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The Big Flop

Rachel Dolezal's White Lies with Naomi Ekperigin and Andy Beckerman | 59

The Big Flop

Wondery

Society & Culture, Comedy, Business

4.6884 Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2024

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Rachel Dolezal built a life for herself as a teacher, a civil rights advocate, and a leader in her local NAACP chapter. There was just one problem: She built it all on a foundation of lies—and the biggest lie of all was about her race. When a local news crew discovered her secret and called her out in front of cameras, it all came crashing down on a national scale.


Naomi Ekperigin and Andy Beckerman (Couples Therapy) join Misha to break down the many lies of Rachel Dolezal—and there are a lot!


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the Big Flop early and ad-free.

0:05.3

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

0:18.8

Jeffrey Humphrey, a reporter at a local news station covering eastern Washington and northern Idaho,

0:25.6

is waiting outside an office building with a camera crew.

0:29.6

Working in local news often means covering puff pieces, like a farmer who grew a big pumpkin

0:35.6

or a dog that can bark the national anthem.

0:39.4

But today, Jeff is trying to get an interview with the subject of an investigative report

0:44.6

that could be explosive. His report is about a woman named Rachel Dolajal. She's a professor,

0:52.9

a chair of a police oversight commission in Spokane,

0:56.2

and the previous year, 2014, she was elected head of the local NACP chapter.

1:04.0

She's a classic big fish in a small town and the face of the local Black Lives Matter movement.

1:11.1

But Jeffries unearthed something, well, fishy.

1:16.2

His report started as an investigation into hate crimes reported by Rachel,

1:22.1

obviously no laughing matter.

1:24.6

But he's come across some facts that just don't pass the smell test. He's starting to suspect

1:30.5

that this big fish has been telling some tall tales. In fact, they suspect that Rachel may be lying

1:38.7

about a crucial part of her backstory, her race. Jeffrey spots Rachel coming out of the building, and he and the

1:47.4

camera crew start moving. His plan is a kind of crazy one. He's just going to come out and ask her a pointed

1:55.0

question. An especially awkward one to ask the head of the local NAACP, but it's a high-stakes gamble, because all she has to do is say,

2:04.8

no, and all his months of work and reporting will be for nothing. He's going to ask her,

2:11.9

are you white? There's no way this will work. Right?

2:22.3

Rachel Dolegal became a household name as the head of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP.

...

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