National Geographic Dares to Think Outside the (Yellow) Box With Valley of the Boom

Matthew Carnahan cannot be accused of false advertising. The creator of Valley of the Boom, premiering Jan. 13 on Nat Geo, pitched the genre-bending scripted-and-documentary hybrid as a project that would elasticize and perhaps even traumatize the storied cable network. "I told them I was going to blow up their perfect gold box," Carnahan says,...