RISK!

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 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 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 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 

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Guest-hosted this week by Taj Easton, stepping in for Kevin to present a story by LeCount Holmes Jr., 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 

Support RISK! & Get Involved

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

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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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Two RISK! stories pulled from the archive, and both are worth your time. "The Best of Adventure Stories #3" is funny and unsettling in equal measure, sometimes within the same story.

Winter Tashlin was 16 years old, at a Jewish summer camp in New York, and desperately wanted one good day. The plan was the Empire State Building and a performance of Les Mis. He has Tourette syndrome, the city is unforgiving, and the day keeps getting worse.

Meanwhile, Marshall York drove solo across the American West, pitched a tent alone in the Grand Tetons, and went to sleep. Sometime in the night, a voice started speaking to him from inside the tent, calm and close and saying something he could not explain.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-adventure-stories-3

Support RISK! & Get Involved

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

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📚 Shop merch or the RISK! book⁠

🎓 Take storytelling classes with us⁠🎥 Hire Kevin as a coach or get personalized videos
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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 

Support RISK! & Get Involved

🎟 See RISK! live⁠ on Tuesday, June 9, 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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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