RISK!

The Best of RISK! #33

Our 33rd compilation of some of our favorite recent stories shared on the RISK! podcast, guest-host by Cyndi Freeman. 🎤Live Story: Hope Under the Sky (excerpt) by LP Nguyen SYNOPSIS: In 1975, the North won Vietnam’s civil war, and LP's dad, high ranking in the Southern Army, was imprisoned. The children lost everything, hunted for food, swam to school, and after 7 years, got their father back. 🎤Radio Story: Black Is the Loneliest Color by Larry Dorsey Jr. SYNOPSIS: Larry saves a suicidal Black man’s life on the streets of SF and examines his tendency to bridge things between people of different races and classes. keywords: Black experience in San Francisco, homeless, knife attack subway, people experiencing homelessness, public violence bystanders, racial isolation, urban survival stories 🎤Live Story: What the Blorp?! by Kerri Doherty SYNOPSIS: Kerri falls in love with a guy who tricks her into helping him lie to the army while he resumes his other life with his wife and daughter.  keywords: army, cheating, lying to the army, relationship 🎤Radio Story: The Silver Dollar (excerpt) by Daryl Davis SYNOPSIS: Daryl backs the Ku Klux Klan into a corner and demands that they tell him why they hate him, and he really listens.  keywords: blackness, changing minds, communication, conflict, empathy, grand dragon, ku klux klan, open minds, prejudice, racial hatred, racism, resolution, unchecked bias 🎤Live Story: Orgasmic by Yossi Rosenberg SYNOPSIS: Yossi is a shy guy raised in a conservative Jewish household with intimacy issues. He gets involved with the Orgasmic Meditation Scene, a somewhat iffy tribe that practices clitoral stimulation as a meditation. keywords: clitoral stimulation, culty, Orgasmic Meditation 🎤Radio Story: Breaking Point by Heather Farley SYNOPSIS: Heather has a psychotic break and leaves a Rauschenberg painting worth millions left to her in the divorce on a park bench.  keywords: divorce, Psychotic Break, Rauschenberg Painting 🎤Live Story: The Big Secret (excerpt) by Brad Lawrence SYNOPSIS: (Content note: child sexual abuse, murder, suicide) In a church where guilt is weaponized and silence rewarded, teenage Brad listens to a friend's secret that echoes into adulthood, long past her violent death. keywords: abortion, childhood abuse, church youth group, evangelical guilt, murder, shame, strangulation, U2 🌈 Support RISK! & Get Involved • 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in NYC on December 11, 2025 • ✍️ 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 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Live From DC!

A Classic RISK! episode from our early years that first ran in July of 2013, when Kevin Boggs, Stephanie Garibaldi, R. Levin and Amy Saidman told stories at the first RISK! live show in Washington, DC in association with SpeakeasyDC. 🎤Live Story: Standing Up by Kevin Boggs Working as a waiter at an upscale Washington DC restaurant, Kevin gets into an emotional fight with an angry customer who calls him a "faggot."  Keywords: Waiter, Rude customer, restaurant 🎤Live Story: Virgin Sacrifice by Stephanie Garibaldi Stephanie visits a Mayan village, where Mayan culture lives on to this day. When the villagers decide she is a "fertility goddess," they begin preparing for her to marry a young man from the village.  Keywords: fertility, Indigenous, Mayans 🎤Live Story: Mofo by R. Levin R. discovers new things about herself while experimenting with a group of fellow moms in the kink community, where she ends up meeting her husband.  Keywords: Kink, BDSM, Privacy, Moms  🎤Live Story: Little Sister by Amy Saidman Amy learns how to stand up to her older sister, and in the process, ends up unexpectedly bonding with her.    Keywords:: Older sister, little sister, funeral 🌈 Support RISK! & Get Involved • 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City TONIGHT! 9/25 at Caveat • ✍️ 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 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Midnight in Manila

Scott McMahon tells Dawn Fraser from the RISK! podcast his story “Midnight in Manila,” about the time he was pulled into a nightmare of corruption, false rape charges, and five years in a Philippine jail.  Check out all of our Conversation Stories! 🎙️Conversation Story: Midnight in Manila by Scott McMahon SYNOPSIS: Scott McMahon tells Dawn Fraser from the RISK! podcast his story “Midnight in Manila,” about the time he was pulled into a nightmare of corruption, false rape charges, and five years in a Philippine jail.  keywords: Philippine jail, American imprisoned abroad, wrongful imprisonment, framed, corruption, corruption in Philippines, Manila, Manila prison survival, false rape charge, held without trial 🌈 Support RISK! & Get Involved • 🎟 See RISK! live!⁠ • ✍️ 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 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Introducing Simpsons Declassified with Nancy Cartwright

Simpsons fans —THE VAULT IS OPEN!  I’m Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson for 35+ years, and I’m finally taking you inside Springfield. Simpsons Declassified is your all-access pass to the world’s most iconic, animated  series.   Each week, we crack open wild predictions, eerie coincidences and fan conspiracies and stories  from 36 seasons (that’s 800+ episodes!) behind-the-scenes with writers, directors, the cast and  celebrity superfans, PLUS…Simpsons-themed games— play along and test your Springfield IQ.   Hear exclusive stories from our guests who were there! Perhaps some scenes that almost never  aired, the jokes that died, the ones that lived and the moments that still shock me at the mic.  Produced and showrun by Monica Gil-Rodriguez. From Audacy Podcasts and CRE84U  Entertainment. Follow now to get new episodes first — and drop your wildest Simpsons’ theory in a review for  a chance to be featured on our uniquely unique podcast, Simpsons Declassified. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Queer

A Classic RISK! episode from our early years that first ran in July of 2013, when Cameron Esposito, Kris Grey and Kevin Allison shared radically different stories of LGBT life in the early 2010’s.  🎤Live Story: All the Rage by Kevin Allison SYNOPSIS: A man living in Kevin's neighborhood started screaming, "Faggot!" at Kevin whenever he was in eyeshot. Then one day the man switched from screaming to punching.  keywords: gay, homosexual, lgbtqia, queer, faggot, violence, homophobia 🎤Radio Story: The Other by Kris Grey SYNOPSIS: Kris talks about how peculiar it was to be a trans man attending the various sex parties among the gay men on Fire Island, most of whom had never seen a vagina before.  keywords: Hate crime, Street harassment, Growing up gay, internalized shame, transgender, Trans man, Queer nightlife, internalized stigma, cruising, genderqueer identity 🎤Live Story: Come Together by Cameron Esposito SYNOPSIS: The week that gay marriage was made legal throughout the land, Cameron told the moving story of her family's coming to grips with her being gay.  keywords: civil rights, lesbian identity, Catholic upbringing and queerness, same-sex marriage, LGBTQ community spaces, coming out to Catholic parents, gender nonconformity, gay rights history 🌈 Support RISK! & Get Involved • 🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York (Thursday, September 25th) • ✍️ 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 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices