Support the Producer

Everything on this site is free. Always. Forever. You make this possible, by sharing, supporting and participating in a regenerative economic experiment.

I'm Crystal (cstreet or desertrat on the interwebs)— a photojournalist, producer, and communications strategist with 25+ years of experience. I build things: podcasts, communications infrastructure, decentralized communities, nonprofit comms strategy, open-source methodology. I also advise, teach, and hold space for people navigating systems that weren't built to celebrate or protect our humanity.

None of my work has sponsors. None of this art is algorithmically optimized. None of my essays ever touch AI (but these info pages are built using my CommsOS and my human layer magic pixie dust). None of my goodness lives on billionaire-owned platforms.

My art runs on direct support from people who believe regenerative infrastructure and systems of mutual aid and circular economics should exist.

Here's what you're funding:

The Human Layer Podcast

Co-hosted and produced with Taylor Kendal

The Human Layer is a podcast exploring the intersection of humans, AI, and the systems we're building together– or deconstructing through Kali's flames. Taylor and I aren't just producing a podcast. We're creating a movement of new myth-making through conversations exploring collapse, rebirth, community and emergence. We also dance with AI models we've trained on the spiritual philosophies and wisdom traditions we've worked with for over a decade to accelerate our understanding of collapsing infrastructure– human, economic and technical to extract lessons in real time from Kali's cremation grounds.

We have a loyal and growing following of like-minded humans exploring the layer that tech-billionaires are trying to toss aside once the beauty has been fully extracted.

THL has no sponsors, no paywall, and no plans to enter the extraction marketplace– by design. The $250/month it costs to produce runs entirely on love and direct support through this site.

Listen → OS Upgrades & Archetypes: Code for the Cremation Ground 

Recent & Highlight Episodes

S2E3 - Rituals of Relearning: Hope Towards a New Human Future

In this episode, we are joined by Speaker, Futurist, Strategist, Linguist, and Creative Adventurer, Louka Parry. In this episode, we enter into Louka's world, into the interstitial space where education becomes not just a system, but a living, breathing ecosystem; where knowledge is not a static credential, but a continuously unfolding story, rooted in the human layer. Explore the episode essays and analysis in our knowledge garden.

S1E2 - From Tokens to Trust: How Aya is Reshaping Crypto's Global Impact

In our second episode of The Human Layer, we were honored to be joined by Eric Annan and Michael Lawal from the Aya team. We also recorded this episode at ETHDenver 2025 and Eric and Michael didn't hold back on their insights on what's wrong with our ecosystem right now and their beautiful vision for what's possible. I first met the Aya team during my time at Consensys and I was blown away by their passion, dedication and optimism for changing the trajectory of African builders for the better. Eric and Michael are bringing hope and prosperity to their communities through blockchain tech and showing the rest of the world what's possible when we approach the human layer with kindness and compassion. Explore episode details and analysis in our knowledge garden.

S1E4 - Hyperlocal Sovereignty: Building Antifragile Knowledge Commons

In this exploration of knowledge gardens, Spencer (also known as Clinamenic) guides us through a promising path back to digital sovereignty in an age of what Cory Doctorow calls "enshittification." Knowledge gardens represent more than just a return to blogging—they're philosophical and practical spaces where personal expression meets intentional curation. Unlike traditional blogs focused on consumption, these gardens emphasize co-creation, interconnection, and thoughtful organization of ideas. Explore episode details in our own knowledge garden.

Guest Productions

GreenPill Guest Series (Summer 2025)

JournoDAO snagged the Green Pill mic the summer of 2025 and dove into some of our "favorite" topics through the lens of acceleration. The whole family hopped on the mic at some point and The Human Layer covered the production. Grab a coffee and enjoy the ride– we surely did. Huge shout of gratitude to the Green Pill Network for letting us share the mic with their community.

The Knowledge Garden

The fertile soil where the signals in our conversations becomes seeds that sprout change and regeneration.

Our Knowledge Garden is the research, framework, and connective tissue behind The Human Layer. It's where episodes get contextualized, where patterns across conversations become visible, and where the open-source methodology behind the work gets documented. We work deeply with our transcripts and do language and energy pattern recognition, carefully pull the threads of importance and weave them into new content through our "wisdom bots".

Our Knowledge Garden functions as a mycelial network for ideas, communities and co-creators. A mother node of sorts to accelorate our understanding of a world that is rapidly transforming into something we can barely comprehend.

Explore the Knowledge Garden → click here

Essays & Analysis

The long-form thinking that started all of this. Essays on AI and communications, on sovereignty and extraction, on what it means to build a creative life without selling your nervous system to an algorithm.

My first blog experiment in 2007 was a short diary of my time working on a documentary project in Palestine. Two years later, I launched my first ongoing writing project while on a walkabout, searching for "what's next". I was wandering the streets of Oakland documenting my meandering with a Blackberry Pearl and The Storytelling Traveler was born. It was live for 4 years and allowed me to connect with a global audience through travel and storytelling and was the genesis of my digital nomad adventure that lasted over a decade. I've published on multiple websites and newsletters over the years and Signals & Seeds is my latest writing home.

The words are the signal. Your support helps them break through the noise.

Read → Click here

CommsOS: Open-Source Communications Infrastructure

I'm developing CommsOS — a methodology for helping comms strategists and organizations build communications operating systems using AI (using Claude, but designed to be model agnostic) without losing their authentic voice.

The 75% rule: Carefully trained AI gets outputs to 75% fast, that's the target. Humans edit the final 25% for authenticity and humanity. The methodology is being documented openly and will be fully open-sourced by Q3 2026.

CommsOS is currently being built and tested with:

• Factland (journalist-led nonprofit — see below)
• Learning Economy Foundation (sandbox testing mode)
• Impact organizations navigating the AI transition

The templates, the frameworks, the lessons learned — all of it will be public. Your support funds the R&D. My intention, once the testing period is done, is to provide this through Factland/JournoLABs for journalists to use as a reskilling and AI onboarding tool.

Learn more about CommsOS builds → Click here

Factland + JournoDAO: Journalist-Led Nonprofit Infrastructure

I'm a cofounder and Director of Development at Factland — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit building open-source publishing infrastructure and AI-augmented operational systems to help journalists own their platforms and thrive.

What we're building:

• Seed Protocol — Decentralized publishing framework on Ethereum so journalists actually own their work
• PermaPress — Open-source publishing client (offline-first, no server to trust)
• Factland – Open, permissionless fact-checking platform where the community reaches consensus through adversarial tokenomics that keep everyone honest.
• CommsOS for Journalists — AI-augmented operations training for journalists looking to transition their skills to communications work.
• Community of Practice — Global network of journalists learning and building together

The team: Three veteran journalists with 60+ combined years at CNET, Forbes, NPR, Wired, and Medium. We've operated on volunteer energy for 5-6 years under JournoDAO. We just merged JournoDAO under the Factland 501(c)(3) and are now pursuing institutional funding to sustain our work.

Learn more → factland.org | Docs → docs.factland.org | JournoDAO.xyz

Advisory & Community Roles

The production and the writing are the visible work. Underneath it, I hold advisory and teaching roles in communities I believe in:

EthBoulder — Advisor helping shape one of Colorado's most important Ethereum community gatherings. This is where builders, founders, creators and the regenerative tech community converge. We forked ETHDenver to try and recreate what was lost when their leadership turned overtly toxic, centralized and driven by extraction. We're restoring connection and emergence to our regional Ethereum community.

MSU Denver — AI Advisory Board — Advisor Supporting Metropolitan State University of Denver as they navigate AI integration in education — bringing a journalist's lens to questions of transparency, accountability, and human-centered design.

Women in AI Boulder — Advisor supporting women navigating the AI landscape — from practitioners and builders to founders and researchers. Representation matters, and the conversations happening in this community are shaping how AI develops in Colorado and beyond.

LEF Skyway — Advisor to the LEF team as they help address the growing need for a modernized approach to learning, as existing systems struggle to keep up with the demands of an evolving, interconnected global society. 

None of these advisory roles are paid. They're contribution. They're pack work. I view the work as crucial to building the regenerative ecosystem that makes everything else possible.

Your support here means I can keep showing up for these communities without needing to monetize every hour.

How to Participate

I've spent 25 years producing for institutions. Now I'm producing for the commons.

The podcast, the essays, the methodology, the nonprofit work, the advisory roles — none of it has a paywall. None of it ever will. It stays open because it's meant to be open.

But open doesn't mean free to produce. It costs time, energy, software, and the ability to keep a roof overhead in one of the most expensive regions in the country while building infrastructure that doesn't extract from anyone– while the labor and economic markets collapse in real time.

Here's how to participate:

TIER 1: FREE

$0 — Read everything. Listen to everything. Share it with like minds.

Full access to all essays, all podcast episodes, all open-source methodology as it's published. No paywalls. No gated content. Ever.

TIER 2: SENDING SIGNALS

$12/month — Support the producer. Keep the signal clear.

You're directly funding independent writing, podcast production, journalism advocacy, and open-source communications infrastructure. No algorithms. No sponsors. Just the work, funded by the people it serves.

• Everything in Free
• The knowledge that your $12/month is building infrastructure, not feeding a platform run by greedy man-children.

TIER 3: THE INNER SIGNAL

$55/month — Let's connect in conversation.

A monthly live group conversation where we explore trends in AI, communications, sovereignty, tantra technologies and regenerative economics. You bring what you're navigating. We think together.

• Everything in Sending Signals
• Monthly live group AMA call (60-ish min) — small virtual room, real conversation
• First access to CommsOS templates and frameworks before public releases (after Q3 2026)
• Limited to 30 members

This isn't a course. It's a table where people building sovereign alternatives sit together once a month and explore what's possible.

TIER 4: COMMS & AI Deep Dive + Ongoing Group Support

$250/month — Let's explore your existing comms & AI pain points, strategies or possibilities.

Starts with a 60-minute 1-on-1 deep dive where we explore your existing AI and communications systems, tooling, pain points and storytelling goals.

• Initial 60-min deep dive support call
• Monthly group office hours for ongoing questions
• Async support during weekly office hours
• Best for founders, nonprofit leaders, and small teams

For full CommsOS builds → Click here

ONE-TIME SUPPORT

Send a one-time signal → click here for Stripe Tips

Not everyone can do monthly. A one-time contribution of any amount still matters. It's still a vote for this kind of work existing in the world.

And if you're from our Ethereum ecosystem: thehumanlayer.eth or 0x7Af84490b500F4a948c88ae9bbf0fD4a759AFc7e

The Frequency

Both the podcast and the writing operate on a principle from our OS documents: consciousness doesn't scale through replication — it scales through resonance.

Signals & Seeds is a tuning fork. People don't consume it, they recognize themselves in the frequency. Readers feel their nervous systems settle. Listeners feel their breath release, shoulders relax. The community feels connected through story and supported through resonance.

If that's been your experience —something landed in a paragraph, whispered in a conversation or shifted your armor — that's what your support sustains.

Not content production. Signal clarity. Communal Coherence.

Everything stays open. Your support keeps the producer producing.