Show Notes
Two people learn something about protecting and being protected, one at a mall in lockdown, one on a plane full of strangers.
(Content note: gun violence)
Jon Rappoport is on a Zoom call in his home office when his wife bursts in with news that their twelve-year-old twin daughters are texting from a nearby mall about an active shooter and hiding in Macy's. He drives there in flip-flops, half feral, and the girls keep texting him back, begging him not to come.
Then Robin Gelfenbien takes a small plane out of St. Louis, freshly heartbroken and dreading her return to New York. She circulates a notebook around fifty strangers with an invitation to write a story together, then sets her sights on convincing a flight attendant named Valentino to let her read it aloud before they land.
Leave your comments and find full episode details plus music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/out-of-my-hands
Be Part of RISK!
🎟 See RISK! live in NYC on Tuesday, September 8, 2026
✍️ Pitch your story
❤️ Support us on Patreon
💵 Make a one-time donation via PayPal or Zelle to [email protected]
📚 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
More from RISK!
A classic RISK! episode from July 2014 built around three situations that everyone involved would happily have ended earlier.
Ploy Anderson is rushing out of her Bangkok house for a lunch date, a hair roller still clipped under her helmet, when a 10-wheeler drifts into her lane. Abel Athi Kumar is easing into a slow Sunday when his housemate starts screaming by the pond, where a python has his cat Whiskey in its coils. And Art Attaphon, reading alone in a tiny Silom library, checks Grindr, and winds up signing a consent form in a stranger’s hotel room.
This week we're revisiting the first RISK! episode ever recorded outside the United States. In July 2014, the show traveled to London for a live event co-produced with Spark.
Two RISK! favorites come back for Latine Heritage Month, handed to guests who know the territory. Brenda González & Delsy Sandoval, Latina co-hosts of Tamarindo podcast, join us to talk both stories through and celebrate Latine lives that rarely get to be this light.
Three of the most memorable stories from the last six months of RISK!, back in one place.