Taboo Episode Guide

Episode Guide

• Freaky Remedies

  Heroin addicts purge their habit in a brutal detox; an asthma treatment that involves swallowing a live animal; animal sacrifice for pain relief.

• Extreme Fighting

  In many cultures, what is considered acceptable violence pushes the boundaries.

• Secret Lives

  Individuals leading extremely opposite double lives.

• Odd Couples

  Unconventional relationships including a woman in love with a man three times her height and a marriage made up of three partners.

• Forbidden Love

  People with emotional, romantic and sometimes sexual attraction to an object.

• Prison Love

  People in love with inmates serving time include a Texas inmate in solitary confinement who is married with the help of a radio host as the surrogate groom and a man serving life for murder who meets and marries a woman over the Internet.

• Hoarders

  When 'stuff' controls its owner.

• Addiction

  The lives of those haunted by addiction include a young boy hooked on video games, a woman addicted to anonymous sex and a man addicted to shopping.

• Fantasy Lives

  Life collides with fantasy.

• Beauty

  Women who mutilate their bodies.

• Beyond the Grave

  The ways different cultures deal with the dead.

• Strange Love

  Uncommon relationships.

• Narcotics

  While some societies wage war on drugs, some embrace them for their medicinal or spiritual benefits.

• Misfits

  People who dwell on the fringes of society.

• Fat

  Fatness in the industrialized world.

• Prostitution

  The hidden world of prostitution.

• Extreme Rituals

  Young men leap head-first from a 70-foot tower in a potentially deadly ritual; a girl tattoos her face before marriage as part of her transition to womanhood; a 70-year-old man participates in a bloodletting ceremony.

• Spilling Blood

  Animal sacrifice in Nepal; the traditional whale-slaughtering tradition, Grind, in Denmark; cockfighting in Bali.

• Initiation

  Boys in Brazil put their hands in gloves filled with fire ants; boys have whipping competitions in West Africa; a woman in South Korea must become a shaman to save her life.

• Bizarre Bodies

  The lengths people will go to to change their looks.

• Extreme Punishment

  The lengths some societies go to to punish a crime.

• Sex

  Love and what attracts the opposite sex can differ from one society to another.

• The Third Sex

  Gender, sex and sexuality can be interpreted as cultural or genetic.

• Drugs

  Some cultures incorporate mind-altering drugs into social and religious life.

• Outsiders

  Every society contains people who live on the fringe, either by force or by choice, and must suffer the consequences.

• Extreme Eats

  What people can and can't eat may be nothing more than a question of mind over matter.

• Trial by Fire

  Many traditional cultures require boys to pass through initiations of pain and fear in order to become men.

• Extreme Healing

  Stepping beyond the bounds of modern science to place health in the hands of the spirit world.

• Body Extremes

  An Australian health therapist drinks his own urine; men and women in the Philippines sell their kidneys to wealthy foreigners; a woman in Papua New Guinea breast-feeds a pig.

• Supreme Devotion

  Some religions measure piety by physical suffering and self-inflicted pain.

• Touching Death

  A man evicts bodies from rented burial plots in Manila; an autopsy entrepreneur contracts out his services; a woman performs Buddhist rituals at the scene of a fatal car accident.

• Trials of Faith

  Extreme rituals for testing one's faith.

• Possessed

  Stories of the spirit world invading the real world.

• Pets

  The devoted and bizarre world of pet ownership.

• Gender Benders

  People who cross the gender lines.

  Next on: Tuesday 28th February 1:00am PST - National Geographic Channel
• Quest for Acceptance

  Students of human behavior and cultural norms provide perspectives on extreme rites and tests of faith from around the world.

• Marked for Life

  The lengths which people will go to identify with their community through skin markings.

• Mating

  Some people go to extreme lengths to find mates.

• Gross Grub

  People eat cheese crawling with maggots, rotten fish heads, grilled guinea pig and eyeballs, blood and brains.

• Rites of Passage

  Cultural practices guiding people into the next phase of life.

  Next on: Tuesday 28th February 2:00am PST - National Geographic Channel
• Jobs

  Some jobs are so disgusting that few people are willing to do them.

• Outcasts

  People who have been cast out of their community.

• Bloodsports

  Lure and horror of ritualized violence.

• Marks of Identity

  Extreme tactics people use to distinguish themselves as part of a group.

• Tests of Faith

  Extreme tests of faith.

• Rites of Manhood

  People jump naked over the backs of 30 cows, undergo sex-change surgeries, or slice and scar their upper bodies to resemble crocodiles in order to be considered men.

• Sacred Pain

  Religious devotees around the world offer their bodies to their gods.

• Initiation Rituals

  Some people perform extreme acts to be accepted and to prove their worth.

• Gross Work

  People who make a living doing uncommon jobs.

  Next on: Sunday 26th February 1:00am PST - National Geographic Channel
• Sexuality

  Boundaries between what is man and what is woman.

• Crime Scene

  People deal with the aftermath of fatal crimes.

• Blood Bonds

  Unusual definitions of family.

• Evil Spirits

  Good vs. evil spirits.

  Next on: Sunday 26th February 12:00am PST - National Geographic Channel
• Nudity

  Shedding clothes as an act of expression or liberation, and even as a means of worship.

• Extreme Entertainers

  Determining the line at which entertainment becomes grotesque.

• Drugs

  The societal impact of mind-altering drug use.

• Body Art

  The art, meaning and mystery of tattoos.

• Child Rearing

  Child rearing techniques around the world.

• Marriage

  Acceptable marriage practices based on culture.

• Proving Ground

  Measuring people's worth by the ability to overcome the fight-or-flight instinct.

  Next on: Sunday 26th February 2:00am PST - National Geographic Channel
• Body Cutters

  People who reshape their bodies by extremes.

• Body Perfect

  Methods for achieving beauty.

• Witchcraft

  Supernatural powers.

• Signs of Identity

  Different ways individuals express themselves through their bodies.

• Extreme Childhood

  Indian children participate in a self-mutilation ritual; young children kickbox for extra income for their families in Thailand; a 5 year-old continues to be breast fed.

• After Death

  Cultural dealings with dead bodies.

• Voodoo

  West Africa is the birthplace of voodoo.

• Sexual Identity

  Some people go through their life feeling they were born the wrong gender.

• Extreme Cuisine

  Food delicacies from around the world.

• Creature Cures

  Using creatures like leeches, baboon claws and bees to cure common ailments.

• Tattoo

  A look at what permanent skin art symbolises to different cultures all over the world

• Looks That Kill

  Joan Bakewell continues her examination of censorship with an exploration of violence, using excerpts from film and television. Recent decades have witnessed some of the most extreme violent acts ever, raising the question of whether society has become desensitised to the unsavoury aspects of life portrayed on screen

• Skin Deep

  Repeatedly cutting skin to create the effect of crocodile skin; a tribe of people's belief in physical perfection is so deep that some individuals kill their babies.

• Spirit World

  Extreme measures people go to in order to get in touch with a higher spirit.

• Delicacies

  Food delicacies from around the world.

• Healers

  Some unorthodox healing practices go beyond science.

• Extreme Living

  People who live in extreme conditions.

• Justice

  Abandoning modern systems of justice for older and more controversial methods.

• Food

  What humans eat.