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On this episode of Risk Reacts. Oh, I've been so stressed lately, and I've been so stuck in my own head ruminating about money worries and oh my God, I don't have this. And oh my God, what's gonna happen with this, that and the other Risk. Hello, folks, this is Risk the the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison, and this is another one of our Risk Reacts video episodes where I listen to a story for the very first time and give you my instant reactions. Now, if you want to watch this episode, there's a link to that in the show notes. And for all of our audio versions of our episodes, Those go back 16 years and they're at risk-show.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Now let's get started. If you've been following our Risk Reacts series, you'll remember that back In April of 2025, I heard a story called the Silver Dollar from the podcast Love and Radio. And it was absolutely extraordinary. And since then we've had multiple suggestions for me to hear another particular story from Love and Radio called called the Living Room. It's from their March 2015 episode. I have never heard it before. So that's what we're gonna do now. We're gonna listen to it together. Now, what I have been told by my producers is that it was presented by Nick Van Der Kolk and produced by Brianna Breen. And we'll hear just a bit of their voices, but for the most part, we'll be hearing from Diane Weiperty, whose story this is. So after a quick break, we'll hear the Living Room from Love and Radio. We'll be right back. We're back.
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So I'd been living in my apartment about 15 years, and one evening I walked in the living room, which has three bay windows which face the gardens in the back, and over half a block of gardens and across a small street, there was this bright window that I'd never noticed before, but it's at the exact eye level of my third floor apartment. And after a while I realized that I'd never seen it because there had always been curtains. And so it was always, I think, dimly lit. The curtains were often closed. And all of a sudden there's this bright light and no curtains. And it was like a movie screen. Fifteen years, and that window has meant nothing. I haven't even noticed it. And now it's all I think about. There were new tenants, and it had always been a living room. And now it was suddenly a bedroom and there were these two people in there and they were naked. This young couple in their 20s, they were really lovey dovey and they were always naked.
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From Radiotopia, you're listening to Love and Radio. I'm Nick Van der Kolk. Today's episode the Living Room featuring Diane Weipert.
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The thing is, they pushed their bed so that the head was up against the windows so their heads, you could see that both of their heads were lying there. So you'd see things that you just like they were just shocking. I just had been there all of this time and suddenly you could see people having sex really clearly, like amazingly clearly. I had no idea that you could see so well across such a distance. And it was really uncomfortable. My husband and I were still adjusting to parenthood and it wasn't the most romantic time in our, in our lives. My son was probably three and when you're new parents to a toddler, especially because he sleeps in bed with us too, so he's like literally right between us. The last thing you need is a couple of hotties getting it on across the window reminding your husband of everything he's not getting. So to have this really beautiful young woman that was really thin and naked all the time, really, you know, it was very frustrating. And you know, she had this beautiful, tall, lanky, well built boyfriend. And so at first I just, because I felt like my husband was going to be staring at this naked woman all the time, I started closing the living room curtains, which is really kind of silly. And it made our room really dark and we never closed those curtains. And so that didn't work. So I thought about making a really big sign that said close your curtains or buy curtains. They didn't even have curtains. Buy curtains. We can see you. And I thought about going by their building. I had no idea what their unit was and leaving a note. And then I started thinking that was really silly and prudish and started realizing that they were just young and I had to just get over it and live with it and move on. And so that's what I did. We got really used to them and they became sort of this symbol of what we used to be, you know, in our 20s. They were living this really carefree time. And that's another thing that it was kind of hard not to. Sometimes when you're in early parenthood, you get a little bitter. I think about some of those freedoms and we'd watch them sleeping till 11 while we'd been up since 5 with our toddler and we saw them eating breakfast on the roof together. So we got used to it and we would notice like, oh look, they got a new plant in there. And they became sort of part of our lives, you know, because they were just always there and never ever bought curtains. Do you think all the neighbors in your building and the surrounding buildings also saw this? It's funny, I think that the way that we're positioned because all of the buildings around us are different sizes and our building is the tallest one on our block, but it's exactly at the right level to see. I have a friend next door and then a friend across the way. And all of them have windows facing the gardens, but not all of them are blocked. And I look at the other windows of the buildings around us and I don't think anyone has this perfect level view. The irony is that I'm such a private person and I don't know, am I supposed to have maybe respected their privacy and just looked away. But it's impossible because that's the way the chairs face, they face the window. I couldn't, I couldn't not see them if I wanted to, but I guess I could have not gotten the binoculars.
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This.
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So time went by and this is maybe a year and a half later, two years later. And I remember seeing their room and the light was on, but it was empty. And I thought that was strange because it was 5 o' clock in the morning and they never went anywhere early. And it was like that for like a whole week. It was just this empty room with a light on. And I thought that was strange. But they didn't seem to be there as often or maybe just she would be there and he was gone for long periods of time and we just kind of forgot about them, you know, we just. There were. There wasn't as much action going on and they weren't as present. And so we just kind of lived our lives and forgot about them for maybe seven or eight months. At the end of last year in December, there was this night when my husband and I separately had both seen this woman, naked, sitting in the window. Kind of chubby, slump shouldered woman who was just looking down at the street. And we both thought it was so strange. Just couldn't figure out who she was and what she was doing and why she was naked. And a few nights later there was this young man standing right at the window by the bed. And he was skeletal, he was so thin and he was bald completely. And we realized it was the same Couple, they had completely changed. He was sick. There was something serious wrong with him. After that. I just watched the window all the time. He would sit all day. He was there because I work from home and I would see him all day in the bedroom, either lying down or sitting at the computer. And then after a couple of weeks, he was just lying down and he was just there. And his bald head would be up against the pane of glass all the time. And she would be there and she'd come in and she would bring him things. But mostly it was just him there by himself. And sometimes he would have, like his knees bent and you could just see how skeletal they were. They were just bones. And sometimes he'd kick off the blankets and he was just lying there naked and emaciated. And then after a while, he was just always burrowed under the blankets. I. I found myself thinking like, well, maybe he's been through chemo and he's recovering and, you know, he's going through this. This sick phase before he gets well because he's so young. He's just such a young guy. We had to go to Colorado to see my family for Christmas. And I worried all the time I was there. I thought about them and I worried that he wasn't going to be there when we got back. I worried all the time about it. When we got back about 10 days later, he was still there, but his head looked so much smaller and. And there were a lot of people there. And then I got out my binoculars, I got my birding binoculars. I'm not proud of it, but it's. At that point I felt so invested. It looked like people coming to say goodbye. And there was this sort of short, blonde, Midwestern looking woman who I guessed was his mother. And then there was this young guy who just kept pacing the halls. You know, you could just see there were two doorways leading out of this room. And you could just see him go down one side and through the other and then back and forth and back and forth. And I figured he was the brother. And it looked like the girlfriend's sister was also there. It was just a guest. Looked like her. I remember there was just this little gathering going on in the living room. I believe the neighbors were standing around and having drinks and they had no idea at all what was going on right upstairs. I would watch people come and go. Then after a while, everyone left except for the girlfriend and the mother. And I spent all that evening sitting vigil on the back of the couch and watching. I remember the Girlfriend lying beside him for a long time on her own. And she was just stroking his face so tenderly. It was so much affection that really transcends the kind of young love that you express. All I could see was the top of his head all that time. And I remember later seeing her standing by the bed with the mother on the other side. And they were just all talking. And she put a hand on his forehead. She put the back of her hand on his forehead. And then she was wiping at her eyes. And you could tell that there was this. That there was this sense that. Something that it was getting closer. Then I could see this reckoning where she. She was wiping at her eyes and touching his forehead and wiping at her eyes. And there were candles lit and. And this young woman was on one side and his mother was on the other side. And they just were lying there for a really long time. And they had their hands just resting on his chest. And so I watched it for a long time. The mother and the girlfriend were lying on either side of him. And you could tell it was his. This was the end, I thought, now all that's left is the girlfriend and the mother. And inexplicably, me. Me, like I am one of the three people at the deathbed. They lay there for a long time, and then they just got up and they went into the other room. And I realized that must have been the moment. All this time, you know, I always had this sense that, you know, they're. They're going to break up, they're going to move out. Nobody that age stays together very long. And. And I had no idea. It was just like this beautiful love story. So the next day. The next day I got up and I went to the window first thing, and they were folding up blankets and stacking them on the bed. And I figured that he had been taken away in the night. And so I was in the kitchen and my husband called because he had. He knew how obsessed I'd gotten with this situation. And he said, there's activity over there. And I came running and I got my binoculars and I looked and. And realized that he was still there. He was still on the bed. His body was still there. And it was the coroner. So the coroner and his assistant came and they had these white plastic gloves on. And they pulled his body to the edge of the bed and onto this white sheet. And I just remember the lifelessness of it. It looked so shrunken. It almost looked like a shrunken rubber proxy of a body so incredibly dead. They wrapped him in the sheet, and they zipped him into a vinyl bag and they put him on this kind of gurney. They took the gurney out. And I just had this very strange impulse. And I ran and threw on my coat kind of over my pajamas and ran out to the street and ran to the corner. And I got there just as they were hauling him out. They were carrying him out. And the girlfriend was there. She was talking to one of them in the doorway. And they loaded him into this van. And I realized that they didn't know me at all like I had. You know, I had no place to be there. And they looked at me. I remember the coroner's assistant looking at me like I was sort of a. Like a rubbernecker in the street, you know, looking at this grisly scene. And I realized that's what I was. I had no place to be there. And suddenly it all felt so perverse. So I went home, and I felt very strange about the whole thing. And I tried to tell myself that. Well, I never wanted to be part of their lives. I. I was the one that wanted them to put up curtains. I wanted them to shut the intimate stuff out. I was uncomfortable with it. I was the one that wanted out. And I started remembering all of a sudden when I moved to that apartment so many years ago. And I was in my mid-20s that I had to share the apartment with a roommate because it was too expensive. And my bedroom was in the living room. And I remember how when I first moved in, I pushed the head of my bed up against the three bay windows so that in the morning I could see the sky. I had no clue. It never occurred to me that anyone could see me, that I remember that I felt like whenever I looked out the window, I never saw anyone. And I never closed my curtains either. Did you ever find out either of their names? I never have found out their names. And I looked through the local obituaries obsessively for weeks, and there was never anyone that fit his description. There was never anyone young enough or that looked like him. So no idea. I walked by their place several times, and there's only. There are only numbers on the mailboxes and the buzzers, and there's. There are no names, so I can't look up anything. I. I don't know. Yeah, I have no idea who she is. I have no idea who he was. No idea what he was sick with. I don't know if I've gotten anything right. Maybe they were married, but I didn't get wrong the fact that he died because I was there. I was there for that because I saw it all. I think about that a lot, how he chose that. He chose to die in that bed, in that bedroom. And he didn't choose to go to a hospice or anywhere he wanted to be in his bedroom all of those long days. From the morning, when I looked out in the evening, he was just exactly the same position. That was where he wanted to be. And it's where all of the happy times were, I guess, and the end times, you know, just a couple days after it happened, she was up on the roof with a friend doing. Doing yoga. And I've watched her lying around a lot. She went out of town, I think, for a bit, and she's still there. I have been watching her recovery and instead of being this young woman, she looks totally different. She looks so changed. She just looks like this very experienced, world weary person. She has a job now that gets her up very early because I get up at 6 and she's already dressed and heads out at like 6:15. And the other night I saw her and she was in her bedroom and she was wearing this baggy T shirt and all the lights were on and she was dancing, just dancing around her room. So, yeah, I. I want her. I want her to move on. This, this young woman that I was so cranky and bitter about, you know, now she's. Now she's. Now I feel so protective and kind of maternal, you know. If you ran into her like, like at the corner market or something, do you think you could ever say anything to her? Yeah, if I ran into her, I wouldn't say a thing. What would I say? I've been watching you through your window. How creepy would that be? Yeah. No way. She doesn't, you know, she doesn't know that. She doesn't know that there's this person that I don't know, that's this complete stranger that's out there really rooting for her, you know?
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Wow. Good Lord. That was. That was extraordinary. That was absolutely beautiful and haunting. I was just not prepared for that. There was no way to prepare for that. Gosh, I'm so touched to have had the experience of sharing in that story today, being able to hear it. So listen, I will take a quick break, collect my thoughts, and when I come back, I'll give you a full but still pretty immediate reaction to Diane Weipert's story and I'll tell you how you can help determine the next episode of Risk React. So we'll be right back.
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- [25:43]
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Okay, we're back. Just took a little break there to collect my thoughts and now I know why members of my staff wanted me to hear this story so much. Couple of reasons, but first and foremost, when I was the 80s was a different time. A lot of us were latchkey kids and I think I was 12 when I started riding the bus into downtown Cincinnati to go to a place called the Moviola, which was a spectacular. You still see people online reminiscing about oh my God, the Moviola. You know, people in the film industry would travel to go see stuff there. It was just this extraordinary art house house that did all sorts of great double features and in 1983amovie that was considered one of the greatest movies ever made. But that had been completely unavailable to see for the public for decades. No one had seen it on tv. It hadn't been re released in theaters. It just went completely away. With critics writing it was one of the greatest movies, but you can't see it anymore. It was Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock, and I think it was Martin Scorsese who got the money together to restore it and fight for the rights to put it out again. And so it was just such a big deal, especially with fans of the movie Ola, that Rear Window was kind of re premiering again. So I was 13 years old and I didn't go with anyone. I just took a bus downtown and went to see the movie. And I will never forget that. It was one of those moments in the cinema where you're having. Where I was having such a. Such a experience with the people around me that when a key climactic moment in the movie happens, I won't spoil it myself. And the lady right next to me literally grabbed on hold each other. And we're like, I'm sorry. But the whole cinema was like. Because it really is one of the most. Hitchcock had a thing about leading you into his perversions and slyly revealing to you. You're just as perverse as I am in the process, right? So Rear Window is a movie all about how when we go to the movies, we're spying. We're essentially like looking in on people's intimate private lives. Jimmy Stewart is a adventure photographer for National Geographic, and he gets into a terrible accident and his leg is broken, and he's kind of stuck for weeks on end just looking out the rear window of his apartment. And one of the couples, he has stories for everyone across his courtyard. One of the couples, they're either called the newlyweds or the honeymooners. Everyone gets a nickname over time, right? And they're right next door. And Jimmy and Grace Kelly, who are an item and kind of spying together at some points, talk about how, oh, my God, young lovers can be so annoying. You know what I mean? They're watching how thrilled they are to be having sex all the time, and then toward the end of it, they're fighting. And Jimmy Stewart's like, see, See what would happen if we tied the knot? You know, that kind of thing. But anyway, it's famous for that looking and then what the character is looking at. And it does that so much for two hours or so that you really start to feel like you are Jimmy Stewart and you are spying and you're stuck in this apartment. And, you know, when danger arises, you feel like you are in danger, too. But it's also so fascinating because we do that, like, stories do serve that purpose for us, of living vicariously. And, I mean, this story did that for me. This story just now, the living room made me feel like, oh, I've been so stressed lately, and I've been so stuck in my own head ruminating about money worries and, oh, my God, I don't have this, and, oh, my God, what's gonna happen with this, that and the other? And then taking a breath, listening to someone else's experience, and just having this profound reminder of just the value of living and appreciating living, and also just the recognition that you just never know what's going on in other people's lives, really. I had a super duper painful breakup several years ago, and a woman wrote a book called the Wisdom of a Broken Heart. And she specifically wrote this book for people who they were broken up with badly. In other words, the breakup was a surprise to the person who got broken up with and the other person kind of sort of ghosted, you know what I mean? Like, there was no completion. There was no, you know, processing done together of the breakup that had happened to her. And it was one of the most devastating things she'd ever lived through. And I realized, and it was for me, too, this breakup was one of the most devastating things I've ever lived through. And I realized, like, maybe, I don't know, a year or so after the breakup, oh, you know what it is when you're that intimate with a person? There's only two people on the face of the earth who know that intimate experience. And so if one person is suddenly behaving as if they don't even remember or they don't, it just never meant enough to them to acknowledge that there used to be something there and now there's not. It's so disorienting because you're like, gosh, I thought we shared these meaningful moments. And I don't feel like he's thinking about those things at all. And he seems to even have forgotten. So what's the point of living if you can't agree with people about the most meaningful things you've lived through? You know what I mean? So this story was like a reminder of, whoa, how weird that there was actually a third person who was witnessing a lot of this couple's most intimate experiences. So, yeah, I mean, it brings up the same issues of morality that Rear Window brings up, which is that you know, yeah, it is perverse to get binoculars and be spying. One of the reasons I rewatched Rear Window when I moved into this skyrise that I live in in Times Square now. And I was so struck when I moved in because I was like, oh, my God, for the first time in my life, I have access to a view of hundreds of people's apartments or offices. And I thought, God, if I got a high powered telescope, you know what I mean? Like, what might I find out is going on out there? But then, of course, you start to realize, yeah, but what if they're all looking at me? So anyway, I am very proud to say I have never bought binoculars or anything like that, but good Lord, I'm so touched that Diane shared this story. Now, John was telling me about, like, the history of this thing. I'm sure Nick van der Kolk could relate to me at a certain point. After the first few years, or maybe the first year of Risk's existence, I stopped listening to other storytelling podcasts because I was constantly, and still am constantly listening to stories for Risk. And so that starts to feel overwhelming to be listening to other storytelling podcasts, too. So I was. I didn't even know that this was rerun on Radiolab, that it won all kinds of awards for best podcast of 2015 or whatnot. There was a ballet based on it. So this got a lot of attention back in the day. So it's kind of a gift that. It's still new to me to be able to react to it this way. But, yeah, it ultimately makes me feel like it just reminds me what an honor it is to hear people share about such private stuff. And in a weird meta way, this story is a person doing that who is also vicariously sort of witnessing very private stuff. And, you know, like I said, it helps. It really does help. I mean, we're feeling more and more isolated. I mean, you know, just as in culturally after the Internet and Covid and everything else, and people feel more disconnected and, you know, there's so much talk about loneliness and people having rumination problems stuck in their own heads, just, you know, ruminating or looking at the world through a tiny little phone window, you know, and when. When you can get away from a tiny little phone window and listen to a human being share at length about such a profound experience, it really helps you feel like, oh, my own little life is, you know, there's a lot to worry about, sure. But here's a little reminder of, you know, how much there is to love about life and make the most of with life. I thought it was really gorgeous because of Rear Window. I was definitely kind of expecting like a horror that this was going into horror movie territory. Especially the moment when he got so thin and they looked totally different. I was like, what the fuck is on? Going, going on. But yeah, I think I'm really appreciative to have heard it today because I've been so consumed by worries and, you know, just logistical stuff, money and all that kind of stuff. And this was a real reminder of appreciating, I don't know, just life itself and the way that people can honor that by sharing about their lives. Now, John also said that some people on the Internet started sleuthing this and pointing out that, oh, they thought that this was inconsistent or yada, yada, you know, people doubting the veracity of the story that has happened with us with several risk stories. It's funny, it hasn't happened with any risk stories that aren't spectacularly amazing. You know what I mean? It's the ones where you're like, holy cow. That some people start to feel like, wait, this feels a little bit too much like, you know, a movie or this hit my heartstrings in a way that made me, you know, that might be it. That might be. Part of what makes people suspicious is when some stories kind of hit your heart in a certain, certain way and you're like, well, this might be fiction. And I'm sure Nick would agree with me. There's only. I mean, we do a lot of questioning when we feel like someone might be exaggerating, embellishing, or even flat out lying. We'll question that. And sometimes people will admit that they were embellishing or lying and we'll have them rework things. But there's just no way to know for sure. I don't know. I guess I'm a very trusting person and I just felt very trusting of Diane in this case. So anyway, I'm so thankful. Thanks to Nick Van Der Kolk and Brendan Baker from Love and Radio. And thank you, Brianna Breen, for bringing the story to life. Incredible. And of course, Diane Weipert for sharing the story in the first place. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, folks, you know, when it comes to mind blowing stories that Love and Radio has been producing for about 20 years now, good Lord, please do yourself a favor and dive into their archives@loveandradio.org and thank you all for listening along with me. Let us know what you think about this or any of our Risk Reacts episodes. You can find the whole series at risk-show.com riskreacts now both our producer Taj Easton and past Risk storyteller Manolo Matos independently recommended that I listen to this particular story and see how that turned out. So if you've heard an amazing true story on another podcast and thought, wow, Kevin Allison has got to hear this one, send it our way. Just leave a comment about it on this video or on the episode page on our website. Or you can me or us on social media, but don't spoil the story. You know, remember, I can't have heard the story. Let us know who the storyteller is by name and what podcast it was on, but let the rest be a surprise and our producers will check it out and take care of things. You can always find us on social media, including YouTube, RiskShow and always on our website at risk-show.com folks, today's the day. Take a risk.
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It.