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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.

This is a classic RISK! episode from January 2014, and it holds up with a particular kind of ferocity.

(Content note: sexual assault)

Ellie Jackson spent 12 years convincing herself she had moved on from being raped at a college party her freshman year. She'd built a careful system for managing intimacy, or avoiding it, and mostly it held. Then a routine visit to Planned Parenthood, a persistent social worker, and an accidental encounter with a Crest commercial undid all of it at once.

(Content note: physical abuse, domestic violence, child abuse)

Liz Stewart grew up with a sociopathic father and a paranoid schizophrenic mother who once pinned her to the floor to perform a homemade exorcism. She had boxed for eight years and never once hit back. Until she did.

Two stories. Both women fought back.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/fighting-back-cre515 

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on June 9th, 2026

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 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

Fighting Back

Three stories so worth your time, from darkly funny to devastating. Our 34th compilation of some of our favorite recent stories shared on the podcast.

(Content note: sexual assault) Fixxy starts a summer in Pittsburgh doing sex work for quick cash before a move to New York City. One night a client seems different, with an unusually easy request and a ride out to the suburbs. Things escalate in ways Fixxy never anticipated, leading to one of the more genuinely terrifying stories we’ve ever aired. In a completely different vibe, Kevin Allison tells the family legend he’ll never live down: a Super 8 film project, a borrowed jar of jumbo pickles, and an ADHD brain running out of options with the clock ticking.

(Content note: child abuse, death) Then there’s Mishelle Roberts, who grew up believing her mother was a devoted caregiver. Years later, she started finding records, asking questions, and pulling at threads that had held her family's story together her entire life. Mishelle’s story was also the focus of Season Six of Nobody Should Believe Me.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-risk-34

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on Tuesday, June 9th 2026

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 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

The Best of RISK! #34

Three 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 hairless cat as the foundation of a breeding empire. When the cat ended up at a friend's apartment and she stopped returning his calls, his plan to get it back got increasingly creative.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/impulsive-cre510

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in New York City

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 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

Impulsive

Kevin hears Timothy Vaux's "Males of the City," a story from So Say We All, for the first time. In RISK! Reacts episodes, there's no preview, no prep, just Kevin listening along with you and sharing everything the story brings to his mind.

The story: Timothy is a happily single gay man living in the heart of North Park, San Diego, where a buzzy Saturday night out ends with a casual wave to a stranger that sets off a chain of spontaneous, increasingly elaborate, and very adult events.

The reaction: Kevin is instantly charmed, finding echoes of his own younger self in Timothy's freewheeling urban adventures. He shares his own surprisingly relatable stories about role play, improv, and the particular chaos of letting a night take you wherever it wants to go.

For more info and music featured in this episode, visit risk-show.com/podcast/males-of-the-city-risk-reacts 

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ June 9th, 2026, in NYC

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 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

Males of the City: RISK! Reacts

True Crime News: The Podcast is your weekly dose of real-time updates on the most gripping true crime stories, current cases, investigations, scams, and schemes. Host Ana Garcia is joined by crime experts, police officers, defense attorneys, and other leading authorities in their fields as they cover murders, scams, investigations, and unsolved crimes from across the country. Join us each week as we take you inside the biggest, most shocking, and most bizarre true crime cases.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Presenting True Crime News: The Podcast

First released in December 2013, this live RISK! episode from Philadelphia's First Person Arts pairs two storytellers with a lot to say about losing control and getting it back.

Dawn Jewel Fraser's "Brasilado" follows a young American woman deep into an immersive year in Rio de Janeiro, learning Portuguese street by street from her chain-smoking instructor Marcy, until a late-night taxi ride home unravels spectacularly when Brazilian police find weed in her bag and mistake her for a drug trafficker.

Then Katie Samson tells "The First Time Again," the story of rebuilding a romantic and sexual life after a sledding accident left her with a spinal cord injury at 20. Her homecoming weekend story is tender, funny, and genuinely triumphant.

Two women, two very different roads back to freedom.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-philly-4-cre509 

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on Tuesday, June 9, 2026

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 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

Live From Philly 4!

(Content note: child sexual abuse)

In 2016, Ed G. got on stage at RISK! and told a story he'd never told anyone. Now, ten years later, Ophira Eisenberg sits down with him to go places that story couldn't: the FBI, the Pope, the survivors who found each other decades later, and the hard-won question of where shame really belongs.

Ed's story begins in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where a boy abandoned by his violent father and drowning in poverty finds an unlikely lifeline in the local Catholic church. What the bishop who runs it asks for in return will take Ed the better part of a lifetime to fully reckon with.

🎶For more info and music featured in this episode, visit risk-show.com/podcast/quid-pro-quo-revisited 

Support RISK! & Get Involved

• 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on March 17th, 2026

• ✍️ Pitch your story⁠

• ❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

• 📚 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

Quid Pro Quo, Revisited

In this crossover episode with The Story Collider, Karen McCaffrey and Mary Cyn share stories that illustrate the importance of compassion in healthcare.

🎤Live Story: More than Survival by Karen McCaffrey

(Content note: sexual assault, rape) After surviving rape and a traumatic hospital experience afterward, Karen transformed her pain into purpose. Decades later, she directed a sexual assault forensic examiner program, advocating for victims' rights and ensuring survivors receive trauma-informed care.

🎤Live Story: My Vagina Job by Mary Cyn

Drawing on her own traumatic experiences with dismissive care, Mary transforms vulnerability into a tool for empathy, helping future doctors treat patients with compassion and helping women feel less fear and isolation about their bodies

🎶For more info and songs featured in this episode, visit risk-show.com/podcast/where-it-hurts

🌈 Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on March 16th, 2026

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 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

Where It Hurts

Michael McFadden and Adrianne Frost share stories about evolving feelings about their bodies over time. 

🎙️Radio Story: Growth by Michael McFadden

Michael is a child swimming prodigy trapped in a grown man’s body who fails a humiliating puberty test, loses his athletic destiny, and ultimately redefines masculinity and self-worth beyond the pool and beyond his penis size.

🎤Live Story: Smoochin' and Fiddlin' by Adrianne Frost

(Content note: child sexual abuse, self-harm) After surviving childhood sexual abuse and years of debilitating endometriosis, Adrianne equates beauty with value and spirals through painful sex and self-harm before discovering lasting love on new terms.

🌈 Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on March 17th

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 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

Metamorphosis

Byron Bowers and Amy Salloway share experiences from their formative years. A part of The Best of Coming of Age Stories series.

🎤🎙️💻Live Story: My Father's Son by Byron Bowers

At 10, Byron goes to visit his dad's crack-addicted father near the projects. Four years later, Byron is selling crack, and he breaks down, wondering how he let his life become like his father’s.

🎤Live Story: Sister Act by Amy Salloway

Amy understands as a child that her relationship with her mother isn’t loving. When her half-sister is born, her mom casts Abbie as the angel to Amy’s devil. Even the cleaning lady says Abbie is the reincarnation of Anne Frank. 

🌈 Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on Tuesday, March 17, 2026

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 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

The Best of Coming of Age Stories #2

Kevin announces RISK!’s goal this year -- helping listeners connect. More social events, more online fun, and Kevin’s latest online storytelling workshops. One starts on Jan 14, one on Feb 15. Email kevin@risk-show.com to jump on in!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2026, Jump In On RISK!

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