Around the World in 80 Faiths Episode Rating Graph

Pete travels to Israel where he meets the African-Americans who have settled in the Holy Land to live by the principles of the Old Testament - including polygamy. He travels to Syria to explore Islam and meet the Sufi Whirling Dervishes, to Samaria to witness the 3000-year-old Passover sacrifice, and to northern Iraq to track down the ancient and obscure Yazidi sect, who have a curious reputation for devil worship. Pete also visits Jerusalem, revered as the ultimate city of spiritual power, where he takes part in two great rituals - the Christian Via Dolorosa and the Jewish Purim festival. His journey is full of uncomfortable revelations about the roots of religious intolerance, but ends with a redemptive message of peace.

Pete discovers a dangerous side to the Bible Belt when he gets too close to the serpent handlers in the Appalachian mountains, before taking his seat at a table-tipping seance. He continues to challenge his own faith when he comes face to face with a miracle-working evangelist and a boy preacher, before witnessing gay rites in California. In Utah, he visits the holy city of Mormonism and ventures into the wilderness to seek out religious outlaws who take many wives. Pete goes native in a traditional Navajo sweat lodge and visits a sect where mummification is alive and well. His journey across the most religiously diverse country in the world reaches an explosive climax in Nevada when he joins 50 thousand revellers to witness the ceremonial burning of a man.

Pete journeys from the Nepalese Himalayas to the south of India to make sense of the mystery of Indian religions, including the transmigration of the soul, karma, the pantheon of gods and the high regard for gurus. Pete visits a Tibetan Buddhist monastery high in the mountains. In Calcutta, he takes part in the colourful Durga Puja festival and meets the Agori who live amongst the dead. He then travels to the deserts of Rajastan, where he finds Hindu sects ready to walk on fire or even pay the ultimate price for their gurus. In Mumbai, Pete attends a Zoroastrian marriage and explores why one of the world's oldest religions is in danger of disappearing. He discovers how Sikhism had a violent birth when he attends the 300th anniversary of its greatest guru's death, and then journeys south to learn about the remarkable faith of Jainism, which renounces violence against every living creature. Finally Pete spends Diwali in a tiny village at a dung-slinging festival - with inevitable results

Pete smokes cigars with Saint Death in Mexico, ventures deep into a Bolivian mine to meet a terrifying god of the underworld, and takes a mind-expanding natural hallucinogen with a New Age community in the forests of Brazil. He also discovers how the centuries-old dominance of the Catholic Church is being challenged by a huge explosion of new religions and the re-emergence of dormant practices from the past. But his search to understand the diverse spiritualities of the New World proves to be a testing experience. Pete encounters the radical methods of an influential Pentecostal preacher in one of Rio de Janeiro's most notorious prisons, and has to hold his nerve when the minister tries to exorcise Pete's addiction to nicotine. In Brasilia he witnesses the space-age pageantry of a UFO-worshipping community, where a mediumistic reading gets out of control and Pete has to deal with a dark and frightening presence from the spirit world.