How the fuck does the History Channel get away with doing all this hideous pseudo-academic (and sometimes not academic at all) bullshit? "Apocalypse Island" is on right now, and it's about the possibility that an artifact and monument found on a remote island could somehow offer clues to the 2012 apocalypse. There was a quite racist portrayal of a Mayan male exhausting himself before a fire, impaling his penis with a wooden spear-point, wrapping paper around the bloody wound and then burning the paper. From the smoke of the burning paper, apparently they could commune with the gods.
Interesting, okay; but ridiculous when the dude at the center of the episode actually believes all this (which he does). The entire voyage that the episode focuses on is based around the possibility that all this bullshit is actually true.