Song: RISK! Theme by Wormburner and John Sondericker
Song: Atlantic Limited by Julian Lage
Live Story: The Last Dance by Brad Lawrence
Interstitial: TEASER* by Jeff Barr
Live Story: You Shouldn’t Hate Yourself for It by Elena
Song: Acid Tongue by Jenny Lewis
Live Story: Follow Me by David Crabb
Song: Cake By the Ocean by DNCE
*Extended dance mix of TEASER available only to Patreon Patrons.
This episode of RISK! is brought to you in part by Thrive Market. Get $60 of FREE organic groceries + free shipping and 30 day trial membership by going to ThriveMarket.com/RISK. Thrive Market’s prices are already 25- 50% below retail because they cut out the middleman. And now they’re offering $60 of free organic groceries + free shipping! Go to ThriveMarket.com/RISK and get $20 off your first 3 orders of $49 or more + free shipping.
Elena, thank you for sharing your story, that was brave. and it made me realize I am not alone.. I still struggle
i can’t help but think part of the reason men don’t stop at suicidal ideation, but actually go through with it, is that a story Elena’s would NEVER make it on the air. if that were a man on stage telling the exact same story about his little sister, there would be precisely zero clapping and cheering at the end. what there WOULD be is an inbox brimming full the next morning the next morning of people encouraging him to go head and put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger, the world would be better off.
“The Monster and the Man,”
“Second Coming,”
“Psychosomatic,”
“Adult Education,”
“Helene,”
“Covert,”
“Beowulf Of Wall Street,”
“The Switch,”
“My Father’s Son,”
“For the Love of K,”
I don’t wanna go back too far in the catalogue, so those are just a few, but the point is, straight men HAVE shared about plenty of things in recent years on the show where they don’t necessarily come out smelling like a rose and they HAVE been applauded for the honesty. All of those stories listed above are very complicated and very revealing. And yeah, some women yelled at those guys about those stories, but… people yell about all kinds of stuff that they hear on RISK!
Elena’s story is about a 6th grader and a 4th grader. Stories about sexual exploration between kids before they hit the age of 18 have been told on RISK! by men like Jay Mohr on All-Star Episode #4, Darren Bodecker in Live From Chicago 2, Jacob Penrod on New Kids, Elliot Ridley on Full Disclosure, and Peter S. Kim on The Best of RISK! #8.
Then, obviously, there have been stories about men who had sex with adults when they were younger than 18, and in a few cases, the men don’t look back on those experiences as having been entirely negative. Examples are Mike Blejer on Shady, Aaron Kheifets on Deviance and Jared Ewy on Live From Denver. (There have been a bunch where they DID look back on those experiences as having been entirely negative.)
In any case, yes, we want to support men being able to tell the truth about difficult or complicated sexual situations they’ve been in. The story “The Monster and the Man” by Larry Talbot pretty much explicitly states that that is what it is all about. It’s one of those RISK! stories that pretty much starts, “Okay, some people are going to be mad at me for even sharing this but… here goes.”
thank you for the thoughtful response. please don’t think for a minute i was crapping on your show, i love it dearly. i’ll listen to episodes you mentioned.