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PODCAST

Risk! Storytelling Podcast

RISK! is a live show and podcast “where people tell true stories they never thought they’d dare to share in public” hosted by Kevin Allison, of the legendary TV sketch comedy troupe The State. It"s featured people like Janeane Garofalo, Lisa Lampanelli, Kevin Nealon, Margaret Cho, Marc Maron, Sarah Silverman, Andy Borowitz and more, dropping the act and showing a side of themselves we’ve never seen before. See more information at www.risk-show.com

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All Episodes

62:49

Stung

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/09/24

"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

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68:23

S17 Ep532: Live from Boston!

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/09/10

Three wildly different stories from a night RISK! recorded live in Boston back in May of 2014, pulled from the archive and dropped back into the feed.(Content note: attempted suicide)Josh Poirier grew up as the kid every bully found, singled out for years by an older boy named Paul. At his lowest, broke and checking himself into an inpatient psychiatric ward, the nurse who comes to wake him is the one person he spent his whole childhood running from.Lillian DeVane lands the dream job: managing a

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63:46

S17 Ep1304: The Best of RISK! Inanity

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/09/03

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 public toilet, TS Madison hollering about a good dick, a Cinderella scene that curdles into filth, and a thank-you number built entirely out of Kevin’s orgasm noises. Bits by and from Jeff Barr, Soce the Elemental Wizard, Brian Babylon, David Crabb, John LaSala, Detox, Alaska, and a

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65:33

S17 Ep530: Live From Pittsburgh!

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/08/27

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, Stacy Keene believes she's found her calling, until a frightened teenage patient and an openly hostile doctor put her in the middle of a confrontation she hadn’t expected.Then Matt Bower answers a late-night Kmart call from a man who just needs one doorknob delivered to a dark house in the

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65:19

S17 Ep529: Death Defying

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/08/20

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 chaplain of a prison the cartels were running themselves. There is a pizza party, a borrowed guitar, and a man with a machete.(Content note: suicidal ideation, suicide)CJ Hostetter graduated into the 2009 economy, moved back in with their divorcing parents, and stopped feeling anything

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55:02

S17 Ep1749: Non-Ethical Non-Monogamy

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/08/11

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

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58:30

S17 Ep527: Live From Reno 1!

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/08/06

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 a barista when a new job as a chiropractor's assistant lands her at a business conference in Clearwater, Florida. The company's multimillionaire CEO zeroes in on her immediately, and over two days his attention escalates from flattery and magic tricks to a yacht tour and a dinner where

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38:04

S17 Ep1747: Let Him Go

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/07/28

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 chemistry is undeniable, right up until he looks her in the eye and warns her not to Google him. Her response becomes a very funny, surprisingly pointed argument about honesty and what commitment is really worth.Then David Hu comes home to the Bronx for Father's Day 2021 and finds his

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47:48

S17 Ep1733: Pop Obie’s Vibrator

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/04/28

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 activity involving a minor)LeCount Holmes Jr. grew up with a father who told him he loved him, hugged him, cried in front of him, and believed that teaching his son how to love a woman was one of the most sacred things a father could do. This is the story of that education, of what was passed down through three generations of loving men, and

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30:12

S17 Ep81: The Best of Adventure Stories #3

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/04/23

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 within the same story.Winter Tashlin was 16 years old, at a Jewish summer camp in New York, and desperately wanted one good day. The plan was the Empire State Building and a performance of Les Mis. He has Tourette syndrome, the city is unforgiving, and the day keeps getting worse.Meanwhile, Marshall York drove solo across the American West,

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50:14

S17 Ep1732: Weirdos

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/04/21

This episode is a love letter to people who are magnificently, irrepressibly, sometimes accidentally weird.Larry Dorsey Jr. opens with the true account of his first day teaching standup comedy at Northern California's top improv venue. He has TAs, a curriculum, a strategy. None of it survives contact with a visibly high student who, roughly fifteen minutes into class, pulls out his ding-dong and just starts going, putting Larry in an impossible position. And Tuesday Thomas moves to LA fresh from a

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2:29

Today's the Day. Welcome to RISK!

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/04/17

Think you've heard it all? You haven't.People pull over because they're laughing too hard to drive. People cry on treadmills. People share episodes with new friends thinking: if this person loves these stories as much as I do, they're my people. That's RISK! — the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. RISK! has been the world's most surprising, most human, most unfiltered storytelling podcast for nearly 17 years. Created and hosted by Kevin Allison (The State

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92:39

S17 Ep186: A Hard Landing, Revisited

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/04/16

JP Michael first told "A Hard Landing" on RISK! in the summer of 2016, and it became one of the most talked-about episodes in the show's history. Now, a decade later, he's back with Kevin Allison to listen to it together and reckon with everything that's happened since.(Content note: self-harm, suicidal ideation)The original story follows JP shortly after he relocated to New York City for a job that quickly fell apart, leaving him isolated and adrift. He meets Claire, a razor-sharp, deeply

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60:01

S17 Ep510: Impulsive

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/03/26

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

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30:08

S17 Ep1727: Males of the City: RISK! Reacts

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/03/24

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:

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38:42

S17 Ep79: The Best of Love Stories #4

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/02/12

Reba Sparrow and Smith Galtney share some of our favorite unusual love stories from our 16-year history.🎙️LIVE Story: Pleasant Mountain by Smith GaltneySmith had the perfect husband, house and home... till he returned to the crystal meth habit of his younger years. His husband was able to support Smith in getting to rehab and putting his life back together again.🎙️LIVE Story: Baby Love by Reba SparrowReba has a history of body shame. She’d always felt her breasts weren't big enough. When she met a

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45:31

S17 Ep1721: Unrequited

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/02/10

Connor O’Donoghue, JC Cassis and Jay Michel share stories about crushes and rebounds. 🎙️Radio Story: I Was the Appetizer by Connor O'DonoghueA virgin with body shame issues, Connor falls for a straight guy he befriends in a psych hospital. He has a threesome with his crush and a girl, knowing the guy is only into the girl. Decades later, Connor sheds his sexual anxiety. 🎤Live Story: Never Again by JC CassisJC gets a crush on Bobby, a glamorous classmate, and tells him about it. Bobby rejects her

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37:26

S17 Ep1720: Come and Go

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/02/03

Ezra Holmlund and Sarah Adelman tell stories about things involving coming... and going. 🎤Live Story: Things Are Going South by Ezra HolmlundEzra and his brother are at home when they begin to suspect a stranger has broken into their house upstairs. When the police arrive, the two brothers are mistaken for being the criminals.🎤Live Story: The Long And Winding Road (To Semen Analysis) by Sarah AdelmanSarah is working at a sperm bank but loses her job after the HR department discovers her stand up

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47:02

S17 Ep184: The Riverside, Revisited

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/01/30

In memory of Jan Scott-Frazier, we revisit her 2011 story called “The Riverside” and, until now unreleased, her conversation about the story in 2021 with narrative therapist David Newman. 🎤Live Story: The Riverside by Jan Scott-Frazier(Content note: suicide) At 22, Jan moved to Japan, but was lonely, as foreigners often feel. She began to notice a woman who visited the same river she did, who was even more depressed. Jan strategized how to comfort this stranger, but was too late, discovering from

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53:38

S17 Ep1719: How Can I Tell You?

Risk! Storytelling Podcast ·

2026/01/27

Stella Mayerhoff and Rebecca Heron tell stories about the unbearable weight of truth.🎙️Radio Story: In Ways I Never Could Have Imagined by Stella MayerhoffIn the Democratic Republic of Congo, out in the field studying bonobos, Stella has to get a local man back home by lying to him, saying his baby is sick, when in fact, his baby has already died.Keywords: Congo field research, bonobos, primatology, grief in the jungle, moral dilemma, scientific fieldwork, malaria loss, human conflict

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