RISK!

A 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

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🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on September 8th, 2026

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Kevin 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

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💵 Make a one-time donation⁠⁠ via PayPal or Zelle to kevin@risk-show.com

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🎓 Take storytelling classes with us⁠

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Two 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

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💵 Make a one-time donation⁠⁠ via PayPal or Zelle to kevin@risk-show.com

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This 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

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Radio 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