Le Rendez-Vous
I ask first. We sit down properly,
and there’s no clock in the room.
The borders that matter most aren’t on any map
About the show
What changed you forever?
Crossing Borders is a podcast about the experiences that change us — and who we become on the other side.
In each episode, I sit down with one person and talk about a border they crossed. Sometimes it’s a country. More often it’s a relationship, a belief, a loss, a rupture — or a version of themselves they had to leave behind.
The most extraordinary stories don’t always belong to extraordinary people. Sometimes, in someone else’s story, we recognise something of our own.
The story
Swiss by accident, Persian by descent, Siberian by conviction.
I was in a sauna outside Moscow with a man who used to be a bandit. A real one, from the nineties. I once asked him how a friendship like ours was even possible. He said it couldn’t be explained. Then he said: это вопрос состояния души. (A question of the state of the soul.) Nobody had ever answered me like that before.
I’m a naturopath. Twenty-two years, three languages, and a great deal of time in places I had no business being. Sakhalin. The far side of Baikal. Villages you reach by hitchhiking. Back streets where the bandits, the babushkas and the hungry dogs all know one another.
Everywhere I went, people told me things. Not medical things. The other things. What they did. Who they lost. What they’d never told their wife. Twenty-two years taught me this: people tell a stranger what they couldn’t tell anyone else. And often, the thing one person is most afraid to say is exactly what another person needs to hear.
So I bought a microphone
So I bought a microphone
I also do stand-up, where I learnt that a room will give you almost anything if you’re willing to go first. At the end of every conversation, I ask the same question: What did this life teach you about yourself — and about how you love?
Somebody listens and hears a stranger say the thing they thought was theirs alone. Nothing gets solved. Something just lifts.
Because everybody has one. A story you’ve carried so long you no longer notice its weight — and never told, because who would you tell?
Three ways we cross
L’Impromptu
We don’t plan it. I stop you where you are and we talk on the spot.
Le Face-à-Face
Bring the person you’re not supposed to get along with. Let’s see.
The newsletter
What stays with me
Now and then I write. What didn’t make it into a conversation. What somebody said after we’d stopped recording. Where I’m going next, and who I’m hoping to sit down with. Occasionally, something I haven’t told anyone either.
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Want to be on the show?
Tell me what you crossed. One paragraph is enough.
karim.chubin@gmail.comWant to work with me privately?
As a naturopath, I work with a very small number of people — on their energy, their focus, and their edge. By application only. Write and tell me what you’re dealing with. If it’s a fit, we’ll talk.
Write to me