Garlic & Pearls

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Garlic & Pearls

Muriel Zagha and Suzanne Raine

85 episodes

6 days ago

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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Society & Culture

All content for Garlic & Pearls is the property of Muriel Zagha and Suzanne Raine and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show more...

Society & Culture

Episodes (20/85)

Garlic & Pearls

La dictée: How did a school spelling test become a French obsession and symbol of Frenchness?

Muriel goes back to school to explore how in France the spelling test called la dictée became the backbone of French education. Who introduced it and why? Is it fascistic or democratic? And how did a school exercise become a beloved popular cultural event shared by the nation? It's a very Gallic tale of Republican alphabetisation, unification and nation-building, and Muriel joins in by pitting herself against Emperor Napoleon III in taking on a famously exacting dictée!

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6 days ago

56 minutes 33 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

The Christmas Tale Face-Off: A Christmas Carol or Les Misérables?

In our last episode of 2025, Suzanne and Muriel consider soberly which is more atmospheric and replete with the spirit of Christmas - is it Dickens with Michael Caine and a cast of Muppets, or is it a pivotal bit of melodrama in Victor Hugo's social saga?

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2 weeks ago

35 minutes 43 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

The Christmas Drink Face-Off: Indulgent Irish Cream or astringent coupe de champagne?

Cheers! Santé! Suzanne retraces the history of a 1970s Soho brainwave of deliciousness and Muriel obeys the traditional Pavlovian call of Champenois fizz

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2 weeks ago

41 minutes 37 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

The Christmas Telly Face-Off: Reithian British Monument or Gallic social satire?

Suzanne brings a whole lotta Christmas to the table and parses the delights of the double issue of the Radio Times; Muriel unpacks a cult French sitcom about two contrasting lifestyles of the bourgeoisie

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2 weeks ago

51 minutes 11 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

The Christmas Carol Face-Off: Pre-Raphaelite Poetry or Socialist Manifesto?

Suzanne makes a compelling case for the evocative beauty of In the Bleak Midwinter and its landscape imagery infused with spirituality; Muriel wonders how Minuit, Chrétiens, a rousing carol authored by a Socialist firebrand and a stage composer, made it into the French Catholic choral canon.

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2 weeks ago

27 minutes 48 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

The Christmas Treat Face-Off: Quality Street or marrons glacés?

Muriel and Suzanne are swapping seasonal treats: masses of cheerful multicoloured candy vs a handful of meticulously crafted products of the terroir. Both delicious, but what do they say about the British and the French at Christmas?

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3 weeks ago

42 minutes 45 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

The Christmas Chart-Topper Face-Off: Beguiling Pop or Kitsch Cosiness?

Suzanne takes a punt at the 2025 Christmas No1 and crowns 1984 as the very best vintage of British Christmas charts; Muriel explains how and why the French Christmas No1, a 'secular carol' by venerated crooner Tino Rossi, remains unchanged since 1946.

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3 weeks ago

41 minutes 26 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

Metal Detectors: What goes 'beep beep' all over the land and is typically British? The gentle army of treasure seekers hoping to find an Anglo-Saxon hoard!

In which Suzanne unearths the story of a major British hobby and its relationship with landscape and the romance of the past. Why are the British obsessed with metal detecting? What is their Arthurian code of practice? What are portable antiquities? Who are the night hawkers? What does all this reveal about British attitudes to liberty, in stark contrast to France? Includes helpful pointers about buying the best metal detector, and Alexander Graham Bell as an unexpected star of the show!

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1 month ago

1 hour 2 minutes 43 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

French Politicians and Clairvoyants: The French worship Reason and critical thinking, don't they? So why do Presidents (and mayors), who serve the French Republic, love the occult so much?

Muriel tackles an awkward truth: the French may love rigour and rationality – France is the nation of Descartes, after all – but they are also susceptible to the allure of psychics, the alignment of the stars, and angels calling on the phone from beyond. How has this survived the advent of the Enlightenment and the Revolution? And what does it mean in terms of our relationship to super-forecasting and superstition, Suzanne wonders.

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1 month ago

53 minutes 26 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

The British Tax Year: The French tax year is aligned on the calendar year, but not the British. Why not? Popes, Catholicism, the Reformation!

In which Suzanne investigates profound differences between our two cultures by asking why the British tax year is not, like in France, aligned onto the calendar year. The answers, which astonish Muriel, are deeply rooted in Britain's relationship to the Continent. It's a story of mathematics and astrology, Popes, bishops and archbishops, Catholicism and the Reformation, and, of course, Acts of Parliament, which opens a vertiginous crack in time. Elizabeth I, John Dee and Isaac Newton all guest star.

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1 month ago

57 minutes 1 second

Garlic & Pearls

Greatest Play Ever! Britain vs France, part 2. The Bald Prima Donna - Zany Avant-Garde on the Paris Left Bank

In the second half of our theatrical diptych, Muriel tells Suzanne about the 'atomic bomb' of the French theatre, an experimental Absurdist masterpiece by Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco that became a classic of the French stage. It has neither plot nor psychology – only a lot of uneasy comic momentum, poking fun at the bourgeoisie. But how has it lasted so long? And why is it about British people?

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1 month ago

51 minutes 44 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

Greatest Play Ever! Britain vs France, part 1. The Mousetrap - Agatha Christie's Not So Cosy West End Whodunnit

Suzanne and Muriel consider the brilliance, longevity and significance of Agatha Christie's murder mystery play The Mousetrap, which has been running since 1952. Set in a country house isolated by bad weather, the play is a model of distinctly British sweet-and-sour eruption of violence in a cosy setting, and replete with red herrings and eccentric characters. The police inspector arrives on skis! It also taps into wider postwar unease: Christie evokes a newly unstable world, a shifting class structure and an air of paranoid watchfulness. But can Muriel and Suzanne guess the culprit? Can you?

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2 months ago

53 minutes 23 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

The Paris Catacombs: palace of death, gigantic memento mori and a way of solving the problem of excess bones

It's Halloween and Muriel encourages Suzanne to think about the Gallic bones displayed and staged in the Paris Catacombs in a neo-classical early-19th-century mise-en-scène at once macabre and meditative. We also discover a contemporary underground scene of fun-loving secret explorers and hear about the time Suzanne dug up a medieval monk in Hampshire.

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2 months ago

1 hour 2 minutes 21 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

The Real Making of Britain and France: A myth-busting, panoramic trip through time and space with our guest, the historian Graham Robb!

Following on from his book The Discovery of France, Graham Robb has produced another fascinating work of exploration, The Discovery of Britain. Graham's observations are rooted in extensive travel all over both countries on a Victorian invention, the bicycle, reconnecting with old pathways, landscapes and forgotten people. He shares with Suzanne and Muriel what he discovered about nomads and tribes, hedgerows and standing stones, Ptlolemaic maps and the corporal punishment of saints with nettles. How did France gradually colonise itself into a centralised nation? How many beacons were needed to communicate from Cornwall to Sunderland? And what can you learn at ground level about two countries where so much of the past is visible in front of you?

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2 months ago

58 minutes 22 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

Rhyming Slang: A distinctly British and creative code that's definitely not 'brown bread'

Would you Adam and Eve it? Suzanne tutors her 'old China' Muriel in a coded language that is full of wit, inventions and surprises. Rooted in old street cant and secret words identified in the 1850s, rhyming slang expresses the earthiness and supple playfulness inherent in the ways in which the British use their language. Does a French equivalent exist? And what's rhyming slang for Garlic & Pearls?

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2 months ago

57 minutes 51 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

Brigitte Bardot: Top French Icon and The Face of France

Where Muriel explains the mythology of the actress, singer, animal activist and all-round contrarian. How did Bardot re-invent French femininity for the 20th century?

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3 months ago

1 hour 7 minutes 18 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

Giant Redwoods in the UK: A story of intrepid botanists and explorers, and a Victorian British craze

Is there a Californian landscape growing in Britain to the tune of half a million Giant Redwoods? Suzanne recounts the 19th-century story of adventurous plant collectors, explains how the seeds they brought home went to create the Victorian British landscape that surrounds us, and imagines a dizzying future, 3,000 years away, where thriving Redwoods reach colossal maturity in the British Isles. Alfred Hitchcock and a man called Sequoia are part of the cast.

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3 months ago

1 hour 3 minutes 32 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

How to Eat Everything in Paris: Our guest, food writer Chris Newens, shares revelatory findings!

Muriel and Suzanne hop around the arrondissements of Paris explored by Chris Newens in his food memoir Moveable Feasts, comparing and contrasting cuisines, history, sociology and atmosphere. They also learn the logistics of making your own Belleville-style doner kebab. And what is the etiquette of eating brunch at a sex club in Pigalle?

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3 months ago

1 hour 4 minutes 27 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

Conkers: from Victorian pastime to urban Battle Royale

Where Suzanne ushers in autumn and educates a baffled Muriel in the great British game of conkers, at once nostalgic, ruthlessly competitive and controversial.

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3 months ago

1 hour 13 seconds

Garlic & Pearls

An Evening with Garlic & Pearls: where Muriel and Suzanne make their first live appearance!

As guests of the Durning Library at the Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival, Muriel and Suzanne discuss Frenchness, Britishness and their podcast adventure.

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3 months ago

46 minutes 15 seconds