The Best of RISK! #33

Sep 30, 2025

Guest

Heather Farley

Guest

Larry Dorsey Jr., a performer and storyteller, shares a gripping urban survival tale about saving a man's life during a violent incident in San Francisco. Kerri Doherty reveals her complicated love affair with a soldier who used deception to avoid the army, ultimately leading to a heartwarming twist involving a rescue puppy. Yossi Rosenberg dives into his unconventional journey through the Orgasmic Meditation community, exploring intimacy. Heather Farley reflects on a challenging psychotic break and the unexpected act of giving away a valuable painting.

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ANECDOTE

Stopping A Subway Knife Attack

Larry Dorsey Jr. intervened in a subway assault by grabbing a youth's knife-wielding arm to stop a potential murder.
He says he acted to protect the kids from repeating cycles of incarceration and death he’d seen in his community.

INSIGHT

Loneliness Framed By Gentrification

Larry observes that being Black in gentrified San Francisco feels isolating and rarefied.
That loneliness frames his encounters with other Black people on the street and shapes his reactions.

ANECDOTE

A Public Hug And A Dollar

Larry helped an older houseless Black man into standing at a large race event, creating a moving public moment of connection.
The man hugged him and then asked for a dollar, leaving Larry to reflect, "black is the loneliest color."

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Our 33rd compilation of some of our favorite recent stories shared on the RISK! podcast, guest-host by Cyndi Freeman.

🎤Live Story: Hope Under the Sky (excerpt) by LP Nguyen

In 1975, the North won Vietnam’s civil war, and LP's dad, high ranking in the Southern Army, was imprisoned. The children lost everything, hunted for food, swam to school, and after 7 years, got their father back.

🎤Radio Story: Black Is the Loneliest Color by Larry Dorsey Jr.

Larry saves a suicidal Black man’s life on the streets of SF and examines his tendency to bridge things between people of different races and classes.

keywords: Black experience in San Francisco, homeless, knife attack subway, people experiencing homelessness, public violence bystanders, racial isolation, urban survival stories

🎤Live Story: What the Blorp?! by Kerri Doherty

Kerri falls in love with a guy who tricks her into helping him lie to the army while he resumes his other life with his wife and daughter.

keywords: army, cheating, lying to the army, relationship

🎤Radio Story: The Silver Dollar (excerpt) by Daryl Davis

Daryl backs the Ku Klux Klan into a corner and demands that they tell him why they hate him, and he really listens.

keywords: blackness, changing minds, communication, conflict, empathy, grand dragon, ku klux klan, open minds, prejudice, racial hatred, racism, resolution, unchecked bias

🎤Live Story: Orgasmic by Yossi Rosenberg

Yossi is a shy guy raised in a conservative Jewish household with intimacy issues. He gets involved with the Orgasmic Meditation Scene, a somewhat iffy tribe that practices clitoral stimulation as a meditation.

keywords: clitoral stimulation, culty, Orgasmic Meditation

🎤Radio Story: Breaking Point by Heather Farley

Heather has a psychotic break and leaves a Rauschenberg painting worth millions left to her in the divorce on a park bench.

keywords: divorce, Psychotic Break, Rauschenberg Painting

🎤Live Story: The Big Secret (excerpt) by Brad Lawrence

(Content note: child sexual abuse, murder, suicide) In a church where guilt is weaponized and silence rewarded, teenage Brad listens to a friend's secret that echoes into adulthood, long past her violent death.

keywords: abortion, childhood abuse, church youth group, evangelical guilt, murder, shame, strangulation, U2

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