Oysters and Activism: The Thomas and George Downing Episode

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Arts, Society & Culture, Places & Travel, Food

4.3 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2026

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This Black father & son duo ran some of the first fancy restaurants in America – and had a stop on the Underground Railroad in their cellar. Anney and Lauren explore the story of Thomas G. Downing and George T. Downing.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:02.6	Guaranteed Human.
0:13.2	Hello and welcome to Saber, prediction of IHeart Radio.
0:15.3	I'm Annie Reese.
0:16.0	And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we have an episode for you about Thomas and George Downing.
0:22.2	Yes. Any particular reason that this topic was on your mind, Lauren?
0:26.8	Yes, it is Black History Month here in the United States, and generally on this show, even outside of February, we like to talk about that important part of our shared history.
0:40.5	And these are a pair of restaurateurs and social activists from history. I'm getting a little
0:48.3	ahead of myself, but here we are, who were just super interesting, cool human people.
0:57.0	And I had not heard their story before.
0:59.1	And I was Googling and found a reference to them.
1:04.7	And I was like, yeah, sure.
1:08.9	Yeah.
1:09.9	It's a really great story and definitely deserves a mini-series or something.
1:17.2	Oh, my goodness. I want a TV series about this, about them so hard right now.
1:23.6	Somebody call us.
1:27.8	They should call us.
1:29.3	Oh, well, not to make a TV series, clearly, but I've got, but I've got like the pitch to send to someone capable.
1:36.0	I see, I see. Okay.
1:41.6	Yes. Yeah, call us.
1:47.2	We'll wait eagerly. Oh, yeah. Uh-huh.
2:02.9	Yes. Yes. Well, this was a really fun one, and it's going to be interesting because it kind of unfolded differently than we normally do our episodes. but those biography episodes are kind of like that.
	...

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