Show Notes
Two stories from people who found themselves in situations they didn't choose and had to figure out what to do from inside them. Guest-hosted by the captivating Cyndi Freeman.
(Content note: references to torture)
Sofia Javed is a Pakistani-American interpreter hired to work in Uzbek and Russian at Guantanamo Bay, where she is ordered not to sympathize with detainees and then immediately put to the test. What starts as a potential crisis in a cellblock turns on a single, surprisingly mundane demand.
(Content note: physical abuse, domestic violence)
Heather Minter grew up in an evangelical fundamentalist family that uprooted itself for the mission field in Papua New Guinea, leaving her and her brother in a boarding school dorm run by a cruel and volatile house father. The faith that held her together through childhood eventually came apart in college, and what filled the void turned out to be its own kind of trap.
Leave your reactions and find episode details and music credits at risk-show.com/podcast/captives
Be Part of RISK!
🎟 See RISK! live tonight! (Tuesday, June 9, 2026) in NYC.
✍️ 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.