Risk! Storytelling Podcast

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500

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Jun 2026

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About the show

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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60 recent

June 16, 2026Episode 174038 min

S17 Ep1740: 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 with a deaf family, spending her adolescence riding horses to the corner store, smoking cigarettes, and managing a fireworks stand at age 13. When she finally gets her own horse, he goes mysteriously missing one afternoon, circling the property in a daze. Her brother tears off barefoot into the woods and comes back with an explanation.(Content note: domestic violence)Evan Miles drives home after a 12-hour hospital shift to find a police helicopter overhead and four cruisers closing in. Charged with attempted murder, he spends nine days in L.A.'s Twin Towers jail before learning what his partner of nine years told them.Leave your comments and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/something-wildAnd thanks to Julia Wiedeman's Top Shelf Stories show in New York, where Kambri’s story was told. Catch the next one on June 18th, 2026!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

June 11, 2026Episode 5201 hr 8 min

S17 Ep520: 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 Firecracker Contest with Holly Hunter in the lead and a stalker with a ticket for opening night. The question of whether to go on becomes a different question entirely when Holly disappears into the basement holding what looks like a butcher knife.Dana Gould spent years as pen pal and friend to Maila Nurmi, the actress who invented Vampira, destitute and barely known, living in a converted garage. He reads from the last letter he wrote her.(Content note: child sexual abuse)Nato Green landed a yard-work job at 16, took about fifteen years to figure out what his employer actually wanted, and has some thoughts on what actually protects kids.Brendon Walsh got his hat ruined, his face rearranged, his brass knuckles confiscated, and his name put on a court docket, in that order.Leave your comments on these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-san-fran-2014-cre520 Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on September 8, 2026 in NYC✍️ 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

June 9, 2026Episode 173946 min

S17 Ep1739: Captives

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)Sofia Javed is a Pakistani-American interpreter hired to work in Uzbek and Russian at Guantanamo Bay, where she is ordered not to sympathize with detainees and then immediately put to the test. What starts as a potential crisis in a cellblock turns on a single, surprisingly mundane demand.(Content note: physical abuse, domestic violence)Heather Minter grew up in an evangelical fundamentalist family that uprooted itself for the mission field in Papua New Guinea, leaving her and her brother in a boarding school dorm run by a cruel and volatile house father. The faith that held her together through childhood eventually came apart in college, and what filled the void turned out to be its own kind of trap.Leave your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/captives Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live⁠ tonight! (Tuesday, June 9, 2026) in NYC.✍️ 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

June 4, 2026Episode 5181 hr 12 min

S17 Ep518: 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 Savage told the story of his early days writing Savage Love in Seattle, doing drag to hide his identity, and one late-night encounter that left him genuinely bewildered by his own desire.(Content note: murder, sexual assault)Kelleen Conway Blanchard grew up carrying fragments of a story no child should know: her cousin Pam was murdered in her apartment, and the man everyone suspected walked free. Twenty years later, a phone call changed what Kelleen knew, though not necessarily how it felt.Summer Waldron was freshly divorced, newly medicated for depression, and committed to a long-planned threesome. Then the night itself unraveled, pulled apart by side effects, a panicked call from her mother, and a body that had simply stopped cooperating.Emmett Montgomery nearly died of hypothermia on a high school survival trip in the Utah desert, hallucinating through every bad decision on the way there.Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-seattle-cre518 Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on Tuesday, June 9, 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

June 2, 2026Episode 173844 min

S17 Ep1738: 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. When her dad goes into cardiac arrest, the family descends on his hospital room in Memphis, and her Taiwanese grandmother, who has never previously mentioned being a healer, begins issuing instructions from a witch she met on a Carnival cruise. The spells escalate. So does everything else.Nick Hornedo has been falling for his girl best friends since he was a teenager, and he knows it's a problem. In high school, a girl named Chloe pulls him into corners to talk, says things that sound like promises, and kicks him in the groin. He keeps finding reasons to stay in the game. It does not go the way he imagined.Between the two stories, JC Cassis drops in with a deathbed anecdote about a grandfather who wanted everyone to know they should be working harder.Share your reactions and find music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/love-death-and-dads-pee Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on Tuesday, June 9, 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

May 28, 2026Episode 51744 min

S17 Ep517: 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 for what they were experiencing.Christine Lee, an Episcopal priest, has spent years navigating the gap between the faith she teaches and the faith she actually feels. When a parishioner with a seriously injured knee agrees to be prayed over, Christine finds herself in the stairwell of her church, watching something she cannot explain.(Content note: emotional abuse, child psychological abuse)Lulu grew up in 1970s Pittsburgh with a mother who was cruel and checked out. That summer, a neighbor's adult son with schizophrenia becomes her unlikely companion and proceeds to fill her head with detailed, terrifying visions of the Rapture, the Antichrist, and the Tribulation.Jen Kwok is with her then-fiancé's family on Staten Island when his father collapses from a heart attack on Christmas Eve. The days that follow are brutal, and something extraordinary happens on the bus ride back to the city.Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/into-the-mystic-cre517 Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live!✍️ 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

May 26, 2026Episode 173759 min

S17 Ep1737: 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 asking the same leading question: Are straight men okay?Cassidy Krug arrives at Stanford a diver of moderate ambition, then spends nine years being screamed at by a coach whose legendarily ruthless style drives her to the Olympics. Fifteen years after retiring, she still isn't sure whether what got her there was abuse, or maybe exactly what she needed.(Content note: domestic violence)Thomas Brazzle grows up desperate for his ex-Marine father's approval, but the man abandons his family after Thomas intervenes on his mother's behalf during a vicious assault by his father. Thirty years later, at his mother's funeral, his father reappears, and Thomas is stunned to find he's still desperate for the approval of a man who brutalized his mother, abandoned them all, and is now a stranger to him.Leave your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/brutal-authority Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on June 9, 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

May 21, 2026Episode 5161 hr 4 min

S17 Ep516: 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.Ryan Britt was a self-appointed porn expert at age 10, thanks to his father's very open magazine policy and to a darkroom box labeled "Do Not Open" that turned out to contain something far more interesting than photographic paper.Adam Wade spent years nursing a Rick Moranis complex, right up until a chance encounter at a pharmaceutical convention gave him an unusual opportunity to put it to use.(Content note: eating disorder)Brad Lawrence was 15, overweight, and utterly transfixed by a softcore film called Felicity — until a different movie sent him down a dangerous path of self-reinvention over a single summer.Lulu left a long, sexless marriage at 44 and spent the next several years making up for lost time, culminating in a nerve-racking attempt to fulfill a very specific fantasy at a kink convention class in Astoria.Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/fascination-cre516 Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in [CITY] ([MONTH & DAY]) or [CITY] ([MONTH & DAY])✍️ 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

May 19, 2026Episode 173637 min

S17 Ep1736: 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 start after a breakup. A drunk coworker zeroes in on the roommate, her little brother in a Charlie Brown shirt enters the mix, and the night expands into something Shauna has been watching her whole life: the strange, exhausting game of male presumption that nobody asked to play.(Content note: Holocaust, genocide)David Zellnik arrived in Vienna for the first time as a dual US-Austrian citizen, his father having fled the city as a Jewish child in 1939. At a food festival, he ends up in a charged, flirtatious conversation with a tall blond Jewish convert that spins into a debate about Israel, Zionism, and who gets to claim a people's history.Share your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/patreon-picks-6Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on June 9, 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

May 14, 2026Episode 5141 hr 8 min

S17 Ep514: 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 promise.Kevin Allison opens with a story he has told for years, then stops midway to admit he has been leaving out the best part. What he adds reframes everything.Alex Edelman turns a power strip at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport into a secret-collecting operation, until a soldier from Ramstein Air Force Base shares something that neither of them can easily walk away from.Chemda recounts her first time getting high, which escalated from bong novice to shirtless Hulk impersonation to improvised superhero capes, and ended face-first in a party-size snack mix.Keith Malley spent months in a baffling odyssey through free clinics and baffled physicians over a rash that ultimately resolved without medical intervention.Selena Coppock traces her lifelong suspicion of genuinely nice men back to a seventh-grade ski trip, then confesses to acting on that suspicion in a way she is not proud of.Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-nyc-podfest-2014-cre514 Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live⁠!✍️ 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