(Content note: sexual assault, justifiable homicide)

Annie Carnrike spent years close to her cousin Michael, a man of fierce loyalty and an equally fierce temper. When he showed up at her home one Thanksgiving night, drunk and out of control, what began as a familiar crisis turned into a fight for her life.

What Annie faced that night was devastating enough. What came after was its own ordeal: arrested, charged with first-degree murder, and placed in a men's maximum-security prison as a transgender woman. The case against her was built not on evidence but on bias. Her story is one of the most remarkable RISK! has ever featured.

Help support Annie on Go Fund Me

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/into-the-moving-dark 

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This is a classic RISK! episode from January 2014, and it holds up with a particular kind of ferocity.

(Content note: sexual assault)

Ellie Jackson spent 12 years convincing herself she had moved on from being raped at a college party her freshman year. She'd built a careful system for managing intimacy, or avoiding it, and mostly it held. Then a routine visit to Planned Parenthood, a persistent social worker, and an accidental encounter with a Crest commercial undid all of it at once.

(Content note: physical abuse, domestic violence, child abuse)

Liz Stewart grew up with a sociopathic father and a paranoid schizophrenic mother who once pinned her to the floor to perform a homemade exorcism. She had boxed for eight years and never once hit back. Until she did.

Two stories. Both women fought back.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/fighting-back-cre515 

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Three stories so worth your time, from darkly funny to devastating. Our 34th compilation of some of our favorite recent stories shared on the podcast.

(Content note: sexual assault) Fixxy starts a summer in Pittsburgh doing sex work for quick cash before a move to New York City. One night a client seems different, with an unusually easy request and a ride out to the suburbs. Things escalate in ways Fixxy never anticipated, leading to one of the more genuinely terrifying stories we’ve ever aired. In a completely different vibe, Kevin Allison tells the family legend he’ll never live down: a Super 8 film project, a borrowed jar of jumbo pickles, and an ADHD brain running out of options with the clock ticking.

(Content note: child abuse, death) Then there’s Mishelle Roberts, who grew up believing her mother was a devoted caregiver. Years later, she started finding records, asking questions, and pulling at threads that had held her family's story together her entire life. Mishelle’s story was also the focus of Season Six of Nobody Should Believe Me.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/the-best-of-risk-34

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Three stories about snap decisions and what happens next: a classic RISK! episode from December 2013 that still hits hard.

Lauren Cook found her date for a stranger's New Jersey wedding on Craigslist Casual Encounters. She showed up with a fake identity, a room full of people who knew nothing about her, and a night that kept escalating in directions she did not plan for.

(Content note: gun violence)

JJ grew up in 1980s Bushwick, Brooklyn, fought his way into Wesleyan and then Wall Street, but one afternoon a neighborhood confrontation pulled him back to a version of himself he thought he had left behind. He came very close to throwing everything away.

Daniel Lobell sank $2,000 into a hairless cat as the foundation of a breeding empire. When the cat ended up at a friend's apartment and she stopped returning his calls, his plan to get it back got increasingly creative.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/impulsive-cre510

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Kevin hears Timothy Vaux's "Males of the City," a story from So Say We All, for the first time. In RISK! Reacts episodes, there's no preview, no prep, just Kevin listening along with you and sharing everything the story brings to his mind.

The story: Timothy is a happily single gay man living in the heart of North Park, San Diego, where a buzzy Saturday night out ends with a casual wave to a stranger that sets off a chain of spontaneous, increasingly elaborate, and very adult events.

The reaction: Kevin is instantly charmed, finding echoes of his own younger self in Timothy's freewheeling urban adventures. He shares his own surprisingly relatable stories about role play, improv, and the particular chaos of letting a night take you wherever it wants to go.

For more info and music featured in this episode, visit risk-show.com/podcast/males-of-the-city-risk-reacts 

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True Crime News: The Podcast is your weekly dose of real-time updates on the most gripping true crime stories, current cases, investigations, scams, and schemes. Host Ana Garcia is joined by crime experts, police officers, defense attorneys, and other leading authorities in their fields as they cover murders, scams, investigations, and unsolved crimes from across the country. Join us each week as we take you inside the biggest, most shocking, and most bizarre true crime cases.

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First released in December 2013, this live RISK! episode from Philadelphia's First Person Arts pairs two storytellers with a lot to say about losing control and getting it back.

Dawn Jewel Fraser's "Brasilado" follows a young American woman deep into an immersive year in Rio de Janeiro, learning Portuguese street by street from her chain-smoking instructor Marcy, until a late-night taxi ride home unravels spectacularly when Brazilian police find weed in her bag and mistake her for a drug trafficker.

Then Katie Samson tells "The First Time Again," the story of rebuilding a romantic and sexual life after a sledding accident left her with a spinal cord injury at 20. Her homecoming weekend story is tender, funny, and genuinely triumphant.

Two women, two very different roads back to freedom.

Full episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/live-from-philly-4-cre509 

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(Content note: child sexual abuse)

In 2016, Ed G. got on stage at RISK! and told a story he'd never told anyone. Now, ten years later, Ophira Eisenberg sits down with him to go places that story couldn't: the FBI, the Pope, the survivors who found each other decades later, and the hard-won question of where shame really belongs.

Ed's story begins in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where a boy abandoned by his violent father and drowning in poverty finds an unlikely lifeline in the local Catholic church. What the bishop who runs it asks for in return will take Ed the better part of a lifetime to fully reckon with.

🎶For more info and music featured in this episode, visit risk-show.com/podcast/quid-pro-quo-revisited 

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In this crossover episode with The Story Collider, Karen McCaffrey and Mary Cyn share stories that illustrate the importance of compassion in healthcare.

🎤Live Story: More than Survival by Karen McCaffrey

(Content note: sexual assault, rape) After surviving rape and a traumatic hospital experience afterward, Karen transformed her pain into purpose. Decades later, she directed a sexual assault forensic examiner program, advocating for victims' rights and ensuring survivors receive trauma-informed care.

🎤Live Story: My Vagina Job by Mary Cyn

Drawing on her own traumatic experiences with dismissive care, Mary transforms vulnerability into a tool for empathy, helping future doctors treat patients with compassion and helping women feel less fear and isolation about their bodies

🎶For more info and songs featured in this episode, visit risk-show.com/podcast/where-it-hurts

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🎟 See RISK! live⁠ in New York City on March 16th, 2026

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Michael McFadden and Adrianne Frost share stories about evolving feelings about their bodies over time. 

🎙️Radio Story: Growth by Michael McFadden

Michael is a child swimming prodigy trapped in a grown man’s body who fails a humiliating puberty test, loses his athletic destiny, and ultimately redefines masculinity and self-worth beyond the pool and beyond his penis size.

🎤Live Story: Smoochin' and Fiddlin' by Adrianne Frost

(Content note: child sexual abuse, self-harm) After surviving childhood sexual abuse and years of debilitating endometriosis, Adrianne equates beauty with value and spirals through painful sex and self-harm before discovering lasting love on new terms.

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