They Did That

From Dean of Black Twitter, Michael Harriot, comes a Black history podcast like you've never heard before. Using a recipe that includes detailed research, barbershop humor and a little seasoned salt, a parade of cookout-certified celebrity guests helps Michael Harriot serve up a compelling, hilarious and more accurate version of Black history that was conveniently whitewashed from your social stud...

Without Judy Heumann, it’s hard to see how we would ever have achieved the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Disabled by polio at just 18 months old in 1949, Judy grew up in a time when nothing prevented discrimination against people with disabilities. In fact, so-called “ugly laws” even outlawed the appearance in public of people who were “diseased, maimed or in any way deformed.” But Judy d...

Mary Ellen Pleasant was a Black conductor of the Underground Railroad, and she was on the run. But in 1852, when her boat arrived on the shores of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, she walked off as someone else. Someone white. Her mission: Expand the Underground Railroad westward—and use her ability to pass to get it done. She’d spend the next decade living a mysterious double life and would go on to...

Before Michelle Yeoh’s historic win at the Oscars, there was another Asian actress nominated for the prize. Merle Oberon, the famous Golden Age actress, was the first Asian woman to ever be nominated for her performance in the 1935 film, “The Dark Angel.” The only thing was - no one knew she was Asian... In this episode we get into Merle’s complicated but fascinating story and learn about the prob...

Ons Jabeur plays some of the most exciting tennis out there. But for most of her career, Ons has been told that to succeed, she needs to change—to conform to how the mostly white western bubble of tennis approaches the game. But Ons has consistently stuck with her Tunisian team. In the last few years, Ons has been climbing the rankings. And she's been doing it with her own team, by following her o...

Before Darwin and evolution, there was Mary Anning and her mysterious fossils. Mary was a working class girl on the Jurassic Coast of England, and she loved to hunt for fossils on the beach. But when her dad died unexpectedly, Mary was forced to turn her hobby into a job. Her discoveries were so big they called theories about life on earth and even God into question. On this episode, the story of...

Our host, Takara Small, quizzes two producers on their knowledge of everything from Black pop culture to Black history legends that deserve to have their praises sung. From Oprah’s net worth to the first Black woman on a banknote… we're covering Black inventors, artists and business extraordinaries that changed the game. Our contestants put their competitive streak to the test, including the host!...

Before open heart surgeries became an everyday thing, the heart was totally and completely off-limits. Operating on a beating heart was just about the most taboo thing you could do. But in 1893, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, a surgeon in Chicago, got a patient with a stab wound to the heart. And it was clear that without surgery, he was going to die. Dr. Williams had never heard of anyone doing heart...

Joseph Bologne put French classical music on the map, was a favorite of Marie Antoinette, and influenced the kings of strings we celebrate today, Mozart and Beethoven. An unbelievable feat for a man born in Guadeloupe to his enslaved mother and a French plantation owner. His talents made him untouchable, enviable even. So how did he go from star composer at the top of the charts to obscurity? Toda...

James Hemings innovated mac and cheese and brought vanilla ice cream, crème brûlée and french fries to the United States from Paris in the late 18th century. And while most of us don’t know Hemings, we do know his brother-in-law and enslaver, the 3rd president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Hemings was an American culinary founding father. He and other enslaved chefs invented fine dining...

Happy New Year! They Did That will be taking a short break for the rest of this month but will be back on February 2nd with our next episode. In the meantime, if you have any ideas for lost histories, we want to hear from you! Write to us at theydidthat@sonymusic.com. A Sony Music Entertainment and Somethin' Else production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/p...

100 years before Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin, there was Elizabeth Jennings. In 1854, Elizabeth refused to leave the streetcar she’d boarded after being told to wait for one designated for Black riders. When her fierce determination leads to an unwarranted physical assault at the hands of the conductor, Elizabeth takes her fight to the New York State Supreme Court. Her game-changing victory wou...

The “Godmother of Rock-n-Roll,” Sister Rosetta Tharpe, contributed to the DNA of rock ‘n’ roll and even inspired the British Invasion of the 1960’s. Born into an evangelicalChristian family in the segregated South in 1915, Sister Rosetta brought the sounds of the Black gospel church to the mainstream. By the time she was six she was a guitar prodigy - and by the time she was 30 she was performing...

Happy holidays! As a little gift from us to you, we’ve put together some of our favorite moments from this season. And if you have ideas for lost histories, we want to hear from you! Write to us at theydidthat@sonymusic.com and tune back in on January 5th for our next episode. Stay safe and warm! See y’all in the new year… A Sony Music Entertainment and Somethin' Else production. Find more great p...

Those instant noodles that kept you alive in college? Turns out they were invented during World War II to stave off hunger in Japan. But they weren’t developed by the government or some big corporation. We have just one guy to thank for dreaming up Chicken Ramen and Cup Noodles—and perfecting them in his backyard shed. Today, the story of Momofuku Ando, a serial entrepreneur in Japan who was strug...

Before 1967, "paramedic" wasn't a word and few first responders had training that went beyond basic first aid. That would all change with Freedom House Ambulance Service. Established in and by an overlooked Black community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Freedom House Ambulance Service created the life-changing and lifesaving mobile emergency medical care we all benefit from today. Their knowledge wo...

Surrealist artists Pablo Picasso, Lee Miller, Man Ray and Roland Penrose were so enamored by Ady Fidelin, a Guadeloupan dancer in a Paris cabaret, that she became one of them, going on holiday with them and posing in their nearly 400 photographs and paintings. One of those photographs landed in the pages of Harper's Bazaar, making Ady the first black model in an American major fashion magazine. So...

Elijah McCoy revolutionized technology forever—from trains to the factory floor—by allowing steam engines to keep running without frequent manual intervention. In 1872, he invented a device that made steam engines infinitely more productive, but his peers refused to give him credit. They even tried passing off their own attempts, none of which worked as well—leading folks to say in frustration, “I...

One of the earliest cycling champs was a Black man named Marshall "Major" Taylor. By the late 1880s, the bicycle had taken the world by storm, making cycling the biggest and most popular sport. In Indianapolis, Indiana, a young amateur cyclist with heaps of natural talent set out to make his mark. But there was a problem... Black men like him weren’t allowed to compete. His faith and determination...

The Patients’ Bill of Rights is something so common you see it in every hospital—and we have a group of young revolutionaries in the South Bronx to thank for it. In the late 1960s, the Young Lords and the Black Panthers were working hard to challenge the dismal healthcare standards plaguing their community. It was so bad that Lincoln Hospital, the only hospital in the area, was called the Butcher...

Not too long ago, before today's high-tech period pads, there were “sanitary belts.” And they used pins to keep pads in place! They were, quite literally, a huge pain. But in the 1930s, a teenage girl from Washington, DC, figured out how to use adhesives instead of pins...the first step in getting us the stick-on pads we have now. She even got the attention of some really big companies...including...

Alice Guy-Blaché started in film when film was just starting—she was one of the first to tell a story in film, the first to use the close up and was almost certainly the first woman director of all time. As her career grew, she started her own studio and made 1000 films. But would she be able to fight off attempts to sabotage her work and erase her from film history altogether? A Sony Music Entert...

It’s 1914 and chemistry student Alice Ball arrives in Honolulu, Hawaii. She doesn’t know it yet, but her knack for solving problems in the chemistry lab is about to change the lives of thousands of people with leprosy aka Hansen’s Disease. But thanks to just one man’s greed, Alice won’t get credit for her work until long after she’s gone. A Sony Music Entertainment and Somethin' Else production. F...

Who built the modern world? The answer to that question might surprise you. (Or maybe not...) There's a long list of global innovators and trailblazers who’ve been erased from history books because of who they were; women, people of color LBGTQ and more. Each week They Did That tells one of these people's stories and how their life’s work has changed our lives for the better. Hosted by Takara Smal...