Hello kids, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they

dared to share.

I'm Kevin Allyson and every Thursday we release these special episodes that we're

calling classic risk singles.

Each of these episodes features just one story from years past.

If you're new to Risk, you should know that the podcast can be very uncensored.

This week, a story by the author of the phenomenal bestseller Sex at Dawn, the prehistoric origins

of modern sexuality, it's the brilliant Christopher Ryan.

Christopher shared this story on the podcast in May of 2013, and here he is now with

the story we call, Outside the Comfort Zone.

I was on track to do a PhD at Oxford in literature, and then be a tenured professor somewhere

by the time I was 30.

But I found a loophole in the student handbook that allowed me to skip my junior year of

college and still graduate on time.

So I skipped the year to save my parents tuition money, and I went to Alaska.

I hitchhiked from New York to Alaska.

During that experience, I met so many amazing people that had no fucking clue who Nietzsche

was, or Joseph Conrad, or Emerson, or Thoreau, or all these people that I was studying, the

stuff that was so important to me.

I looked back at my friends who were all these verified geniuses and realized they were

sort of assholes, and that I didn't really want to be like that.

I mean, they were good to me.

...