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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.

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48 episodes
Avg 54 min
English

Episodes 48

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S17 · E530
August 27 · 1 hr 4 min
Live From Pittsburgh!
Three storytellers live in Pittsburgh: a nurse who won't back down, a doorknob bound for a dark house in the woods, and a teenager's jar of coins.
S17 · E1751
August 25 · 40 min
Is It Her?
A found wallet, a 3 a.m. subway stare, and two New York men circling breakups. Brad Lawrence and Christopher Moncayo-Torres.
S17 · E529
August 20 · 1 hr 4 min
Death Defying
A classic RISK! episode from May 2014, where Dave Hill, CJ Hostetter and Tyler Phillips each get close enough to death to feel it. The mood swings from absurd comedy to real dread, sometimes inside a single sentence.
S17 · E1750
August 18 · 32 min
Exposure Therapy
Calvin Cato and Uriah Wesman tell stories about revealing who they really are in front of an audience.
S17 · E528
August 13 · 48 min
Live From Reno 2!
A classic RISK! episode recorded live in Reno, Nevada, in April of 2014, featuring Josie Spadoni and the late Emily Reese. The night ranged from pitch-black and profane to raw, tender reckoning with love and unconditional acceptance.
S17 · E85
August 12 · 45 min
The Best of Sex Stories #5
Ceara Lynch and Baruch Porras-Hernandez bring the heat and the complications. Ceara discovers her most marketable asset is one she flushes every day; Baruch gives a fake name at a bathhouse and watches the lie take on a life of its own.
S17 · E1749
August 11 · 55 min
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 apartment, grows colder and stranger by the day, and one late-night argument escalates until Fox is the one in handcuffs, alone in an Italian jail cell with no idea why. Patrick Holbert convinces himself his marriage is quietly open, books an appointment with a dominatrix in Queens, and spends the next six weeks deciding whether to tell his wife. His confession lands nothing like he pictured. Funny, filthy, and more honest about marriage than he probably planned. Both men skipped the conversation that might have changed everything. Leave your comments on the stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ On September 8, 2026 in New York City ✍️ Pitch your story⁠ ❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ 💵 Make a one-time donation⁠⁠ via PayPal or Zelle to kevin@risk-show.com 📚 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
S17 · E527
August 6 · 1 hr
Live From Reno 1!
A classic RISK! episode from April 2014, recorded live in Reno. Virginia Munsterman, Jessica Levity, and Steve Emmerich bring three stories spanning unwanted propositions, roadside spiritual encounters, and psychedelic self-discovery.
S17 · E1748
August 4 · 49 min
Trying It On
Kenice Mobley and Richard Velasquez tell stories about chasing freedom. Kenice Mobley chases a movie-heroine fantasy of the woman who says yes to everything, and Richard Velazquez performs teenage toughness on a 1980s crack corner.
S17 · E525
July 30 · 1 hr 13 min
Freedom
A classic RISK! episode from April 2014. Sean Crespo, Jeff Simmermon, Kate Greathead, John F. O'Donnell, and Jean Ann Le Bec each get out of something: a summer job, a diagnosis, a heartbreak, a delusion, a marriage.
S17 · E1747
July 28 · 37 min
Let Him Go
Two very different encounters with love and loss. Tuesday Thomas turns a dating-app romance with a secretive man into a sharp reckoning with commitment, while David Hu walks through his father's last months in the Bronx.
S17 · E1746
July 23 · 1 hr 3 min
Still Dog People: Who Am I Now
In a spiritual sequel to our episode Still Dog People: Two Truths, Marilyn Gilchrist is attacked by a rescue dog on a routine welfare check. She tells her story to Michael Shikashio in a crossover with his podcast, The Bitey End of the Dog, about the injury, the fear that followed, and what she only thought she had lost.
S17 · E1745
July 21 · 44 min
Still Dog People: Two Truths
Guest-hosts John and Kate LaSala present the first of two Still Dog People episodes. Jill Karliner's four-year-old son was attacked by a neighbor's dog. Kate, a professional dog behavior consultant, joins John afterward to discuss Jill's story through a dog professional's lens.
S17 · E523
July 16 · 57 min
Mixed Feelings
From March 2014, a classic RISK! episode about the voices in our heads and what we do with them. Three storytellers each take the stage to face down a part of themselves they had spent years trying to ignore.
S17 · E84
July 15 · 49 min
The Best of Disability Stories
Mary Gossett falls for a man on a dating site, and Amy Salloway starts a job at a therapeutic theater program for adults with disabilities.
S17 · E1744
July 14 · 39 min
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 Rappoport is on a Zoom call in his home office when his wife bursts in with news that their twelve-year-old twin daughters are texting from a nearby mall about an active shooter and hiding in Macy's. He drives there in flip-flops, half feral, and the girls keep texting him back, begging him not to come. Then Robin Gelfenbien takes a small plane out of St. Louis, freshly heartbroken and dreading her return to New York. She circulates a notebook around fifty strangers with an invitation to write a story together, then sets her sights on convincing a flight attendant named Valentino to let her read it aloud before they land. Leave your comments and find full episode details plus music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/out-of-my-hands Be Part of RISK! 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on Tuesday, September 8, 2026 ✍️ Pitch your story⁠ ❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ 💵 Make a one-time donation⁠⁠ via PayPal or Zelle to kevin@risk-show.com 📚 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
S17 · E522
July 9 · 1 hr 17 min
Live From San Diego!
A classic RISK! episode from March 2014, captured at a live San Diego show. Tommy Galan, Joy Keller, Lesley, and Justin Hudnall trade true stories that swing from hard-won sobriety to cult recruitment, a secret desire, and the search for an absent father.
S17 · E1743
July 7 · 42 min
I Don't Know
Guest-host/curator Jon Nelson, a lifelong agnostic, frames an hour on childhood faith and the comfort of not knowing. Jana Fisher competes to be holiest at a sleepover, Jesse Bradley-Amore gets sex-ed from his mom and a nightstick, and Stephen Harder suspects an angel arranged his job interview.
S17 · E521
July 2 · 1 hr 1 min
Vagina Vagina Vagina!
On this classic RISK! episode from March 2014, Josh Healey, Amy Salloway, and Elna Baker go places most people would never speak of out loud: high school theater wars, a hotel full of radical self-acceptance, and a Hollywood dream undone by the body itself. And vaginas. Did we mention vaginas?
S17 · E1742
June 30 · 39 min
But You Look So Good
Appearances rarely match what is happening underneath. Ande Jackson navigates the things people say to someone with cancer, and Chetter M. Galloway moves through addiction, a doctor's advice, and a road trip to a family reunion. Two very different reckonings with how the world reads us.

Showing 21–40 of 48 episodes