a priest and a local drug dealer both warn him off. The dealer's alternative invitation lands him somewhere stranger. Jen Kirkman dissects why she never wanted to take care of anyone, working through an elderly woman feeding her wheelchair-bound husband, a husband who fell in the shower while she stayed in bed, and a grandmother's wake full of relatives she could never picture creating herself. Eli Olsberg signs up for a blood drive offering two free movie tickets and ends up with three nurses semicircled around him. Janine Brito, raised religious by her Cuban father, is four days into her freshman year of college when a voicemail changes everything. Leave your comments plus find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/stung-cre534  Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in N.Y.C. 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 come within reach of what they want and are nearly undone grabbing for it. Karen Ibarra brings a self-described nerd's devotion to a heated Los Angeles delegate election, where bad blood between two party factions turns personal. David Zellnik spends his childhood worshipping the stage, then auditions for the bad-boy role he wants most in his high school's production of Oliver!, only for the director to pull him aside with a wounding notion about which part he should play. And thanks to EST's "Truth Be Told", the New York show and podcast where this story first appeared. Amy Sohn hits bottom and pins everything on an elderly Manhattan analyst for one ridiculous reason, a rumor that he is Woody Allen's therapist, then sinks into his Freudian world without admitting why she came. Leave your thoughts on the stories, and find details and music credits, at risk-show.com/podcast/almost  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

This episode first surfaced back in June 2014, presenting two people who’d run out of road and somehow had to find more. Joe Mulligan, a stand-up whose marriage and career have both come apart, flies to Boulder for a peyote ceremony and finds his spirit guide is the last thing he would have chosen. And Olga Schmutz, gutted by a breakup, walks into a Philadelphia shop at 3 a.m. and walks out with a strap-on named Carlitos and a brand-new sense of purpose. Leave your comments on these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/second-wind-cre533  Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on December 8, 2026 in N.Y.C. ✍️ 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