Penn State is known for its fair share of athletic prowess, but we have our own intellectual superstars, too. NPR’s “Throughline” — a new weekly history show that goes “back in time to understand the present” — featured the expertise of assistant professor Amira Rose Davis, who teaches history and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies here. She also hosts her own podcast about feminism and sports, “Burn It All Down.”

Last week’s episode, titled “On the Shoulders of Giants,” covered the history of black athletes protesting in the U.S. Instead of going with the more obvious choices like Colin Kaepernick or Muhammad Ali, the quintessentially esoteric NPR show focused instead on the not-quite-so-well-known stories of Jack Johnson, Wilma Rudolph, and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.

The episode described how their stories contributed to the movement and laid the groundwork for the current (but by no means complete) state of black athletic protest in our country today.

Davis, who earned her Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University in 2016, joined “Throughline” to talk about Johnson and Rudolph. If you want the full story and access to all of Dr. Davis’ insight, just listen to the episode (it’s worth it), but to summarize, she lent her expertise to explaining the socio-racial implications of Johnson and Rudolph’s successes and public perceptions.

She’s taught courses in several areas, including but not limited to African American history, women’s history, and sports history, which are areas that align with her research work on black women’s athletic labor and their representation in the U.S.