This documentary looks at the surge in political violence through the story of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, showing the roots of anti-government sentiment and its reverberations today, along with the emotionally charged warnings of those who suffered tragic losses in the deadliest homegrown attack in U.S. history.

Shortly before dawn on August 21, 1992, six heavily armed U.S. marshals made their way up to the isolated mountaintop home of Randy and Vicki Weaver and their children on Ruby Ridge in Northern Idaho. Charged with selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns to an undercover agent, Weaver had failed to appear in court and law enforcement was tasked with bringing him in. For months, the Weavers had been holed up on their property with a cache of firearms, including automatic weapons. When the federal agents surveilling the property crossed paths with members of the family, a firefight broke out. The standoff that mesmerized the nation would leave Weaver injured, his wife and son dead, and some convinced that the federal government was out of control. Drawing upon eyewitness accounts, including interviews with Weaver’s daughter, Sara, and federal agents involved in the confrontation, Ruby Ridge is a riveting account of the event that helped give rise to the modern American militia movement.

The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995 is the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history. This documentary explores how a series of deadly encounters between American citizens and federal law enforcement—including the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco—led to it.

William Shatner re-examines some of the biggest national news stories of the past two decades to find out how the lives of the people directly affected by these events have changed forever. Shatner gains exclusive access to the newsmakers -- heroes, villains, victims, family members and law enforcement -- at the heart of the stories, including those of Jessica Lynch, Bernard Goetz, Mary Kay Letourneau and the DC snipers, to separate the fact from the fiction, with archival footage and re-enactments helping to round out the storytelling.

The Secret Rulers of the World was first shown on Channel 4 in April 2001. The five-part documentary series accompanied creator Jon Ronson's book 'Them: Adventures with Extremists', which covered similar topics and described many of the same episodes. Both the series and book detail Ronson's encounters following theorists and activists residing outside political, religious, and sociological norms.