Podcasts · Arts · Comedy

RISK!

RISK!

300 episodes · Explicit

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 page 1 of 6

  1. Scary Stories #18: Spine-tingling!

    · 1 h 03 min · S18 E1803 · Explicit

    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 girlfriend’s apartment in the projects when a fever comes over…

  2. Make It Stop!

    · 52 min · S18 E541

    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 at the University of Victoria acting program when a…

  3. Bangkok Stories 1

    · 56 min · S18 E1803 · Explicit

    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 Athi Kumar is easing into a slow Sunday when his housemate…

  4. Live From London!

    · 1 h 26 min · S18 E540 · Explicit

    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 co-produced with Spark. (Content note: suicidal ideation) Dave…

  5. The Best of Hispanic Lives #5

    · 40 min · Explicit

    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…

  6. The Best of RISK! #37

    · 1 h 16 min · Explicit

    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…

  7. Seedy

    · 56 min · Explicit

    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…

  8. Gettin' Off Scot-Free

    · 35 min · S18 E1801 · Explicit

    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…

  9. Live From Chapel Hill!

    · 58 min · S17 E536 · Explicit

    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…

  10. The Best of RISK! #36

    · 1 h 51 min · S17 E1756 · Explicit

    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,…

  11. Stung

    · 1 h 03 min · Explicit

    "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…

  12. Almost

    · 40 min · S17 E1755 · Explicit

    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…

  13. Second Wind

    · 40 min · S17 E533 · Explicit

    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…

  14. Giggles

    · 41 min · S17 E1755 · Explicit

    Three stories about laughing at exactly the wrong moment, and finding out it was the right one all along. Three ways of getting through it sideways. Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live in NYC - Tuesday, December 8,…

  15. Live from Boston!

    · 1 h 09 min · S17 E532 · Explicit

    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 back into the feed. (Content note: attempted suicide)…

  16. No Harm, No Foul

    · 37 min · S17 E1754 · Explicit

    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 to the ER, floors it down an empty road of green lights, on…

  17. The Best of RISK! Inanity

    · 1 h 03 min · S17 E1304 · Explicit

    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. We’ve got stamps.com jingles, a goth lament about needing a…

  18. The Best of School Stories #2

    · 47 min · S17 E86 · Explicit

    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 to a Manhattan college, where a classmate mocked how she…

  19. So Long, And Thanks For All The Jeff: The Jeffisode

    · 1 h 06 min · S17 E1752 · Explicit

    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 never told on the show: the mushroom trip Kevin took at…

  20. Live From Pittsburgh!

    · 1 h 04 min · S17 E530 · Explicit

    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 assault) As a counselor at a Pittsburgh women's clinic,…

  21. Is It Her?

    · 40 min · S17 E1751 · Explicit

    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, and their seven-year relationship goes cold almost on…

  22. Death Defying

    · 1 h 04 min · S17 E529 · Explicit

    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 Mexico to stay with an old college friend who had become the…

  23. Exposure Therapy

    · 32 min · S17 E1750 · Explicit

    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 willing to do almost anything to perform for more than…

  24. Live From Reno 2!

    · 48 min · S17 E528 · Explicit

    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 Spadoni is working an afternoon at her Los Angeles dungeon when…

  25. The Best of Sex Stories #5

    · 46 min · S17 E85 · Explicit

    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 suggests she bottle and sell her urine. She does it on a dare…

  26. Non-Ethical Non-Monogamy

    · 55 min · S17 E1749 · Explicit

    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 apartment, grows colder and stranger by the day, and one…

  27. Live From Reno 1!

    · 1 h 00 min · S17 E527 · Explicit

    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 Munsterman is a 20-year-old college student scraping by as…

  28. Trying It On

    · 49 min · S17 E1748 · Explicit

    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 ideal into a Paris sex club, a single shared baguette, and a…

  29. Freedom

    · 1 h 14 min · S17 E525 · Explicit

    From April 2014, five people finding a way out. Sean Crespo signs up for a sleep deprivation study to escape the worst summer job in Boston, then spends ten days plotting one act of privacy. Kate Greathead, dumped and…

  30. Let Him Go

    · 38 min · S17 E1747 · Explicit

    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 unavailable men, meets a charming match on a dating app. The…

  31. Still Dog People: Who Am I Now

    · 1 h 03 min · S17 E1746 · Explicit

    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 Dog. Kevin Allison sets it up and returns at the end with his…

  32. Still Dog People: Two Truths

    · 44 min · S17 E1745 · Explicit

    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 note: graphic dog attack on a child) Jill Karliner watched…

  33. Mixed Feelings

    · 58 min · S17 E523 · Explicit

    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 orbiting a wilder crowd. The summer before she turns 16,…

  34. The Best of Disability Stories

    · 49 min · S17 E84 · Explicit

    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 job as guest playwright at Entropy, a theater program for…

  35. Out of My Hands

    · 40 min · S17 E1744 · Explicit

    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 Rappoport is on a Zoom call in his home office when his…

  36. Live From San Diego!

    · 1 h 18 min · S17 E522 · Explicit

    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 gleeful filth. Tommy Galan traces a drinking habit that…

  37. I Don't Know

    · 43 min · S17 E1743 · Explicit

    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…

  38. Vagina Vagina Vagina!

    · 1 h 01 min · S17 E521 · Explicit

    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…

  39. But You Look So Good

    · 40 min · S17 E1742 · Explicit

    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…

  40. The Best of Long Shot Stories

    · 39 min · S17 E83 · Explicit

    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…

  41. Negative Attention

    · 35 min · S17 E1741 · Explicit

    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…

  42. My Old Man

    · 1 h 09 min · S17 E446 · Explicit

    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 Fathers Day Stories series! Chesley Calloway grew up in Baton…

  43. Something Wild

    · 37 min · S17 E1740 · Explicit

    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 with a deaf family, spending her adolescence riding horses…

  44. Live From San Fran 2014

    · 1 h 08 min · S17 E520 · Explicit

    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 Firecracker Contest with Holly Hunter in the lead and a…

  45. Captives

    · 46 min · S17 E1739 · Explicit

    Two stories from people who found themselves in situations they didn't choose and had to figure out what to do from inside them. Guest-hosted by the captivating Cyndi Freeman. (Content note: references to torture)…

  46. Live From Seattle!

    · 1 h 13 min · S17 E518 · Explicit

    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 Savage told the story of his early days writing Savage Love in…

  47. Love, Death, and Dad’s Pee

    · 44 min · S17 E1738 · Explicit

    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. When her dad goes into cardiac arrest, the family descends on…

  48. Into the Mystic

    · 47 min · S17 E517 · Explicit

    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 for what they were experiencing. Christine Lee, an…

  49. Brutal Authority

    · 1 h 02 min · S17 E1737 · Explicit

    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 asking the same leading question: Are straight men okay?…

  50. Fascination

    · 1 h 07 min · S17 E516 · Explicit

    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. Ryan Britt was a self-appointed porn expert at age 10,…

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