This one goes deep. "Into the Mystic" first aired in February 2014, and it brings together three accounts of the uncanny from three storytellers who had no map for what they were experiencing.



Christine Lee [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Christine-Lee], an Episcopal priest, has spent years navigating the gap between the faith she teaches and the faith she actually feels. When a parishioner with a seriously injured knee agrees to be prayed over, Christine finds herself in the stairwell of her church, watching something she cannot explain.

(Content note: emotional abuse, child psychological abuse)

Lulu [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Lulu] grew up in 1970s Pittsburgh with a mother who was cruel and checked out. That summer, a neighbor's adult son with schizophrenia becomes her unlikely companion and proceeds to fill her head with detailed, terrifying visions of the Rapture, the Antichrist, and the Tribulation.

Jen Kwok [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Jen-Kwok] is with her then-fiancé's family on Staten Island when his father collapses from a heart attack on Christmas Eve. The days that follow are brutal, and something extraordinary happens on the bus ride back to the city.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/into-the-mystic-cre517 [http://risk-show.com/podcast/into-the-mystic-cre517] 

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Into the Mystic

Guest-host Taj Easton [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/taj-easton] is in the chair this week, presenting these two stories on the long shadow of patriarchy with a particular attentiveness, repeatedly asking the same leading question: Are straight men okay?



Cassidy Krug [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/cassidy-krug] arrives at Stanford a diver of moderate ambition, then spends nine years being screamed at by a coach whose legendarily ruthless style drives her to the Olympics. Fifteen years after retiring, she still isn't sure whether what got her there was abuse, or maybe exactly what she needed.

(Content note: domestic violence)

Thomas Brazzle [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/thomas-brazzle] grows up desperate for his ex-Marine father's approval, but the man abandons his family after Thomas intervenes on his mother's behalf during a vicious assault by his father. Thirty years later, at his mother's funeral, his father reappears, and Thomas is stunned to find he's still desperate for the approval of a man who brutalized his mother, abandoned them all, and is now a stranger to him.

Leave your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/brutal-authority [http://risk-show.com/podcast/brutal-authority] 

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Brutal Authority

This one goes back to February 2014: a live RISK! episode built around the theme of fascination, meaning the things that get under your skin and won't let go.



Ryan Britt [https://www.risk-show.com/storyteller/Ryan-Britt] was a self-appointed porn expert at age 10, thanks to his father's very open magazine policy and to a darkroom box labeled "Do Not Open" that turned out to contain something far more interesting than photographic paper.

Adam Wade [https://www.risk-show.com/storyteller/Adam-Wade] spent years nursing a Rick Moranis complex, right up until a chance encounter at a pharmaceutical convention gave him an unusual opportunity to put it to use.

(Content note: eating disorder)

Brad Lawrence [https://www.risk-show.com/storyteller/Brad-Lawrence] was 15, overweight, and utterly transfixed by a softcore film called Felicity — until a different movie sent him down a dangerous path of self-reinvention over a single summer.

Lulu [https://www.risk-show.com/storyteller/Lulu] left a long, sexless marriage at 44 and spent the next several years making up for lost time, culminating in a nerve-racking attempt to fulfill a very specific fantasy at a kink convention class in Astoria.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/fascination-cre516 [http://risk-show.com/podcast/fascination-cre516] 

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Fascination

Two storytellers, two very different ways of inheriting the past.



Shauna McGarry [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Shauna-McGarry] throws a Halloween party with her newly single roommate, hoping for a fresh start after a breakup. A drunk coworker zeroes in on the roommate, her little brother in a Charlie Brown shirt enters the mix, and the night expands into something Shauna has been watching her whole life: the strange, exhausting game of male presumption that nobody asked to play.

(Content note: Holocaust, genocide)

David Zellnik [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/David-Zellnik] arrived in Vienna for the first time as a dual US-Austrian citizen, his father having fled the city as a Jewish child in 1939. At a food festival, he ends up in a charged, flirtatious conversation with a tall blond Jewish convert that spins into a debate about Israel, Zionism, and who gets to claim a people's history.

Share your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/patreon-picks-6

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Patreon Picks #6

Originally recorded live at NYC Podfest in January 2014, this is one of those classic RISK! episodes where the theme, confession, actually delivers on its promise.

Kevin Allison [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Kevin-Allison] opens with a story he has told for years, then stops midway to admit he has been leaving out the best part. What he adds reframes everything.

Alex Edelman [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Alex-Edelman] turns a power strip at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport into a secret-collecting operation, until a soldier from Ramstein Air Force Base shares something that neither of them can easily walk away from.

Chemda [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Chemda] recounts her first time getting high, which escalated from bong novice to shirtless Hulk impersonation to improvised superhero capes, and ended face-first in a party-size snack mix.

Keith Malley [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Keith-Malley] spent months in a baffling odyssey through free clinics and baffled physicians over a rash that ultimately resolved without medical intervention.

Selena Coppock [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Selena-Coppock] traces her lifelong suspicion of genuinely nice men back to a seventh-grade ski trip, then confesses to acting on that suspicion in a way she is not proud of.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-nyc-podfest-2014-cre514 [http://risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-nyc-podfest-2014-cre514] 

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Live From NYC Podfest 2014

Two stories about what the body holds onto and what it eventually gives back.



Ali Mac [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/ali-mac] took a job in crypto after two years of Nazi death threats courtesy of Fox News. At the Miami Bitcoin Conference in 2022, she finds herself escorting her boss down a hallway and comes face to face with Tucker Carlson, broadcasting live, sitting very low, blissfully unaware of what is about to happen to him.

(Content note: death of a partner)

Gordon Blitz [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/gordon-blitz] has been with his partner Scott since 1973, through an informal wedding, years of infidelity Gordon never told anyone about, and the terrifying early years of the AIDS crisis. "Bonded" follows Gordon through an HIV test, a week of waiting, and the long, complicated road of caring for the man who put him at risk.

Leave your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/what-the-body-keeps

Be Part of RISK!

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What the Body Keeps

Two mothers' days that look nothing alike, but hit just as hard.



Jobim Santos [https://www.risk-show.com/storyteller/Jobim-Santos] grew up watching his mother Linda lose her battle with ALS piece by piece, from cane to wheelchair to hospice bed, all while praying at church each week that she would just live long enough to see him turn 13. She didn't quite make it. What he didn't expect was that grief would take another 13 years to fully arrive.

(Content note: domestic violence, murder)

Amy Brooks [https://www.risk-show.com/storyteller/Amy-Brooks] got a phone call one Monday morning about a blue-eyed three-year-old whose father had killed his mother. She said yes before the social worker finished the sentence. What followed was two and a half years in court while raising a child whose trauma was showing up in holes in the walls and phone calls from the police.

For more info and music featured in this episode, visit risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-mothers-day-stories-4 [http://risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-mothers-day-stories-4] 

And you can find all of our Mother's Day Stories at risk-show.com/mothersdaystories [http://risk-show.com/mothersdaystories] 



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The Best of Mother’s Day Stories #4

This episode brings together two of the most gripping conversations in the show's recent run: a man who survived an extended stint in a Philippine jail on fabricated charges, and a medical student whose addiction and grief turned out to be more entangled than she had ever let herself understand.

(Content note: accusations of sexual assault, child abuse, false imprisonment)



Scott McMahon [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/scott-mcmahon] went to Manila for a construction job, ended up befriending a Belgian neighbor, and got pulled into a nightmare when that neighbor's wife turned the Philippine justice system against him. What followed was five and a half years in a maximum-security cell with 300 men, corrupt cops showing up every six weeks with a cash demand, and a family he could only see through a chain-link fence. It is one of the most staggering survival accounts this show has ever aired.

(Content note: addiction, overdose death)

Chelsea Dalsey [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/chelsea-dalsey] was a medical student with a photographic memory, a habit she couldn't shake, and a lifelong partner in crime named Alex. Her conversation with Kevin Allison is part confession, part excavation, arriving at a truth she had spent 14 years burying alive.

Leave your reactions to these stories and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-risk-35 [http://risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-risk-35] 

You can find all of our Best of RISK! episodes at risk-show.com/bestofrisk [http://risk-show.com/bestofrisk]



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The Best of RISK! #35

From the RISK! archives, this January 2014 episode gathers three storytellers around a theme that sounds simple and turns out not to be: actually being okay with yourself.

Joel Kim Booster [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Joe-Kim-Booster] grew up as a gay Korean adoptee in an evangelical family, and it wasn't until he fell for a man who specifically desired him because of his race that he realized how thoroughly someone else's rejection had shaped his sense of his own worth.

Dylan Brody [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Dylan-Brody] has been performing the postmortem on his own victories since fifth grade, and it took competing in a full-contact TaeKwondo tournament at 41, with blood running down his face, to get a piece of advice he hadn't been able to give himself.

Jolenta Greenberg [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/Jolenta-Greenberg] built an entire adolescent identity around the belief that she was a diamond in the rough, and her high school crush Brian eventually put that idea to the test.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/im-okay-youre-okay-cre513 [http://risk-show.com/podcast/im-okay-youre-okay-cre513] 

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ [https://risk-show.com/live] in New York City on Tuesday, June 9th

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I'm okay, You're okay

Guest-hosted this week by Taj Easton [http://risk-show.com/storyteller/taj-easton], stepping in for Kevin to present a story by LeCount Holmes Jr. [https://www.lecountholmesjr.com/], now Taj’s surrogate pops.

(Content note: explicit sexual activity involving a minor)

LeCount Holmes Jr. grew up with a father who told him he loved him, hugged him, cried in front of him, and believed that teaching his son how to love a woman was one of the most sacred things a father could do. This is the story of that education, of what was passed down through three generations of loving men, and one of the most unusual love stories RISK! has ever told. 

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/pop-obies-vibrator [http://risk-show.com/podcast/pop-obies-vibrator] 

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ [https://risk-show.com/live] on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in NYC

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📚 Shop merch or the RISK! book⁠ [https://risk-show.com/shop]

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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Pop Obie’s Vibrator

If you like The Moth, This American Life or Snap Judgment, take a walk on the wilder side with RISK! Your colorful host Kevin Allison (of the legendary comedy group The State) helms this surprisingly uncensored show where people tell jaw-dropping true stories they never thought they'd dare to share in public. RISK! is hilarious, heart-wrenching and remarkably real. Think you've heard it all? Fasten your seatbelt.

kevinallison

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