Strange Rituals

In India, an Aghori monk who believes eating human flesh is a crucial step toward enlightenment; uncovering feasts in Liberia where soldiers would consume the organs of defeated enemies.

Blurring the line between male and female; religious sect in India filled with castrated boys; a college professor struggles to keep his job and family after changing his name to Jennifer; performance artist transitions from female to male.

Warrior women; ancient Amazons; all-female boxing team from Brooklyn, N.Y.; Wilma Mankiller becomes the first woman to lead the Cherokee Nation; women rule a remote village in China.

Testing the limits of the human body; a man runs barefoot marathons on Arctic ice; dentists drill the teeth of patients anesthetized through hypnosis; members of an Amazonian religious cult believe their priest can suck disease out of a sick person.

The Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome; Anchee Min is forced to live in a Maoist work camp; the Jessop family practices Mormon polygamy in Arizona; estranged father and daughter meet as adults and fall in love; tantric sexual healing.

The different ways people deal with death around the world, including traditions in India, Indonesia and Mexico.

Ruben Enaje endures a crucifixion for the seventh time; hundreds of people hang from hooks at Suspension Convention; an underground club in Los Angeles where members play with fire.

Ritual killings; Celtic rites of ancient Ireland; Cambodian genocide of the 1970s; cult members commit mass suicide in 1997.

Rites of passage; vampire-like rituals in New York City; psychedelic initiations in the jungles of Peru; Aborigines perform painful warrior scarification rituals in Australia.

People venture into the wild in search of adventure and discoveries; underwater explorers dive into icy caves in Antarctica's glaciers; three Mexican fishermen survive nine months adrift in a tiny boat; a teenage girl communicates with wild animals.

Mankind's obsession with how the world will end; a California preacher and his family await the apocalypse; British researchers believe fallout from an asteroid impact destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah 5,000 years ago; preventing World War III.