Shows / RISK!
RISK!
If you like The Moth, This American Life or Snap Judgment, take a walk on the wilder side with RISK! Your colorful host Kevin Allison (of the legendary comedy group The State) helms this surprisingly uncensored show where people tell jaw-dropping true stories they never thought they'd dare to share in public. RISK! is hilarious, heart-wrenching and remarkably real. Think you've heard it all? Fasten your seatbelt.
Episodes
- RISK!
Scary Stories #4: Yikes!
Halloween weekend brings back one of RISK!’s eerier classics from November 2013. Jackson McKeehan, orphaned at seven and still an anxious wreck as an adult…
- RISK!
Scary Stories #18: Spine-tingling!
The eighteenth annual Halloween-tide episode runs from a dark bedroom to a front porch to a burning house. Larry Dorsey Jr. is eighteen and staying at his…
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Make It Stop!
A classic RISK! episode from July 2014 built around three situations that everyone involved would happily have ended earlier. Sam Mullins is in his final year…
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Bangkok Stories 1
Ploy Anderson is rushing out of her Bangkok house for a lunch date, a hair roller still clipped under her helmet, when a 10-wheeler drifts into her lane. Abel…
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Live From London!
This week we're revisiting the first RISK! episode ever recorded outside the United States. In July 2014, the show traveled to London for a live event…
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The Best of Hispanic Lives #5
Two RISK! favorites come back for Latine Heritage Month, handed to guests who know the territory. Brenda González & Delsy Sandoval, Latina co-hosts of…
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The Best of RISK! #37
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…
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Gettin' Off Scot-Free
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…
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Live From Chapel Hill!
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…
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The Best of RISK! #36
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…
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Second Wind
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…
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Live from Boston!
Three wildly different stories from a night RISK! recorded live in Boston at the Nameless Coffeehouse back in May of 2014, pulled from the archive and dropped…
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No Harm, No Foul
At twenty-four, Allen Fetters is blindsided by the worst gallstone attack of his life. Too stubborn to call 911 or even a friend, he decides to drive himself…
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The Best of RISK! Inanity
Back from November 2021, this episode is just bonkers: original songs, sound collages, audio easter eggs, and other inanities stacked one on top of another…
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The Best of School Stories #2
Two classic RISK! stories about walking into a room that codes you as wrong from the second you open your mouth. Tara Clancy commuted from working-class Queens…
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So Long, And Thanks For All The Jeff: The Jeffisode
Kevin Allison sits down with Jeff Barr, RISK!'s longtime editor, for a farewell conversation almost two decades in the making. At its center is a story they've…
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Live From Pittsburgh!
Back in May of 2014, RISK! hit Pittsburgh for the first time, and this classic episode brings the whole strange, sharp-edged night home. (Content note: sexual…
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Is It Her?
Two New York men take the long way through heartbreak. Brad Lawrence arrives in the city to become an actor while his girlfriend starts Columbia Law School…
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Death Defying
An episode from May 2014 with more comedy than the alliterative title would suggest. Dave Hill wanted to frighten himself on purpose, so he flew to northern…
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Exposure Therapy
Two comedians with two very different things to stop hiding, expose themselves in turn: Calvin S. Cato is queer, twenty pounds lighter than he used to be, and…
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Live From Reno 2!
This one comes back from April of 2014, the second night of a RISK! live run in Reno, Nevada, and it swings hard between the filthy and the tender. Josie…
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The Best of Sex Stories #5
Let's dig into two people’s lives where physical desire set off completely unplanned-for chain reactions. Ceara Lynch is a teenager when a stranger online…
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Non-Ethical Non-Monogamy
Fox Emerson moves to Milan with his husband for a fresh start, then lets a charismatic man he met in Atlanta follow him there. The man settles into the…
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Live From Reno 1!
Live from Reno in April 2014, three first-time RISK! storytellers turn a single night into a run of proposition, prophecy, and psychedelic reckoning. Virginia…
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Trying It On
Kenice Mobley grew up on a 1999 movie fantasy of the woman who travels the world, says yes to everything, and never flinches. As an adult she follows that…
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Let Him Go
Two people confront what it means to stay bound to someone who keeps letting them down. Tuesday Thomas, a trans woman in LA with a lifelong pull toward…
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Still Dog People: Who Am I Now
Marilyn Gilchrist is a professional dog trainer, and "Who Am I Now" is her conversation with Michael Shikashio, lifted from his podcast The Bitey End of the…
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Still Dog People: Two Truths
For the first of two Still Dog People episodes this week, John LaSala guest-hosts with his wife Kate LaSala, a professional dog behavior consultant. (Content…
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Mixed Feelings
A classic RISK! episode from March 2014. Three live storytellers, three very different voices in the head. Vicki Tollemache spent her teens as the careful kid…
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The Best of Disability Stories
Kevin launches a new classic RISK! series for Disability Pride Month, revisiting stories about life with a disability from episodes past. Amy Salloway takes a…
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Out of My Hands
Two people learn something about protecting and being protected, one at a mall in lockdown, one on a plane full of strangers. (Content note: gun violence) Jon…
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Live From San Diego!
This classic RISK! episode first aired in March 2014, and the four San Diego storytellers behind it cover a remarkable range, from white-knuckle confession to…
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I Don't Know
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…
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Vagina Vagina Vagina!
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…
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But You Look So Good
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…
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The Best of Long Shot Stories
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…
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Negative Attention
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…
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My Old Man
This one originally aired in August 2013, and the fathers in it tend toward the unexpectedly generous. And heck, this episode may as well be part of our…
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Something Wild
Kambri and Evan arrive on the same episode from opposite ends of the spectrum, which turns out to be exactly right. Kambri Crews grew up poor in rural Texas…
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Live From San Fran 2014
In San Francisco, 2014, four great storytellers took the RISK! stage at SF Sketch Fest: Stephen Tobolowsky was directing the New York premiere of The Miss…
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Live From Seattle!
One chilly Seattle night in February 2014, four storytellers on the RISK! stage said some things they probably wouldn’t have otherwise said out loud. Dan…
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Love, Death, and Dad’s Pee
It's summer 2014, and Bailey Swilley has a boyfriend she's been trying to leave for months and a father who is about to make that the least of her problems…
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Into the Mystic
This one goes deep. "Into the Mystic" first aired in February 2014, and it brings together three accounts of the uncanny from three storytellers who had no map…
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Brutal Authority
Guest-host Taj Easton is in the chair this week, presenting these two stories on the long shadow of patriarchy with a particular attentiveness, repeatedly…
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Fascination
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…
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Patreon Picks #6
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…
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Live From NYC Podfest 2014
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…
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What the Body Keeps
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…
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The Best of Mother’s Day Stories #4
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…
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The Best of RISK! #35
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…
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I'm Okay, You're Okay
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…
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Pop Obie’s Vibrator
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…
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The Best of Adventure Stories #3
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…