Le Rendez-Vous
I ask first. We sit down properly. 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 memorable 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 never imagined I would reach. 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 had never told anyone. 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 everyone carries a story in their heart — one they may have carried for years, and never quite known how to share.
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 what happens.
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.
Write to meWant to work with me privately?
As a naturopath, I work slowly, with a small number of people — by application only. Write and tell me what brings you here. If it feels like a fit, we’ll talk.
Write to me