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For decades, talk of UAPsunidentified aerial phenomenon, for the uninitiatedwas relegated to conspiracy forums and X-Files reruns. Not anymore. The Age of Disclosure, which premiered to a standing ovation at South by Southwest this month, reframes the conversation with journalistic clarity and a big assist from some of the most powerful people in government going on the record. With critics and audiences alike buzzing over the documentary, director Dan Farah is pushing the UAP conversation out of the shadows and into the mainstream. That momentum is owed in large part to the fact that Farah (who is otherwise best known as a producer on the 2018 adaptation of Ready Player One) didnt just scrape the surface, he went straight to the top. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Mike Rounds, former National Intelligence Director Jim Clapper, and dozens of other government officials lend their voices to a film thats less little green men and more national security urgency. If disclosure feels like a cultural inflection point, thats because it just might be. Fast Company spoke with Farah about how he landed these interviews, what shook him the most, and what happens if the truth really is out there. What sparked your interest in UAPs? Its not a subject youve really explored in your filmmaking before. I’ve been interested in this topic my whole life. I’m 45, so my childhood was the 80s and 90s, and I grew up watching movies like ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s just always been a lifelong interest. They made me curious about big questions: Are we alone in the universe? Does the U.S. government know more than they shared with the public? I was doing research on the topic a few years ago, and I started getting introduced, through some mutual friends, to people who have worked on this topic for the U.S. government. I started to realize that this is very serious and has incredible bipartisan support at the most senior levels of our government. At a time when Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on anything, Democratic and Republican leadership agree this is an extremely important topic and should be taken extremely seriously. The average person doesn’t know that Senator Schumer from the Democratic Party and Senator Rounds from the Republican Party co-sponsored the UAP Disclosure Act that attempted to bring this information out to the public. When you read the language of that act, it’s shocking. They’re talking about technology of nonhuman origin, they’re talking about all these things that seem very extraordinary but they’re taking it very seriously. The more I learned about it, and the more I became excited and motivated to make a credible, non-sensationalized documentary on the topic. When I started socializing my vision for it within intelligence, military, and government circles, I started to get a lot of support. Why do you think they offered that support? Why did they agree to sit down for an interview? I think I was presenting an opportunity that they hadn’t heard before. I was committed to making this independently so they didn’t have to worry about a studio or a network sensationalizing it. I gave the interview subjects strength in numbers: I was setting off to interview dozens of people and wasn’t asking any one person to go out on a limb. I had the support early on of a lot of people who were very influential in that space, including Luis Elizondo, Jay Stratton, Christopher Mellon. They all really believed in what I was trying to do, and not something to do in a Hollywood way. Now, something to keep in mind: Almost all the people I interviewed have knowledge on this topic at a classified level that they obviously cannot talk about. But there’s a lot of information that they can talk about, and historically they’ve just been discouraged from doing so, or they haven’t had a comfortable opportunity to share what they can lawfully disclose. To the best of your understanding, why has the government been so secretive? Historically, there have been understandable and valid reasons for secrecy. And there are also very valid reasons now for making some of the information more known to the public. For you, what was the most interesting discovery during this process? An interesting realization that came out of this is just a reminder of how our government works in general. Our elected officials largely pay attention to what their constituents tell them that they want them to pay attention to, right? So there’s a lot of very senior leadership in our country that knows this is a very serious situation, and they’re not really putting their bandwidth toward it because they’re worried about an historical stigma around the topic, and they’re not sure its one of the top issues for their constituents. I have great respect for the leaders of both parties right now who are taking it very seriously and putting themselves out there like Secretary Rubio, Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and on the House level people like you Representative Carson, Representative Garcia, Representative Lunathese people are really putting themselves out there. The film comes at a moment when our two major parties cant seem to agree on much. I wonder what kind of political implications mutual acknowledging of the issue would have. This might be the one thing that could actually bring parties togetherand maybe bring adversarial nations together: the acknowledgement that we’re not alone in the universe. But as the documentary points out, there’s also a lot of negative things that could come out of disclosureit’s just another thing that nations could fight over. It’s really interesting to think about the fact that people who participated in the documentary share this extremely significant information that has extremely high stakes and impacts us all. And it’s very serious, yeah, but there’s still so much information they have that is informing their opinion that they cant disclose, and you wonder what that is.
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Leaders transition for a number of reasonsfrom promotions, layoffs, and changes in ownership. Whether its Goldman Sachs eyeing job cuts or the federal government downsizing senior-level government workers in the Trump era, transitions take an emotional toll. The recent turmoil at multiple government departments that impacts tens of thousands of experienced federal employees is another reminder that leadership transitions are messy. Theres more to change than an unemotional cost-benefit analysis, and thats the emotional toll. Transitions are major life stressors. But we dont see organizations giving leadersnor do we see leaders give themselvesthe time and resources to work through the emotional side of change. Suppressed or unprocessed emotionslike anxiety or grieving what used to bedont just disappear. Instead, they accumulate and surface as procrastination, cynicism, internalized self-doubt, exhaustion, blame, and avoidance. If we dont quickly correct it, these self-defeating coping mechanisms will undermine the psychological safety of an entire team. It can also break trust, which leads to half-hearted execution. In this scenario, even the most vibrant workplace cultures can turn transactional, which undermines results. The best approach is to prepare for your emotions, embrace them, and design them. Here are some steps to follow. Step 1: prepare Most of the time, you can see a transition coming, or at least the potential for it in your future. If possible, you should engage in a few key activities while they have a clear and focused mind. Create a personal coping plan by identifying the healthiest ways that people generally cope with the ups and downs of everyday life. Does music lift your spirits? Does going for a run give you energy? For example, when I left the stability of full-time work to start executive coaching, I committed to making breakfast for the family. This was something I couldnt do when working a 9 to 5. Its also crucial to diversify your support system. Find people who will support your efforts to process and move through emotions, including friends, family, a coach, or even a therapist. Leaning into a special support system supports resilience. It also protects you from those who would rather rile you up or commiserate with you. Step 2: Embrace Embracing the emotional rollercoaster of change starts with recognizing that ups and downs are natural and not signs of failure. The emotional stagesranging from excitement and optimism to fear, resistance, and eventually acceptanceare all part of the journey. Feel the feelings by labeling emotions, instead of letting them exist anonymously. If needed, refer to a feelings chart, like this one from The Work of Byron Katie. Once you have the words for your feelings, its best to get them out. If you tend to bottle things up, try doing something like going to a boxing class to express anger or watching a sad movie to cry. Once you have control of emotional expression, it is time to design the future. Whether its a new job or a new industry altogether, ask those around you, What does success look like? Step 3: Design Once youve embraced your natural emotional reactions and youre no longer running the show on autodrive, it’s timeto design the emotions. You can do this for yourself and others to support everyone’s success. Start by defining positive. We all want the workplace to be a positive experience, but put it into action. You can do this by choosing three to five key emotions that you can bake into your workplace on a daily basis. For example, the leader of a new start-up might choose excited, energized, and eager. The leader of a compliance unit might choose confident, respected, and engaged. Dont just wait for the positive emotions youve identified to materialize naturally; create experiences that bring them out to play. For instance, to prompt excitement, you could build time into team meetings for team members to share something that excites them, and how they plan to celebrate. To prompt respect, you may have a senior leader express their appreciation for the teams work. By preparing for transitions, embracing the emotions they stir, and intentionally designing experiences that foster resilience, we create environments where teams can thrive. Despite the challenges, leadership transitions can be a very positive outcome. Public- and private-sector executives and human resources teams need to implement leadership transition plans, harnessing executive coaches to support leaders for transition success. For example, when a senior director transitions to an expanded vice president role, executive coaches who specialize in leadership transitions can help that leader prevent failure while also building executive presence and business acumen. Similarly, if a successful leader experienced a lay-off and less experienced one steps in, transition coaching can bridge the gap so that the best practices endure. These are difficult times for many, but true leaders will overcome todays adversity with proper support. For those with seniority, the end of the road at a specific organization doesnt necessarily spell the end of the road for your career or your former team. Will you let change dictate the experience, or will you take an active role in shaping it?
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E-Commerce
In an industrial park in North Las Vegas, near an Amazon warehouse and a waste storage facility, a new carbon removal plant is beginning to pull CO2 from the air and store it permanently. Called Project Juniper, its the first integrated plant of its kind in the U.S., meaning that it handles both carbon capture and storage in one place. (As a bonus, it also generates clean water.) Clairity Tech, the startup behind it, designed the new plant after raising a seed round of funding led by Initialized Capital and Lowercarbon Capital last year. After spending the last few months setting up the facility, it ran its full system for the first time last week. Founder Glen Meyerowitz, who previously worked on rocket and spacecraft propulsion testing at SpaceX, pivoted to carbon removal in 2022. As I look at it, this is really the existential threat of our time and the most important problem that needs to be addressed, he says. In order for the world to have any chance of meeting climate goals, CO2 needs to be captured from the air at a massive scale at the same time as the economy decarbonizes. As Meyerowitz researched the space, he saw an opportunity to take a slightly different approach than some other companies. The Clairity direct air capture reactor in Nevada [Photo: Clairity] First, Clairity uses a different material to capture CO2 from the air. Its in the same family as baking soda, Meyerowitz says. The materials are produced in millions of tons per year for a range of applications. Its abundant, cheap, and after its filled with CO2, it takes relatively little energy to remove it. Unlike some other chemicals used for direct air capture, it doesnt degrade, so it can also be used longer. The plants are cheap enough to build that they dont have to run continuously to make economic sense. That means that its also possible to run on cheap, intermittent solar power from the grid. (The caveat: The company will be competing with data centers that also want to run on renewable energy and may be willing to pay more.) Sorbent cartridge being inserted into adsorption station [Photo: Clairity] While many companies in the space plan to inject CO2 into underground wells, that system isnt ready yet in the U.S. Clairity is starting with another direction: adding the CO2 to materials. For example, if its combined with fly asha byproduct from coal power plantsit can be used to make lower-carbon concrete. It won’t be the first direct air capture company to use CO2 in concrete: A startup called Heirloom previously partnered with a cement company. But Clairity is unique in that it handles both steps itself. The CO2 can also be injected into other waste materials to permanently store it. Building an underground storage well costs millions of dollars, and the process of getting regulatory approval is slow; building the companys ex-situ mineralization equipment costs less than $70,000. Its at a much smaller scale, but it allows the company to begin storage now. We can actually deliver credits today and not from some future project, Meyerowitz says. Theres also the potential to make more money by selling value-added products rather than only selling credits for storage. The company expects to be one of two facilities in the world to deliver certified credits for carbon stored this year. The other, 4,000-plus miles away in Iceland, is Climeworks, which partners with a company called CarbFix to inject its captured CO2 into Icelands deep rock formations and naturally turn the CO2 into stone. Clairity chose Vegas as its first location for a few reasons. First, the particular sorbent it uses to capture the CO2 works best in an arid climate (some others, like Climeworkss, are better in humid climates). Nevada has abundant access to renewable power. The state has relatively little arable land, so there are more potential locations; the company plans to expand in Nevada and other parts of the Southwest. And because the companys process generates clean water on the side, theres also a potential market to sell that water to local utilities. (The water is produced when the company heats up its sorbent to release the captured CO2; water comes out at the same time and is separately stored.) You can imagine that in water-stressed Las Vegas, thats a really interesting side benefit, Meyerowitz says. For now, its operating on a tiny scale. Project Juniper can capture 100 metric tons of CO2 a year; society generated more than 40 billion tons of CO2 last year. Clairity’s cost right now is around $700 per ton of captured CO2which will need to dramatically decline to be feasible over the long term. (Federal tax credits currently help with the cost, and may be more likely to stay in place than some other climate-related incentives because of strong Republican support.) Despite the challenges, Meyerowitz believes it’s possible for the startup to scale up to an ambitious goal: 10 megatons of CO2 removal in the next decade, or 100,000 times more than its first project.
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