RISK!

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 divorce, meets Alexis Arquette within her first week, and ends up at a film premiere with Danny Elfman, where she personally escorts a legless, increasingly volatile Susan Tyrrell down Hollywood Boulevard in stiletto heels on a Friday night. She thought she had finally made it in Hollywood. And in a way, she had

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/weirdos 

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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 on MTV), new stories every Tuesday, classics every Thursday. Much more at risk-show.com.

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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 perceptive woman who becomes his anchor in the city, and when she develops a mysterious and terrifying illness, JP steps up as her primary caregiver. What unfolds over the following months is almost impossible to believe.

In the conversation that follows, JP reflects on the three-year gap between the events and telling the story, the therapy that helped him finally make sense of it, and a stunning new development: he recently tracked down one of the story's key figures and got answers he'd been missing for thirteen years.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/a-hard-landing-revisited 

And check out all of our Revisited Stories!

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on Tuesday, June 9, 2026

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❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 Shop merch or the RISK! book⁠

🎓 Take storytelling classes with us⁠

🎥 Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos
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Bad Medicine brings together three storytellers whose bodies, doctors, and circumstances all conspire against them in very different ways.

Pam Stepansky throws out her back on a spin bike, ends up bedridden at her father's apartment, and asks him to do something she never imagined asking any parent to do. What follows is a five-day hospital stay where she's dosed with narcotics she explicitly refused, and a long recovery that forces her to finally reckon with who she wants to be.

Brad Lawrence walks himself to the ER after gaining 25 pounds in five days and charms an entire floor of doctors and nurses into basically hanging out with him. Then his wife shows up to get shit done. Kevin Allison takes his first trip to San Francisco in 1993 with his best friend, buys three doses of surprisingly potent acid from someone who looks a lot like Jesus, and things escalate from there.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/bad-medicine 

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on Tuesday, June 9th, 2026

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 Shop merch or the RISK! book⁠

🎓 Take storytelling classes with us⁠🎥 Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos
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Two RISK! veterans deliver stories about plans that—you guessed it—backfired.

As a teenager Nate Runkel built a satirical website that sexualized cartoon characters as a parody of how guys talk online. It got a million views, landed in Complex Magazine and a Maureen Dowd book, and earned him more attention than he ever wanted. The people he respected weren't laughing.

(Content note: conversion therapy) And Kelli Dunham’s story is set in the sweaty, armadillo-haunted wilds of an evangelical Florida summer camp. She was there by her own choice, fundraised her own way in, and came home proud, convinced for the next 20 years that the whole adventure was entirely her idea. It wasn't.

Two stories about getting exactly what you didn't ask for. Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/backfire 

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in New York City!

✍️ Pitch your story⁠

❤️ Support us on Patreon⁠ or ⁠make a one-time PayPal donation⁠

📚 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