Podcast
Risk! Storytelling Podcast
Hosted by Unknown Author · EN
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
36episodes
Episodes
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S17 Ep1745: Still Dog People: Two Truths
3d ago00:43:39Tap to summarizeFor the first of two Still Dog People episodes this week, John LaSala guest-hosts with his wife Kate LaSala, a professional dog behavior consultant.(Content note: graphic dog attack on a child)Jill Karliner watched her four-year-old twin sons head into the neighbors' backyard to play with the big kids. Minutes later, she heard a scream that changed how her family would live with dogs. In the years since, she has come to hold two truths that don't quite fit together.Kate joins John afterward for a wide-ranging discussion, drawing on her work in fear and aggression cases and her role as a companion animal end-of-life doula.Leave your comments plus find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/still-dog-people-two-truths 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
Transcribe →S17 Ep523: Mixed Feelings
1w ago00:58:27Tap to summarizeA classic RISK! episode from March 2014. Three live storytellers, three very different voices in the head.Vicki Tollemache spent her teens as the careful kid orbiting a wilder crowd. The summer before she turns 16, she decides to get her first kiss over with and arranges a late-night meeting with a boy she barely knows. The kiss becomes something she spends years trying to forget, for reasons she only understands much later.Kevin Allison hits the bottom of a lost decade with no career, no money, and no plan. He picks up a book about taking dictation from God and starts a notebook of his own, never sure whether the answers are wisdom or just his own voice talking back.Mollena Williams admits she's an alcoholic and lands in detox, where a four-foot hyena climbs out of the floor and refuses to leave.Leave your comments and find music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/mixed-feelings-cre523 Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live in New York City on September 8th, 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
Transcribe →S17 Ep84: The Best of Disability Stories
1w ago00:47:09Tap to summarizeKevin launches a new classic RISK! series for Disability Pride Month, revisiting stories about life with a disability from episodes past.Amy Salloway takes a job as guest playwright at Entropy, a theater program for adults with multiple disabilities. On her first day, a charming client named Aaron falls at her feet. The interview quickly becomes something Amy knows is off-limits.Mary Gossett meets Andrew on the Plenty of Fish dating app. He's a wheelchair user. Their first months together are equal parts giddy first love and daily logistical negotiation. Then, on the morning of what was supposed to be a landmark day, Mary loses feeling on the right side of her body.(And thanks to Amy Salloway and Jeff Grell, who organized the Twin Cities RISK! fundraiser where Mary's story was originally recorded.)• Leave your comments to these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-disability-stories• Find this and future Best of Disability Stories episodes at risk-show.com/disabilitystories 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
Transcribe →S17 Ep1744: Out of My Hands
1w ago00:40:05Tap to summarizeTwo 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
Transcribe →S17 Ep522: Live From San Diego!
2w ago01:17:21Tap to summarizeThis classic RISK! episode first aired in March 2014, and the four San Diego storytellers behind it cover a remarkable range, from white-knuckle confession to gleeful filth.Tommy Galan traces a drinking habit that began at age eleven and nearly cost him his family, until three little words from a bar owner reframe everything. Justin Hudnall grows up on the motto "you don't miss what you don't have," then goes looking for the Vietnam-veteran father he never met.(Content note: suicide, sexual abuse, eating disorder)Meanwhile, Joy Keller lands in Los Angeles broke and answers an ad promising pay to meditate, which pulls her toward a guru selling enlightenment by the thousands. And Lesley borrows a coworker's copy of the film Secretary and recognizes a desire she has hidden since childhood.Leave your comments on these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-san-diego-cre522 Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live in New York City on September 8th, 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
Transcribe →S17 Ep1743: I Don't Know
2w ago00:40:37Tap to summarizeRadio producer Jon Nelson curates and guest-hosts an episode built from three listener submissions RISK! never quite knew where to file, all circling childhood faith and the certainties grown-ups pass down.Jana Fisher is eleven and the most devout girl in her friend group until a sleepover becomes a contest over who is truly saved. Jesse Bradley-Amore is twelve and watching cartoons when his mother appears with a police nightstick and a frank approach to sex ed. Stephen Harder, fresh out of Bible college, arrives for a youth ministry interview at a megachurch and learns the being who scheduled it may not work there.Nelson, an avowed agnostic, threads it together with his own reckoning with faith and his late father.Leave your comments on the stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/i-dont-know 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
Transcribe →S17 Ep521: Vagina Vagina Vagina!
3w ago01:00:48Tap to summarizeBack in March 2014, RISK! tripled down on a single subject, and this classic episode was the result.Josh Healey is 17 and smitten with his drama club co-president when she casts him, a boy, in the first ever co-ed production of The Vagina Monologues. The soccer team has questions, the college feminists have objections, and the cast is heading toward open revolt.Amy Salloway, fresh off a massage therapist's humiliating refusal to touch her, lands at a size acceptance conference in Seattle. It turns out she's one of the only straight women in the building and starts to wonder if that's negotiable for a weekend.And Elna Baker arrives in Hollywood for the pitch meeting of her dreams while her own body quietly sabotages the room.Leave your comments on these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/vagina-vagina-vagina-cre521 Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live in NYC on 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
Transcribe →S17 Ep1742: But You Look So Good
3w ago00:40:48Tap to summarizeTwo people who look fine on the outside, and the very different storms going on underneath.Ande Jackson is years into rebuilding after ovarian cancer. But one afternoon mid-treatment, immune system flattened by chemo, she decides to open her door to a neighbor holding a casserole. The woman means well, and reaches for a thought about mortality that does the opposite of comfort."(Content note: heavy drug use)Chetter M. Galloway is in deep with crystal meth in 2005, dodging help from his HIV doctor and dragging his family through the collateral damage. His years-long cycle of relapse only screeches to a halt when an unspeakable revelation about his dealer drops a bomb on his life and leaves Chetter praying a stash of compromising photos doesn't drag him down with it.Leave your comments on these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/but-you-look-so-good 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
Transcribe →S17 Ep83: The Best of Long Shot Stories
4w ago00:41:09Tap to summarizeLong shots don't always pan out the way you hoped. Sometimes they catch fire. Sometimes they mug you.Shauna McGarry, a TV writer who can't shake her mother's thrift-store instincts, talks herself into a $2,500 used hot tub from a shady Craigslist dealer named Dan. Things don’t turn out so great.David Crabb waitered through the days after 9/11 at one of the only open restaurants in lower Manhattan, listening to strangers unburden themselves over candlelight. By the end of the week he'd saved $900 for a U-Haul, and on the walk home from his last shift, drunk and carrying a magnum of wine, he felt an arm clamp around his neck and something jab into his ribs.Leave your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-long-shot-stories-1 You can find all of our special series episodes at risk-show.com/specialseries 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
Transcribe →S17 Ep1741: Negative Attention
Jun 2300:37:12Tap to summarizeBrittany Ross and Sam Feirstein are both hungry for it in this episode: the moment someone finally looks your way and says, yes, you.For Brittany, that moment arrives in the least expected form. She is in her early 20s, grinding through acting classes and princess gigs and bar shifts, desperate for anyone in Los Angeles to see her as the star she knows she could be. When a neighbor with an apparent break from reality begins accusing Brittany of following her through the apartment building, Brittany finds herself oddly reluctant to shut it down. The woman is unhinged, possibly dangerous, and giving Brittany more attention than anyone in Hollywood has managed in years.Sam's wound runs deeper. His story begins at a dressing room in a North Hollywood strip mall in 1976, where a single word from his mother sets off a decade of relentless bullying. By the time he lands at a commercial casting in the 1990s, surrounded by quarterbacks and cheerleaders, the kid who won a writing contest nobody noticed is just trying to get one person to see him as something other than a problem.Leave your comments and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/negative-attention Be Part of RISK!🎟 See RISK! live on Tuesday, 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
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