Garlic & Pearls Podcast By Muriel Zagha and Suzanne Raine cover art

Garlic & Pearls

Garlic & Pearls

By: Muriel Zagha and Suzanne Raine
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Suzanne and Muriel examine a series of very different things – from a film to a kitchen utensil, a model train to a bar of soap – that define British or French attitudes, each explaining her cultural background to the other and trying to get to the essence of what makes the British British and the French French.

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Muriel Zagha and Suzanne Raine Social Sciences
Episodes
  • The Flâneur: Why The French Walk More Slowly Than The British

    The Flâneur: Why The French Walk More Slowly Than The British
    Mar 27 2026
    Monocles and canes at the ready! Muriel traces the 19th-century origins of a familiar and somewhat raffish figure of Frenchness. Part boulevardier, part dandy, part poet, the flâneur is a leisurely observer of the urban landscape. But where did he come from? What is his legacy? And can there be such a thing as a British flâneur?

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    56 mins
  • Daffodils: The poetic icon that means booming business for Britain

    Daffodils: The poetic icon that means booming business for Britain
    Mar 20 2026
    Suzanne explores the British adoration of the yellow, trumpet-like, optimistic daffodil, the harbinger of spring. The evocative words of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, poetry and prose, bracket this episode, in which we discover that daffodils are also about economics. The UK cultivates 90% of the global daffodil supply. The numbers are staggering: hundreds of millions of flowers are grown annually and must all be harvested by hand. But how? We also meet a bunch of Victorian daffodil obsessives, from Scottish enthusiast Peter Barr, whose quest for seeds took him, astride a donkey, all over the Pyrenees, where he was mistaken for a bandit; Reverend George Herbert Engleheart, clergyman and father of the modern daffodil; and Quaker plantswoman Sarah Backhouse – aka 'The Genius' – who turned daffodils pink!

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    44 mins
  • The Café Waiter: Working-class hero? Towering figure of haughty Frenchness?

    The Café Waiter: Working-class hero? Towering figure of haughty Frenchness?
    Mar 13 2026
    Café waiters are omnipresent in French life and in French culture as a sort of regiment – serried ranks of men in their black-and-white uniform with tremendous esprit de corps. But who are they really, Muriel asks, and how did they become such stock figures of Frenchness, and even objects of study for French philosophy? What makes a good café waiter? Is it to do with natural ability, physical fitness, French reserve, or the joys of performance? What is the etiquette of interacting with a café waiter? And what are the rules of the traditional café waiters race?

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    53 mins
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