Slate Presents: Standoff

Subscribe in Apple Podcasts or another podcast player.

In 1992, hundreds of armed federal agents surrounded a family of white separatists in a ramshackle mountaintop cabin. Eleven days later, three people were dead—and the story of Ruby Ridge was just beginning. Journalist Ruth Graham explores a tragedy that’s become a foundational myth for the modern right, and finds some frightening lessons about power and paranoia.

Standoff: What Happened at Ruby Ridge? is the first in a new line of in-depth narrative podcast miniseries from Slate. Listen for a new episode every Wednesday starting Oct. 31.

EPISODE 1: TWO SHOTGUNS
Randy and Vicki Weaver moved their family to a remote Idaho cabin. They feared their world would be destroyed in an apocalyptic confrontation with the federal government. They were right.

PLUS: WHO WERE THE ORDER?
More about The Order, a violent criminal group that formed out of the Church of Jesus Christ-Christians, Aryan Nations in the 1980s. For Slate Plus members only.

EPISODE 2: RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
In August 1992, the long, tense standoff at Ruby Ridge erupted into deadly violence. What went wrong?
PLUS: WOMEN IN WHITE POWER
More about the surprisingly prominent role of women in white power movements.

EPISODE 3: THE WISDOM OF THE CROWD
The surviving Weavers stayed holed up inside their cabin as their story attracted droves of supporters and rabble-rousers to rural Idaho.
PLUS: THE INVESTIGATION AFTER
More from a deputy sheriff on the scene at the time.

EPISODE 4: AFTERLIFE
How did a brief incident become an enduring myth on the far right?
PLUS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
More about what happened to the Weavers, and an interview with writer Tara Westover about growing up in a family of survivalists in Idaho.