Topher Gardner Boundaries, Biochar & the Slaying of Idols

[Joel] (0:02 - 0:30) Topher Gardner is the founder of Black Gold Biochar and Coral Domes based in the show me state. Appropriate technologies that support resilience is the main focus of his professional life. Tofa has also had a podcast for the last 10 years that explores innovation in all different walks of life. This has led to producing the Elementals Gathering which is a festival that features the guests of the Biocharisma podcast. Welcome to Here for the Truth, man. [Topher] (0:31 - 0:35) It's great to meet you, Joel. Good to see you again. In Erasmus, you don't have to lie. [Yerasimos] (0:35 - 0:36) It's always good to see you. [Joel] (0:36 - 0:38) You don't have to lie about. It's good to see your ass once again. [Topher] (0:40 - 0:42) I feel obligated to say that that's. [Yerasimos] (0:42 - 0:42) Here for the truth. [Joel] (0:42 - 0:43) We're here for the truth, man. [Topher] (0:44 - 0:45) Awesome, bro. [Joel] (0:45 - 0:59) One way we always like to kick this off with first time guests is we kind of want to unpack your personal story and your personal hero's journey a little bit. So wherever you feel called to start, like major rites of passage, like the things that really led you down this path, that's evolving for you. [Topher] (1:00 - 1:14) I guess the first thing is, is when I was a kid, I was an athlete. You know, I ended up getting a full scholarship to Michigan State University. I was a four year starter for them. I was there during Nick Saban's rookie coach campaign. [Yerasimos] (1:15 - 1:15) You playing football? [Topher] (1:16 - 1:18) Yeah, yeah, I was a field goal kicker. [Joel] (1:19 - 1:19) Oh, wow. [Topher] (1:20 - 4:10) I had no idea. Yeah, yeah. So I guess what that exposed me to is like an extremely high level of competition and professionalism and that's something that's kind of taking me into all walks of life. I have very, very high standards, which could kind of be a pain in the butt for, for my peers and my cohorts. But either way, I, I did that for, for, you know, I did college football for four years and then I played in different professional leagues for three years after that. And I wasn't too happy with like the way my body had gotten deconstructed in football. So I reconstructed it in the yogic path that took me to India. I did the whole India thing for a while. And then after kind of seeing the follies of like the new age yoga world, I ended up in Central America and got into Rudolf Steiner and essentially all the different ways to do regenerative agriculture and building. And so that's been the focus for like the last 20 years for me has been how do I actually build structures that can actually handle earthquakes, handle different types of storms that can shield us from emf? Can, can sometimes mitigate, you know, things from the blue light spectrum. And then also I got into food sovereignty. Like my good friends down in Costa Rica started Vita Authentica, which was a, a non for profit that pretty much taught so many of the people there organic gardening so we could have some food sovereignty. And then they opened a market because there was no sense of, you know, teaching people how to, how to grow organically unless there was a market where they could sell their wares. Right. And so they, they essentially created this beautiful market that still goes on today. And in that whole world of food sovereignty, I got into biochar and that was pretty remarkable for me, learning about Amazonian terra preta, I think all the. Way back in 2010. And then because of my building prowess,. I knew how to convert certain types of rocket mass heating systems that I was already building. I actually just started making biochar. And now that's led me all the. Way to the middle of the United. States where I have a biochar company and I still have my construction company. It's changed since moving from Central America to Central North America, but pretty much I'm still focused on the same things. I'm focused on food sovereignty and I'm focused on resilient technology. [Yerasimos] (4:11 - 4:15) Did you, what drew you to Costa Rica first and foremost? [Topher] (4:15 - 4:21) I had gone down there in like 2001 or 2002 for, on a vacation and I loved it. [Yerasimos] (4:22 - 4:24) What part of Costa Rica? [Topher] (4:24 - 6:04) The Southern Pacific zone. So I flew into San Jose and then drove down to Quepos and on my vacation. And so when I was in, I, I lived in an ashram in India and I was operations director for it. And they were looking to expand and they were talking about the different countries that they wanted to expand to. And Costa Rica was, you know, in the leaderboard. I was like, Costa Rica. Because I'd already been there and I loved it and it had everything at the time that I was looking for. It had like, you know, very well one, it's extremely beautiful, lots of fresh water and it had very little government. You know, I guess you'd say intrusion, you know, at the time, at the turn of the, of the 20th century. Or 21st century, you know, after 9,. 11, There was so much BS around. All the different things that were, you. Know, people in my age range weren't. Used to, you know, there was just. Like, you know, so much like rah,. Rah military and all this stuff in the United States. And I wasn't, I wasn't into any of that. So going down to Costa Rica at the time. And I have to emphasize at the. Time, I thought was like a very idealistic, perfect thing. They didn't have a military, you know,. The government was supposedly hands off. And I came to learn that all. That was a miss, like a misqualification. But going down there was brilliant because it got me in touch with nature. You know, I had been pretty much. A city kid up until that time. And where'd you grow. [Yerasimos] (6:04 - 6:05) Where'd you grow up again? [Topher] (6:05 - 6:10) In South Florida. I'm. I'm born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, just north of Miami. [Yerasimos] (6:10 - 6:13) Okay. Go Miami Dolphins, right? [Topher] (6:14 - 6:17) Yeah. I grew up in the Merino era, which was a lot of fun. [Yerasimos] (6:17 - 6:19) Yeah, I mean, that's my. That was my team growing up. [Topher] (6:19 - 6:20) Yeah. Yeah. [Yerasimos] (6:20 - 6:23) I don't know why I grew up in jets country, but my cousin, My older cousin was a fan. [Topher] (6:23 - 6:24) My. [Yerasimos] (6:24 - 6:28) One of my earliest memories was. Was the 1984 Super bowl with. Against the Niners, where they lost. [Topher] (6:29 - 6:43) Yeah, yeah. They're. You know, we always joke because, like, South Florida is just a southern borough of New York. You know, so many. So many New Yorkers and New Englanders, you know, they have their. Their summer or their winter haven down there in Florida. [Yerasimos] (6:43 - 7:05) Yeah, for sure. When did you get into bodywork? Because I know you've. You've gone so many different paths. Bodywork, human design, astrology. Like, I think that's the one thing that struck me when I first met you at Acapulco, I think it was in 2024, was just like. Yeah, the diversity of the things that you know and you've gotten into. And the conversation. I remember having a conversation about human design on the beach. [Topher] (7:05 - 7:06) Yes. [Yerasimos] (7:06 - 7:12) Just curious about all that. And, like, you. Have you always been this, like, curious? Were you always a curious child? [Topher] (7:12 - 10:51) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, specifically with body work, you know, being a professional athlete, I got a lot of good body work. And I remember the first time I got Rolfed, which is like a very deep tissue type of body work, if you haven't heard of that. It changed my life. Like, I. I was so smitten with, like, how. How much my body repaired itself and how good I felt. I was like, oh, if I could do this for other people, this is probably, like, one of the only things that is worth doing. So I went and got trained, and I continually, like, with all the world, the yoga world, I was in the ashram that I was in, I was exposed to all these different modalities. I got exposed to ayurvedic massage, which brought me into astrology because in ayurvedic massage they see the human body as the Maserath, as the zodiac. And so like, you know, Aries is the head, Taurus is the neck, you know. And so in that line of thinking, you could see where certain people would hold stuck energy. And a lot of times what they were considering stuck was just because there was an over amplification of the sun energy in that given region. And so I really, that, that had me study astrology at a very deep level because I was, I had my hands on people. You know, I've been a professional masseuse since I was 23 years old. So it's been, been a lot. And what I wanted to do is really refine my practice. Plus I just saw how wonderfully attuned the. I always found astrology more, more real than astronomy per se. And so I, I endeavored and took a class from John Lamb Lash in 2011 called his Celestics class, which was like real sky astronomy meets ast. And when I did that, it was like a three year class where I'd wake up early in the morning, I look at the night sky, and I would just like, you know, have like a little, you know, charting mechanism. And he was very big into, you know, teaching that the, the sky would be interactive with you if you just watched it. And I, I found that to be true. And at the same time I was doing that, I was also very big in the medicine world. And when I say very big in the medicine world, what I mean by that is I had a best friend that was a shaman in that he actually served ayahuasca. And because I gave so many massages to all these retreats and everything like this throughout the years, I would act as like a grounding rod in a lot of the different ayahuasca retreats that he was having. And then other shamans, you know, that would come down to our area, Costa Rica, they would use me also in that, in that function. And that function is exactly what my function is in deep tissue massage, is just to be the ground. I'm just there to hold, hold center and hold neutral while, while the person processes whatever they're processing. And that stability allows the process to move very, very quickly. And so I did that for like 10 years. And then I had part, I partook in probably about 50 or 60 different Ayahuasca medicine journeys myself until I was told I was done, which was, which was great. I was happy to be done with it because I couldn't ever say that that was an enjoyable thing, but it's. [Yerasimos] (10:51 - 11:14) Not, I mean, it's not like I had my own experiences and it's like I, I feel like people, how do I say this? I think there's some good elements of it, but I think there's some things that maybe aren't that ideal and what it can potentially do to the body. So were there any like, realizations that you came to or you were like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be doing this 50 times, or was it just because someone said, hey, you're done, time to move on? [Topher] (11:15 - 13:18) Well, the medicine itself told me like I had a very like anti guru. Thing in, in my consciousness from the ashram days. So the first time I interacted with. The quote, unquote spirit of the medicine, I was alone with it. I got to be with ayahuasca alone. And I flat out told whatever that thing was, I said, look, I'm, I'm not looking for a guru. I'm not looking for, to deify anything. I'm not externalizing my authority. I, if you can answer this one. Question, I'll listen to you in an advisory capacity. And that was really my relationship with. Ayahuasca that I would be shown certain things in the physical world that were really remarkable. And she never tried to like, act like she was a God or there, there was no, no like crazy outlandish stuff that would happen in my experiences. I would get very profound insights into certain physical things. But she actually told me and I. Had, and she was only mirroring my. Own realization because when you do ayahuasca for like 10 years, like the, the people I was watching in that world. Weren't really changing and they weren't necessarily. Changing for the better. And so for me, I was like, you know, I'm very big into variability and training as an athlete or, you know, however I want to characterize myself, like, you have to change it up. Like, I have no problem with changing things up. And I just saw, you know, this. Could be for other people for their entire life. For me, a good decade is, that's solid. And I was told, hey, you're like, she's like, you're finished with this. Like you've gotten what you're going to get from this. And I was like, cool. I did it one more time just because my, my, my then girlfriend that became my wife, mackenzie, she, she wanted to try it and she wanted me to be in session with her. So I did it one more time with her and that was it. [Yerasimos] (13:19 - 14:06) Yeah, that's interesting because you know, in 2000, in early 2009, I, I went down to Peru and I had several experiences and you know, I had some deep, deep insights. But like for me it just wasn't, it wasn't the ultimate thing. I think like as I moved on and you got deeper into sober like, and when I sober, I mean I just made the choice to go off all substances. Like for me that had more of an impact on my life than the ceremonies that I went through. So I've had different conversations with different people and like some people have profound experiences and other people, it's like they're like chasing something. They're cha. They're going after the same thing for some like enlightened experience. But like you said, is anything really changing in their day to day life? So again, I think teach their own, they got to go on this journey and have their own like relationship and then see what comes of it. [Topher] (14:07 - 15:08) I, I totally agree. Everybody has their own path. And for me, yeah, I got incredible insights. Like I had some like wild, like really neat insights into, into physical reality with it. And I also have to say at that time I had tried other plant medicines and personally for me the plant medicine that spoke most to, to my being was peyote. Now I don't endeavor to do it all the time, if, if, if at all. I think I might have it like once every like six or seven years. But like overall like that, that plant medicine, you know, it was once said to me that if ayahuasca was the grandmother, peyote is the grandfather. I just, I like the grandfather energy better than the grandmother. Like the squawky, constant, like communication of ayahuasca was a little bit much for me, whereas learning from the silence I think is more my pace. [Yerasimos] (15:08 - 15:38) Yeah, I want to go back to the astrology and the bodywork kind of connection did you find as you started working with lots of people? Depending on their sun sign or looking at their chart as a whole, you would notice correlations with the body. I'm a Gemini, okay, with a Libra rising and a Leo moon, but that's in tropical astrology. So were you following a different form of astrology? The way you were working in body work? Was it more of a Vedic astrology, I'm assuming? [Topher] (15:38 - 21:26) Well, for my first 10 years I was doing strictly tropical, even though I was exposed to in 2003 and 2004 in India, the Vedic was more akin to true sidereal astrology. So like India is very good at like Switching whatever the most predominant or popular thinking is. Like there's like the, the quote unquote notion of ancient there. That's not what I found in that culture. That culture likes to, to shift gears faster than anything if there's a buck to be made. So in southern India, where I was the, the predominant thing in sidereal astrology or Vedic astrology was that there was 13, 13 constellations. Now tropical astrology doesn't look at the constellations as the signs. They just say, okay, we're going to divide the horizon up into, into 12 equal 30 degree segments. And these segments we're going to say are the tropical signs. That's a completely different system than what I originally was taught from, from a sidereal perspective. And what I practice now is it from a. Now, now you have to call it true sidereal. So in true sidereal, they connect the signs to the actual constellations. And that, that kind of. In 2010, or excuse me, 2011, 2012, when I was learning this system of actually looking at this, looking at the sky, like not looking at a computer,. But like, you know, having my. All my little, like, I guess you look like I was a boat captain. Outside with doing my sextants and everything like that. Like, when you actually look at the sky, it's very obvious that, okay, this particular constellation is obviously a different size than that constellation or that constellation, and they have a profoundly different feeling when you're actually interactive with that constellation. And then I had this, I had. This real challenge when I was first getting into it before the Ayahuasca world,. Because I was like, these are just arbitrary. Like some dude picked out like these like, you know, stars and said that that was a, a constellation and therefore a sign or whatever. But it was really odd. Like in some of these deeper medicine works, you know, most of those happen at night and I'd be out in the sky and I'd actually be watching. And like the, the, the actual constellation had a consciousness. Now that could be an egregore. That could be. I'm, I'm not saying that there wasn't, you know, some sort of placebo effect or I, I don't really know what the phenomenon was, but there were distinct delineations. And I also saw in nature that pretty much in nature nothing is equal. So to me it was kind of. To say, oh, the signs are equal or the constellations which the signs are based off of are equal. Like all that's just not true. That's like, you don't ever see that. You have trees of all different sizes. You have everything of different sizes. And it takes a little bit of. Nuance to look at it. And at the time I was building domes where in domes you can see the Analima. Like the dome acts like a sundial. And when you look at how the. Constellation sizes work relative to the Analima, it was all starting to make sense to me of these different sizes and the different powers and energies that come through. And I was also learning still from the India perspective of like I said, now you have to call it true Sidereal. Their deva worship was the worship of the different moons. And there are 13 moons that, that, that they worship. Now each one of these moons has like a characterization to the moon. And so for me I was like, ah, 13 makes a lot of sense, right? Because I, I knew in like just from living life that most of the history that we were being told was a lie. So I'm like, yeah, if they lie to us about the history and they've lied to us about our calendar, more than likely they're going to lie to us about the geography. Like pretty much anything that's worth knowing we're going to be lied to about, right? So I just decided to take it amongst myself and like actually look at things from a base 13 perspective. And then I come to find out in astronomy, like in normal astronomy, they're like, no, there's 13 constellations on the plane ecliptic. There's this, there's this ninth constellation. People want to call it the 13th, but the ninth constellation is called Ophiuchus. You know, technically Pisces is the 13th because it's the last. But that, that Pisces or the, that Ophiuchus. When I started looking into the archetype of Ophiuchus and I knew people within that, that, that range, you know, that birth range of Ophiuchus, I was like, oh my God, they totally fit Ophiuchus. They don't fit the Scorpio archetype. And then that trickled down into my body work and it made my body work so much, so much better because now I was dealing with like a full, full deck of cards. Where before I was kind of hamstrung. I didn't have, I didn't have all the archetypes at play before Ophiuchus, before I knew about that. [Joel] (21:26 - 21:35) Yeah, I think ophiuchus is like November 29th to December 17th, I think so I think it's Sagittarians that fit in that gap. [Topher] (21:35 - 21:41) Well, it would be the last half of Scorpio and the. In the first half of. Because once again, it's. [Joel] (21:41 - 21:42) That's right. [Yerasimos] (21:42 - 21:42) Everything. [Joel] (21:42 - 21:43) Everything shifts in. [Topher] (21:44 - 22:09) Yeah. And it's a small. It's small constellation. It's the only constellation that's above the plane ecliptic. It just has. It's like one star below the plane ecliptic, and it's pointing to the center. So when you look at. When, you know, the Gregorian calendar switched over and when they changed all the calendrics, that's exactly when they took it out of the Maseroth. So it was the. It was the original archetype of Jesus. [Joel] (22:10 - 22:30) Interesting. Interesting. Hey, Topher, this might be a big question. What can you speak into in terms of what is like your general philosophical worldview around man and his existence? Is the hermetics? Is it hermeticism, microsm, macrosm? Anything that comes up as I ask that question. [Topher] (22:31 - 26:23) Oh, geez, I love that. Like that. That's what my podcast is on. It's pretty much cosmology at the moment. Because I'm always changing as a true, you know, Pisces, Aquarius, Cusp person. I. I give myself a room to adapt when new information comes. I would say there is. I. I do see myself as like. A natural philosopher and a hermeticist. Not in like the gay black magic. Way, like where they're like, ooh, I. I manifest this or do that. No, no, it's nothing like that. The highest will is. Is thy will, is God's will. And you can pretend or you can like. Some people have different aptitudes and capacities. I always recommend to people the. The movie the Nines. It's one of Ryan Reynolds early films. It's like a B movie. It's a campy movie. But in that movie, they explain like. How the people that are nines, they can like, really warp and change their environment until, like into how they see fit. Eights, you know, are more of like the management class. And then you have sevens, which are. Like, you know, pretty decent, you know, strong people. Then the majority are sixes. And I really see life like that. Like there are certain people that really have the capacity for whatever reason it's God given, I believe, that have the ability to really change and, you know, be the needle mover around them. And I know, I know that Erasmus is really into the human design aspect of things. So that would be like the manifester. The manifester is here to like, tell. You their will and it telling you that, you know, you know, they. They kind of morph into the, the geography. But what I've seen with that is from my own personal cosmological perspective, if that's not in alignment with the higher order, it's very short lived. And there's usually a huge boomerang effect. Yeah, that boomerang will come and hit you in the back of the head. But I really feel like this is, it's not a choose your own illusion in the sense that, that each one of us like is like, you know, creating our own thing. I think that they're one of, one of the biggest lies that we've been told just on a very practical and empirical level is that we experience things the same way. And I know that for a fact that we don't. There's not a single one of us that vector into the same, you know, position as anybody else at the same given time. And each one of our physiology is completely different and so we see things completely differently. And then you have all the filters of the mind and the emotional body and the spiritual body. Like there's so many different filters that each being is looking through that the illusion that we're all sharing is that we actually experience the same thing, which we do not. So for me, where I'm coming from is as an educator and as somebody that does things on a very like practical like worldly level is like trying to show people and like bring people as close together as they, as they might be able to see things. And then to understand to what extent we're actually viewing things differently, to understand to what extent our, our, maybe our physiology or maybe our idyllic, you know, composition. It isn't allowing the, the actual true meeting of the minds and heart. [Yerasimos] (26:24 - 26:29) Yeah. What do you, what do you think the purpose is? Like to, for you, the purpose of. [Topher] (26:29 - 28:40) Us being here to learn to learn boundaries. Like we're given physical, like physical reality to me is literally there. There's one purpose and it's that every soul that incarnates, in whatever form they incarnate is actually here to learn that boundary layer. Because like I've, I've, I've waxed rhapsodic. With the most philosophical people in the world. And they'll talk about, oh, we're all. One and, but they're talking about at. A level outside of the body. And I'm like, no, no, that, that. Might be all well and good, but. Like right here, right now, like if. We're actually having a discussion and there's. A you and there's a me and. There's you know, distinction, you know, there's literally that purpose here. The distinction is the purpose. And that's why I went all the. Way to the east and came all. The way back west. And from a philosophical perspective is because. Pretty much in the east they're trying to get you to the, to, to. Experience the. Impersonal life that I am. Personal life. Whereas the, the, some of the Abrahamic faiths, specifically the Christianity faith is. That's more focused on like, no, no, you were connect. You were created uniquely like, and God wants to have a personal relationship with you as you. And that is wholly unique. I don't think people understand how unique that is. Like, I, I used to interview Rinpoche's and Tibetan Buddhism. I had gone like, I literally lived in a cave in southern India with the, the depth of Vedanta, Advaita, Hinduism, all of those thinking processes are all there to strip away the self, to like completely and utterly make you a non being. And when you see the way that. People live, you can understand why, like what the purpose of that is. And at least from my perspective, I could understand why they were doing that. But. [Joel] (28:40 - 28:44) Or is the, is the way they live a product of that ideology? [Topher] (28:44 - 30:13) It's both. Yeah, it's both. And like, absolutely like they're like, you know, you can never have a logical conversation with somebody. At least I couldn't in India. Like I would be having a great conversation with say a middle class person. The bus would pull up and a Brahmin would jump off the bus. And then the person that I was just having this great connection with would get up and leave because the Brahmin wanted to sit next to me and talk to an American. And then the Brahmin would just sit there and start like acting like I cared about what they were saying in the whole thing in that, in their thing was like, oh, this is the karma, this is the karma. And I'm like, if you're going to go the karmic route, then you can justify anything. You can literally justify anything. When you start to talk about karma that way. And I saw the worst behavior, I saw the absolute most deplorable things. And so for me, just being once again a very practical person as a builder and as somebody that like literally physically manipulates people and like I physically manipulate, you know, my environment for, for buildings and you know, agriculture and all the rest of it, I was like, no, this, this world is actually to learn how to fully integrate my boundary layer with other boundary layers within the will of God. Like to me, that is like the primary focus. [Yerasimos] (30:14 - 31:23) Yeah, well said. Yeah, it's just, I think being in Los Angeles, traveling around the world, you know, coming across different individuals, I just love to throw these like, platitudes out. Like, there's no you, there's no me. You know, we're not separated. Like, okay, cool, do your thing. I have a different experience and it's kind of cool that you do work with the land and you work with physical material and, and change physical material from that standpoint. But like, I just, I personally couldn't, while maybe I, I've read some books, I just couldn't get into that aspect philosophically, you know, Like, I tend to come from what you were saying, a more Western standpoint. And I'm this unique being with this unique relationship with God, with nature and yeah, I just, I just couldn't go down that path, you know, and it just feels like when I have conversations with people on these subjects, sometimes they, they tend to sometimes go nowhere, you know, because it's like I'm going to just say one phrase, one statement and that's it. I've, they, they, they've ended it with one statement. Like, we're all one, you know? Okay, all right, cool. Okay. [Topher] (31:23 - 32:03) Yeah. And maybe I'm just Old man river now. Like, I don't know how to say it, but like, you look at Those people in 10, 15 years, it, it, everybody has an opinion now. You know, my whole thing is, is like, is what you're giving attention to. Does it actually have legs? And everybody. Like when I was in my 20s, I was an extreme idealist. When I was in my 30s, I thought I knew everything because I had. Just enough experience and I had all. This physical, you know, like, vigor. Like we all go through those stages. Like, so what, like what's your HD profile? I'm an egoic manifester and I'm a 626 2. [Joel] (32:03 - 32:06) Yeah, we definitely go through phases. [Yerasimos] (32:06 - 32:58) Yeah, he's a 6 to emotional generator. I'm the 5 one. So again, I like the practicality of things as well. And some of this stuff doesn't feel practical to me. It's some of these conversations I get into with people to solve the challenge of your life of like, who you are as a person and what you're going after and how you are in relationships and how you are with your children and how you are in your work. Like, it doesn't feel, some of this stuff doesn't feel practical. And I know even in the Gene Keys part of my life's, work is to take some of the esoteric and bring it down to the practical level. So again, I know people are on their own path and they're going through their own journey, but that's kind of like from my personal standpoint, that's the stuff that I care about. So like, I love that you're like building stuff and like in the garden and making things and, and doing, being a body worker and, and I love that you are into human design. I don't know if you're still into it or you're just like, it's a thing that you, you learned and, and that you know about. But. [Topher] (32:58 - 35:32) Well, I love, I love human design as a qualification. I'll always be a scout. So, like, I use human design as like one of the tools in my tool. Like, you know, the way I use to like profile people. And I do profile people and I'll do it professionally for people just to give them like a heads up of like, what, what they should be paying attention to and not get so overly easternized, you know, because like the people don't understand. Like, I had, I had to get jarred. Like, I was the dumbass that went to India thinking that India was like,. You know, special dirt. Like, I was that dude. So I'm not coming at this with this like, greater than thou thing. I'm coming at it as the guy who has already made the mistakes. Like, I've already, I've already like, you know, traversed those landmines. So the, the one thing I have to be very, very like, humble about is like, I've had to been shocked out of my stupidity. So like, what I mean by that is like all the outlier events of my life are really responsible for where I am now. Yeah, like, like the outlier events, the things that I never strategized, really kicked my butt and I needed that. Like, it's obvious. Like I'm. I don't know, I've never known. Best for me. And this is what I always say to the people that are like, oh, we have soul contracts. And I knew that at this part of my life I was going to do this. I'm like, so what you're saying is you have perfect knowledge. Like you, you're omnipresent. Like your higher self is omnipresent and it knows everything that the, that the little self needs to know, right? I go, that's interesting because for me, I'm coming from a totally different place. What, what time and experience has shown me is that I don't know. And the more that I think I know, the more I come to find I don't know. So in not knowing, all the best things in my life have been a surprise. Like, I never saw them coming. I had no idea that they were right around the corner. So in like kneeling down that into genuflect to that fact, I'm just like, okay, God's will, it's your will. Like, I know the things that I like and the things that I desire, but I will never project that as like being the. The end all, be all. I just know that that's the way God has conditioned me over. [Yerasimos] (35:32 - 35:36) You just didn't meditate enough in a cave to be able to have perfect knowledge. [Topher] (35:36 - 36:22) Dude, I tell you what, man. I like, I have that thing with me. Like, I get obsessive. So whether it's field goal kicking or, you know, whether it's biochar massage, I just obsess. And so like, I end up being kind of a pain in the butt to people. Like, I saw you guys at Confluence. And like, there are a bunch of people that came up to me that had their theories on things, but they've only been in the theory aspect of life. They haven't been in the practice part of life. And I've been like, oh, well, I've done that. Like what you're talking about. I've done that. And, and I could just see them get deflated. And I'm not like, I'm not saying it to deflate anybody. I'm just saying. No, no, I've made that mistake. I thought what you thought and I was wrong. [Yerasimos] (36:23 - 36:30) Yeah, it's such a perfect, like. I know you said you're a 6:2, but like even just hearing you talk, it just, it's highlighting this like three stage journey of like. [Topher] (36:30 - 36:31) Yes. [Yerasimos] (36:31 - 36:45) Having all these subjective experiences in the early 30s. You're bumping into things, going into things, and then you're like, I gotta take a little step back. I gotta build some more objectivity. And then now you know, and I'm, I'm. I'm assuming you're over 50. Are you over 50 or. [Topher] (36:45 - 36:46) I just turned 50 this year. [Yerasimos] (36:47 - 37:09) Okay, cool. So it's like, what, what do I assume? Well, no, no, because I'm 46, so I had a feeling he was. I knew he was older than me, so I just didn't know how much. And then it just feels like you're, you know, you're stepping in to more so this like, hey, been there, done that, made the mistakes you Know, learn some stuff, and if you want to hear what I have to say and listen to some of my guidance, then great. [Topher] (37:10 - 38:08) Yeah. Yeah. The thing is, too, because people. I don't ever offer this stuff, like, unless somebody asks and what I try and relay to people, especially if I'm telling them something that seems to be like, you know, like, deflating to whatever their projection is, I tell them straight up, I'm only telling you this because my projection, and I admit it's a projection is. My projection is. I don't want to have anybody waste my time, so I project that onto other people. If you want to waste your time, go for it. But I'm telling you this because I don't want you to waste your time. Time is the only thing that we don't have more of. So, like. Like, I'm telling you this because I've been the dude in the field doing what you're. What you're about to embark on. So, like, and so in that, like, I guess, you know, they say that with the six twos, you know, after age 50, you get to be the. You get to be the teacher or whatever. [Yerasimos] (38:09 - 38:09) Yeah, the role model. [Topher] (38:09 - 38:21) Yeah, the role model. And so I. I embrace that because I. I like that there. There's always been that aspect of me that likes to coach, so I'm all about it. [Yerasimos] (38:22 - 39:30) Yeah. What. Why do you think systems, like human design, like, you know, it came into the world? I think it was 1987. Like, what's. Like, what's the purpose? What do you think happened with Ra? Do you think it was like. Like, do you believe in that? Like, okay, the voice came to him and gave him some knowledge, and then. And then, like, he evolved it over time. I know there's some people who follow just the original kind of voice and what was given to him, and then it's moved forward. Like, there are people that have lived great lives without human design, without astrology, and then there are people who obsess over human design and astrology about every single thing. Like. Like, they can't even go a date with. Go on a date with someone without having to find out their astrology. And then they go home that night, and then they analyze their entire futures together, and then they project it back onto them, and the guy just disappears after, like, a week. He's like, all right, chill. You know what I mean? Like, it's just so interesting how people relate to this knowledge and these systems. So they make it their whole identity. They don't just take it for the tool or the gift that it is. Like I'm just so curious, like are these little mini cheat codes for life, these esoteric systems that just come in like I don't know, I'm curious your thoughts like on that. [Topher] (39:30 - 42:05) 1987 Was apparently, you know, the harmonic convergence, if you want to believe any of that. So there was probably some extra celestial energy. I think the harmonic convergence that was one of the few times in modern era that all the planets were aligned, you know. And to me I don't look at the planets, I don't, I'm, I don't subscribe to NASA's billiard ball universe. Like I, I, when I look at the sky, I look at it, you know, from an alchemical lens and like each one of the luminaries, you know,. You have your fixed luminaries which are. The stars and then you have your non fixed luminaries which are like the archons and the daemons. And so if all those energies of all the demonic energy was lined up, you know, in a specific geometry that would have a profound effect on the information that was distributed during that year. You know here like I've had the chance now to experience two full solar eclipses and they're pretty remarkable. Like everything does change, like life does change after that, which is really neat. And so as being like an avid sky watcher, I wasn't conscious of that in 1987, you know, I was 11 years old running around. But I'm pretty sure the guy that is now called Ra? Ura, when he was still alive, he probably had like, you know, his John Travolta moment and phenomenon. He probably like, you know, that energy wave hit him and it probably downloaded into his system and he just filtered it the way he could filter it. I think a lot of channeling that happens is like no matter what, the channel isn't perfect. And anybody that says the channel is perfect or the medium is perfect is absolutely full of shit. And so he processed the harmonic energy in the way that he did and he came up with the system that he came up with and all the spin offs and all the different things that occur after that, it's just, it's just straight up economics. You know, the Tim Ferriss school of economics is like, you don't enter an existing market, you create a new one. So I actually really like that, that like style of thinking and marketing because like to enter a saturated market is kind of stupid. So if you create like a new like oh, I have this new system, you're always going to get people that are attracted to novelty. [Yerasimos] (42:06 - 42:06) Yeah. [Topher] (42:06 - 44:38) And if that novelty has some truth to it, woohoo, you're off to the races. Like you're, you're going to have converts for life. And so that's why, you know, Christianity has 32,000, thousand, like 32,000, you know, sects of Christianity. Like, come on, like there's always the person that's interpreting the information in a different way and then you're going to get the people that are like, ah, I agree with that. And the cool thing that, that the way Ra actually processed things was that he combined four existing systems. You know, in those four existing systems have a lot of, you know, they have a lot of clout behind them. And when you, when you convert systems, if you think about it, he like automated four different systems and to automate four different systems is, is pretty cool in the way that he did. And the, the proof is in the pudding. Like I remember I was in my Jesus year when I was shown human design. And the guy, the guy owl who showed that to me 17 years ago, he really clarified something. Like he completely up until age 33, like you, anybody who meets me can tell, like I'm pretty opinionated. But the way my opinions were being read earlier in life was like I, like I was like being forceful with it. And I've never been forceful, I've just been passionate. And so I was being judged in the new age world as like, oh, he's just so man, you know, so male or whatever. Like there was all this BS even back then, like with the, the whole wokification of the world. And like I was so thick in that world. Like I was a massage therapist. I was massaging all these yoga retreats and all that, all that stuff. And so, but I've always had fire, I've always had vigor. And when Al was showing me my human design, he's like, yeah, you're, you're a 6:2 egoic manifester. Like you should be teaching this. Like you are here to be heard. Like that's what your role is. And then what he clarified for me was that the, the egoic manifestors authority only comes in when he's speaking to others. And nobody had ever explained that to me because I'm a, I'm an idiot. When I'm by myself. Like I'm just like, it's, you're speaking. [Yerasimos] (44:38 - 44:41) Out your wants and your desires. Yeah. [Topher] (44:41 - 45:44) But the, the second I start communicating with anybody this, I've always known this even as a little kid. It's like, there's this extra intelligence comes in, and I'm like, oh, I better record that. Like, I've literally had that thought in. My head before podcasting, before anything. I never. Like, I was always like. Like, oh, man, what. Where did that come from? But it only came when I was speaking to other. And so when. When the human design, like, showed that. To me and was like, oh, yeah,. You're an egoic manifester. It's very rare that you know this. This gate opens up for you when you speak to others. And that's the gate to higher intelligence. I mean, I was like, hallelujah. Because that explains a mystery. Because I'd be sitting there by myself, like, trying to think of stuff and whatever, and I was just totally not effective. The second I'd put myself in a. Team setting or setting with other people and I would start to communicate, I was like, the beats were there. It's like. And so, yeah, that human design was great for me with that. [Yerasimos] (45:44 - 46:31) Yeah. Yeah. Ra's was a 5:1 egoic manifester, I believe. Yeah, I thought it was interesting too. It was. I believe it was January 3, 1987, when he had his experience. And I'm also into the system based on a deck of playing cards. And January 3rd is a jack of Spades day, which is. One person who wrote a book about it, calls it the Day of the Spiritual Initiate. So interesting that that experience happens to him then on that day, you know, where he's kind of initiated into this, and he's a manifester meant to initiate and bring this forth. So, you know, again, like, speculation, correlation, who knows? But it's interesting to think about when it comes to this kind of stuff. [Topher] (46:31 - 48:14) I love it. I think it's so cool because for. Me, overall, I don't think any of. Us should have any idols here on Earth. So, like, when we're actually getting this type of information, you know, to take. It all with a grain of salt,. Always leave room for development and growth and, you know, take what you take, don't take what you don't take, and, you know, just. Just keep on going. Yeah, the zealots. The zealots in my life, you know, they really want to make the idol, and then they get really mad that. That the idol, you know, ends up being slayed, you know, And I. And I always refer to the book from Wilhelm Reich called the Murder of. Christ, because in that book, it was. One of the more beautiful, poignant books about how there is a need in the broken person to create idols. And they create the idol not to idolize them. They actually create the idol so that they can feel disappointment in that idol and project their disappointment onto that idol as they age through that process. And when I read that book, I was like, that's me. And I read that. I was lucky to read that before. My first Saturn return. So it was like one of those huge, like, you know, initiation things for me of being like, oh, my God,. I have been making these idols just so I could sit there and judge. The idol on the other side, you know, And I'm. I'm glad that I. I actually. What was the last idol? I just. Just that I just slayed. There's always new idols that we have to slay, but it's some. It's something I've talked about with some of my. Some of my guests on my show, which is a lot of fun. [Yerasimos] (48:14 - 49:02) Yeah, I. I definitely like your perspective when it comes to that. And I think also one of the cool things about some of these systems is, like, you go back before to the question of, you know, boundaries. Like, I like these systems because it's just kind of like, me, me, I could explore me more and. And who I am and some of my gifts and some of my challenges. And, like, you do your thing and you have your unique, you know, constellation of. Of behavior based on whatever maybe these systems have to say. And so I appreciate them for that as well, you know, and like you said, take things with a grain of salt. Yeah. I can't imagine going out there with my bible of human design and just being like, this is the way. This is the only way. Meanwhile, like, my parents lived a pretty good life and they didn't know any of this. So, you know. [Topher] (49:02 - 50:39) Yeah, it's amazing, too, because, like, I'm still, like, I still have people in my family that are in their late 70s, late 80s and stuff like that. And when I talk with them, it's very interesting to see the. The world through their eyes. And we are all so different, man. Like, it's like. It's not even. It's not even close. And even, like, talking, like, the. The difference between men and women. I knew this for years and years and years of doing body work is like men and women process energy in different directions. So, like, the woman is always processing the energy as an internal thing because they. They are the negative pole. The energy is being absorbed to their center where men. The energy is being projected from their center. And so what I saw with male. Female dynamics was, like, you could have a man and a woman both like pointing to the same thing. But if they're just off just a little bit, it looks like they're going past each other. And so we are. Like, the level of difference is like astounding. So for me, what I've endeavored to do as of late, and as of late, like the last seven, eight years of my life, is to really ask questions, to be the creditor. You just, just ask questions. I'm just like, so what? So what do you mean? What, what exactly are you saying? How do you define that? Like, really get clarity on where a person's coming from. Because in reality, people just want to talk about themselves anyway. [Joel] (50:40 - 50:41) That's why your ass must love human design. [Yerasimos] (50:43 - 52:25) Yeah, but again, it's like, I, I don't even, I'm not an expert in human design. Whatever you want to say about expert. Like, but do I know more about it than most people? Yes, because most people don't even know human design. So it's like, I like the elements that I think are practical and then I think are like a little ingredient that might allow a person to see themselves and accept themselves in a certain way. Just like what you just said when you first were exposed to it at 33, and it just made you like, understand something unique and even if you take one or two things from it. And this is why I do like human design. Because strategy and authority is very different than other systems out there. Like, there's something that very tangible about strategy and authority that you can, you can experiment with. And I think for me, when I first realized I was a generator, everyone was always like telling me to like, do, oh, you got to do this and you got to force this and you got to make happen. And I just was like, I just wanted like, trust. And then the more I did that, the right situations, the right people, the right things started coming in to my life. And I think inherently, even before any human design, I was honoring my authority. You know, using this term from human design, where it's like I, I followed my interest, but I gave myself time to just like, not just jump into something very quickly as an emotional authority. I was like, let me just wait things out and see what's coming through me intuitively from this feeling based state of if I want to go towards that person or go towards that line of work or, or travel to that country. And so it's been really cool to see because you said one of my lines that I love saying all the time early. Obviously people have said it for years, but the proof is in the pudding. [Topher] (52:25 - 52:26) Yeah. [Yerasimos] (52:26 - 52:28) You know, it's like, what is the state of your life? [Topher] (52:29 - 52:29) Right? [Yerasimos] (52:29 - 54:03) And if like you're not content with who you are and what you're doing and the relationships you are in, then you need to effing change something or you need to shift your philosophy or you need to interpret something in a different way. And so as I started bringing certain things into my life that I aligned with, I started seeing, oh, wow, my relationship shifted, I started coming across and having these magical experiences. You know, when we've talked about, oh, we're creating and manifesting a reality, I'm like, wow, that person, like that opportunity, like this is really cool. And so you see things progressing, you see, you get more satisfied. Okay. For myself. And I'm like, okay, let me just keep going with this without obsessing over it. And so I think that's the cool magic of being an individual, is that we can kind of like pick and choose and integrate and then see how things play out. And at the end of the day, from a self responsibility standpoint, your life is your life, okay. Outside of some stuff that maybe you have no control over. Unless you try to look at things from some new age cosmic way that you've chosen every single thing. But like, like you're making how many choices in a single day, how many choices are you making that is like accumulating into who you are and the life, the life that you're living. So yeah, yeah, I'm just not into the, the, some of the victimy stuff and also like the reality that we are such creator awesome beings and it's a blessing to, to have life force moving through us, to be able to build and create the things that we want to create. [Topher] (54:03 - 56:07) I'm with you on that, man. I'm totally with you on that. Yeah. Because like, you know, I, I have to say, like, I, I've let go of the messiah complex quite a long time ago. And ever since I let go of that, the, the amount of energy I've had to actually apply to like fruitful businesses has been awesome. And in an indirect way with like actually having, you know, the entrepreneurial spirit and having these businesses that have been profitable that is actually doing more good per se than just talking about the stuff or trying to be like the guy on the pulpit that's like wagging. His finger or whatever. But I understand that there's all stages too. For me. I really enjoy watching people in their process, like in getting to know people. And I will only ever, ever Interject, if they ask me multiple times, because I know I could be kind of a, like a, you know, a deflator in a way. Not that I'm trying to be a deflator, but like, I guess a numerologist once told me my. My core num. Numerology is 11, and 11 is like the. Is like the Shiva energy. It's the energy that breaks things down, but it breaks it down like a detritivore does in nature. Like, the things get broken down to be reused. And I find that really funny because that's actually like, what I'm most passionate about in life is like biochar is. Just accelerated, you know, breakdown process of biomass. Like, I do do that. Like, I do actually, like, like. No, no, no, that's inappropriate there. Let's go ahead and, you know, decompose that so that we get the raw materials so we can do something that's. Actually, you know, worth something. So I. I find that kind of funny. That just, you know, the. From a numerological perspective, that, that. That seemed to be pretty accurate. Yeah. [Yerasimos] (56:07 - 56:12) Yeah. Well, this is a perfect segue into talking about biochar. Unless, Joel, you had something you wanted to. [Joel] (56:12 - 56:13) That's where I was going to go. [Yerasimos] (56:13 - 56:49) So you're good. Oh, yeah. Well, I definitely want to talk about that. Like, what you've built, what you've created. I think my neighbor, who was also a Confluence, shout out to Seamus, he ordered a bunch of biochar things from you recently. And then for me, like, you know, here in Topanga, we've been really. We've been going hard, you know, growing a food forest, you know, the last few years. And I want to give a shout out to Eric at stacking functions. My. My buddy who's like. Like a. An amazing gardener, and he's helped us out. I have yet to integrate biochar in. I don't know, Sam wants to build one of those machines, one of the. What is the retort? What is that? [Topher] (56:49 - 56:51) Yeah, it's a rocket retort. [Yerasimos] (56:51 - 57:02) Yeah, rocket retort. If Sam wants to get one or build one. So, you know, maybe. Maybe there'll be one here at some point. But, like, what is biochar? Like, how did you first come across it? [Topher] (57:02 - 57:05) Biochar? Do you want me to answer it? [Yerasimos] (57:05 - 57:06) Yeah, yeah. [Topher] (57:07 - 58:45) Biochar is pyrolized carbon. And what that means is, like, I found out about it in 2010. I. I had a cacao grove that I had planted on my farm in Costa Rica. Cacao is chocolate, and they were getting eaten by leaf cutter ants. And our local permaculture expert gave me the, the advice to look into this,. This stuff called terra preta. And terra preta is Amazonian biochar. And so I started reading all these articles online about how the conquistadors had, you know, pretty much said that the Amazonian empire was massive. Like the, the, the people that lived in the Amazon basin, they said it. Was more like agriculturally intensive than what. Some of them had seen in the southeast of Asia. So that's pretty remarkable. And up until that point, all of. My, yeah, I guess you would say permaculture training had been from people that were more looking at the Southeast Asia way of doing things. And whatever I was doing was failing. So I was willing to try something new. And I just noticed that the way they made this terra preta, which is this biochar, the way they made it, I could see in some of these diagrams I was like, oh, I actually make, you know, wood fired furnaces that I could modify to like actually make this stuff. And that's where the rocket retort was born. I think it was my very first video that I put on, on Instagram. [Yerasimos] (58:45 - 58:48) So did you invent the rocket retort or. [Topher] (58:48 - 1:03:20) Yeah, I did. That's my invention. And so I couldn't ever like take credit for it because I didn't like as like a retort is technically an alchemical, you know, a saying, a retort and then Anthony, to an alchemist are the same thing, which is it's a vessel that under heat will positively pressurize and it won't allow any of the outside environment in. And when that happens, you end up getting the only the carbon element remains of whatever you're cooking. So the alchemists used to do this and then obviously the Amazonians, you know, did it at a very massive scale. And it was very appropriate for my area of Costa Rica because we didn't have soil, we just had clay. We had red clay. And red clay is bauxite and it's a, that's aluminum silicate mixed with iron oxide. So what that means is those, that combination of materials doesn't really allow for roots to like spread out and get any nutrients from the ground because you need carbon for that. So the Amazonians figured this out. I was like, hey, if it worked for them, I'm gonna try it. And so I did and it worked great. And then everything on my farm exploded. Like I went from years of not having anything, you know, any of my fruit trees fruiting, my, my Coffee looked like crap. You know, a lot of my bigger, like, I had like the juicy fruit tree, the, the big jackfruit trees. I had,. I had like all these like tropical fruit trees, bananas, plantains, all the things you have in the tropics. And when I started using the biochar, even when I just top dressed, when I top dressed the plants that were already planted, I noticed this massive uptick in growth and health. And the biggest thing was you could always tell the health of your, of your, of your groves by the leaf cutter ants because the leaf cutters would only go in there and attack those things that were unhealthy. You know, they're, they're bottom feeders. They, they just go after the weak and the sickly. So I ended up having this incredible like, you know, eight year period of just experimentation with, with the biochar in the tropics. And then I started to get a pretty good reputation with the biochar and I started to sell it locally. I was trying to sell people the retorts because my pride was in the retort and down there the, the metal that was available was really a cheap metal and stuff like that. Most people just wanted the biochar. And then I had a client that needed like, you know, a lot of biochar because of how big his farm was. And so I, I started looking into like bigger kilns and stuff like that through him. But the investment was, was a little bit out of my range at the time. So Covid hits the whole world gets turned upside down. As a family, we decide to, to leave Costa Rica because we could see a lot of the shenanigans that were going on. We come, we choose this, you know, Arkansas, Missouri, like this whole area of the country because of like the gun rules, like, just like the, the overall like feeling in this area of the country is like, you know, nobody gets in anybody else's business. And I was tired of that. I was tired of living in socialist, you know, countries where everybody was in everybody else's business and everybody was a finger wagger and all the rest of it. So here we really like the fact that, you know, it's a gun carrying group of people, very low crime rate, land was very inexpensive. And from a biochar perspective, tons of like the, tons of the companies that make finished woods are here in the Ozarks. And so for me that means that there's like a lot of excess wood waste. And so we moved here after a few years of me like piecing together the team Finding out which kilns work the best and all the rest of it. Last year, in November, we had been selling our product locally, but last year it was time to, like, bring it online. So in November, we started selling it online, you know, internationally. And so that, that's. That's the genesis of Blackwell Biochar. [Yerasimos] (1:03:20 - 1:03:43) That's awesome. So what are the different ways that you would use it? You said top dressing, but, like, would you, like, if you were to dig a hole to plant a tree, would you mix it with, like, the native soil and some. Maybe some compost, or would you put it in your compost pile? Like, I'm just curious of different ways that you can utilize biochar. And real quickly, the way it's made, it's like it's like heated or cooked in, like, a closed container. Is that. [Topher] (1:03:43 - 1:05:53) Yes. Yeah, yeah. So we have this massive kiln on. On my Instagram, I have a couple videos of, like, our kilns. And the kilns are like, essentially a very long cylinder. Everybody has a vacuum flask, you know, drinking container. Imagine a vacuum flask that's about 60ft long where the outer cylinder has perforations in it. The inner cylinder has. Where all of our biomass goes. So our biomass is from hardwood trees. We mainly are processing oak and black walnut trees. And when they. When they're cutting that into square stock, they have all the rounded part of the tree. We go ahead and throw through two levels of chipper shredders. So we have mountains, like, we process, you know, close to 50 tons a week of just all this biomass. And that chip, that chipped biomass will go through that vacuum flask that's slowly rotating, but it's over 2,000 degrees inside. And one that, you know, obviously anything, you know, wood starts to burn at 800 degrees. So at 2000 degrees, it's between, you know, 1600 and 20, 200 degrees. I just like to say 2000 degrees. What occurs is all that. All the volatiles, all the things that are within the wood chips, that. That off gases immediately and that secondary whole system, all the. All the gases get sucked into that and then we store that for. For use later. You know, that's one of the beautiful things of wood gasification. You don't have to use all the fuel right away. So we run this through. It only takes about 20 minutes from start to finish, but like I said, we're processing so much biomass per week, it's pretty much running all day long and it conveys out and then it's sprayed with atomized water to like, cool it immediately, and then it just drops down into these shoots. And then we have these shakers that separate the sizes of, depending on what product we're going to actually send to people. [Yerasimos] (1:05:53 - 1:05:57) So is this on your property or is this like a separate property that you have? [Topher] (1:05:57 - 1:06:07) No, it's a. I have the business on a second property, and we're, we're expanding so fast that I am going to end up buying a second property and put another kiln on it. [Yerasimos] (1:06:08 - 1:06:09) That's epic. [Topher] (1:06:10 - 1:09:57) Yeah. So you were asking, like, how it's used in agriculture. It's used, you know, you know, pretty much as a fertilizer replacement. I. I've just done this whole series of, of talks and podcasts because people are all like, you know, panties in a bunch with the straight of her Hormuz. And like, the whole thing with the Middle east, you know, fertilizer thing is that those fertilizers are all petrochemical dependent. So what they're doing is a petrochemical. It means it's from petroleum, which means it's a hydrocarbon. Well, you only need the hydrocarbon if you don't actually have the carbon already in your soil. So what we can do in, in what we're doing is we're like, no, no, skip all the hydrocarbons and just put the carbon in your soil. Because what the carbon does is it's the house for all the, the positive bacteria, all the fungus kingdom, all those things that are like the little alchemists that will do all the work and provide the plants with what they need. It's just like if your body was to take probiotics, you know, the probiotics are there to build up your internal biome so that it can handle whatever it can give your body. It can transduce whatever, you know, solids you're taking in into whatever you need. We're just doing that for the soil. We're just making sure that the soil has the probiotic it needs. Because the number one thing that's been happening, and I kind of had the insight into this quite a while back, was whatever is demonized is actually what you need. So they demonize carbon dioxide, but on a deeper level, they are demonizing carbon. And at the same time, you have people like Bill Gates buying all the farmland. You have all these different beings out there. They're like, carbon bad, carbon bad. Yet they're the ones that are consuming and also, I guess you'd say, stockpiling as much carbon as they can. Right? Because they're trying to create, once again a new market like we talked about earlier. They're trying to create this market of carbon depletion so that they can be the solution for it. And so. Oh, our solution is hydrocarbons. Well, you don't need the hydrocarbons if you just have regular carbon. So what we've been doing and what's been incredible is like, we sell the agricultural products for plants and crops and stuff like that. But our biggest buyers up at this point have been cattle ranches, have been chicken farms and pig farm farms. And the chicken farms and the pig farms were initially just buying it as like an odor control thing. But. But what we're finding is, is when you feed it to any animal, including us, like if you were to go to the hospital and be under toxic shock, they would be giving you biochar. Well, they call it activated carbon, but activated carbon and biochar are the same thing. And the reason why they give that to you is because it actually absorbs all, everything that's toxic in your GI tract. Well, when you give that to animals on the regular, they have a lot lower parasite load. They have a lot lower of a, of a, a bad bacteria load on their body. So they grow bigger, they grow faster. And when they're eating all that, then what these farms can do is they can sell their waste product as a fertilizer that has no smell and is a much healthier product. So it's been an incredible thing for us. I never saw this coming. I never even knew. It was like one of those happy accidents. Yeah. [Yerasimos] (1:09:57 - 1:10:07) So, so would you, like, how would you feed it to chickens? Would you mix it with their feed? Is there a certain proportion that you would put in as opposed to like here? [Topher] (1:10:07 - 1:10:18) Yeah, it's anywhere. Biochar, it's anywhere from 5 to 10% of the volume of their feed. It's very light. So you don't, you don't ever measure it by its weight, you measure it by its volume. [Yerasimos] (1:10:19 - 1:10:19) Yeah. [Topher] (1:10:19 - 1:10:59) And the chickens will. And then you can just put it down in their beds and stuff like that and they'll, they'll. You know, chickens are always looking for things for their gullet and then it's really, really good for their gullet. So we've had controlled studies the last two years where our chickens only are like anywhere from 15 to 20 cent, 15 to 20% bigger, but they're bigger in like two to three weeks less time. So the turnover of, like, if you're running like an organic poultry business or whatever, you're talking about, like, factors of money, more that you can generate that way. [Yerasimos] (1:11:00 - 1:11:00) Yeah. [Topher] (1:11:00 - 1:11:39) Because you're moving through your generations faster and they're healthier, so you have a lot less of the load on them that you used to. And then once again, you can sell all of their waste as a fertilizer. And you can not only sell their waste as a fertilizer, but specifically with chickens, they can sell their waste as a fertilizer in one month, where normally the industry standard is three months, because it's still hot. And what that means is hot means it's unusable. But with the biochar in there breaking everything down as fast as it does it actually, it actually makes their. Their poo usable within a month. [Yerasimos] (1:11:39 - 1:12:05) That's so cool. So we have chickens on our property, but they're for egg purposes, so similar thing. And then we save their. We have a whole pile of their waste. Of their waste. And so, like, can you, like, do it like double time where you have. You're sprinkling biochar on the waste outside as well where you dump it. And of course, they're having it in their food or it's in their pen or their run or whatever the case. [Topher] (1:12:05 - 1:14:25) Yeah. And then you use that in, like, your soil, because all the nitrogen from their waste is incredible. But the biochar, like I said, it mellows it out so much faster. And so when you have that mellowing go out the way it does, I mean, you talk about building soil fast because that's really the key. Like, I. The moniker for my podcast used to be health from the ground up. And I still believe in that. Like, I still don't, like, if we don't have healthy ground, and if what we're standing on isn't healthy, we're not going to be all that healthy. And I find that to be true. Now with soil building, like, with the soil itself, if you're able to flip the waste as fast as we can and make the waste healthy, then that gives you all your phosphate groups, it gives you a lot of your nitrogen groups. It gives you all these things that actually. And then obviously with the stable carbon, it gives you all the factors to start building soil. So, for example, on the farm I live on right now, when we got here, we had about 6 inches of soil in. In our garden bed area. Now I have about two feet. So it's. And that's just in a very, very small scale that. I mean, I, I have some donkeys, I have some chickens, and that's it, it's not like I'm like, you know, having tons and tons of cow waste or whatever. So it's one of those things where like, you can start to build your soil like super quick. And because the carbon, the difference between something like biochar and something like charcoal is charcoal is unstable. It will break down very fast when exposed to the water because it's positively ionized. Biochar is negatively ionized because it's pyrolyzed. And that pyrolization makes it super stable. That's why I always wear these shirts. Starts saying fixing carbon because it becomes a fixed carbon amendment. Like the stuff that they found in the Amazon basin that they call terra preta, that's over 600 years old. And that stuff is still like usable today. Like it's stable, like it's not going anywhere. So it's one of those things, like if you start to like amend your, your farm with that, it ends up being a builder. Like it's not something that goes away. [Yerasimos] (1:14:26 - 1:14:35) So are you primarily top dressing, like over things or how, how exactly are you using it in different ways? Like, let's. You're about to plant a fruit tree. I know I mentioned earlier. [Topher] (1:14:35 - 1:15:00) Oh, I, I mix it into the soil. So in a fruit tree, usually the root ball volume that you dig out is, is 3x. So say the volume of your root ball is say, you know, 10 gallons by volume that you're, you're digging a hole that's 30 gallons by volume. And in that extra area, I'm mixing the native soils with biochar. One to one. [Yerasimos] (1:15:01 - 1:15:04) Okay, okay. So it's one to one interesting with. [Topher] (1:15:04 - 1:16:02) The native soils because like here we have a lot of clay. It's very similar, it's very similar in a way to Costa Rica. I mean, it's a lot of clay, A lot of clay and rock. There's more rock here than Costa Rica. So I really appreciate mixing that all in and mixing that together. So you get like the, the, the, the natural, the. I shouldn't say natural, the regular biome to mix with the, with the carbon. And then depending on what, what other things I have going on, like what the season is, like, sometimes I'll put in aragonite just to give the, the trees a good little, you know, shot of like, it's like a multivitamin for, for trees. It all depends what I have going on. But all the time I'm always dressing things. Like, I spray a lot with effective microorganisms and mountain microorganisms just Always trying to build the biome up around where everything is growing. [Yerasimos] (1:16:03 - 1:16:25) Yeah. And when you're, when you have the, let's say the three gallon or the 30 gallon hole, are you having the native soil that you've dug out? Are you trying to mix it? Like, so it's, you know, really mixed? Are you like, oh, like I'm going to do a shovel full of the, of the biochar and then a shovel full of, of the native soil? Or are you really trying to mix it first before you put it in? [Joel] (1:16:26 - 1:16:29) This podcast was just a personal info session for your assholes. [Yerasimos] (1:16:29 - 1:16:38) Well, no, I mean, the end of it is. I mean, obviously we're talking about biochar. Joel. Joel has the. What's the opposite of a green thumb? Yeah, a dead, decaying brown thumb. [Topher] (1:16:39 - 1:16:45) That's the name of my book is Black Thumbs Green Garden. Like, like, I, I send a copy to Joel. [Yerasimos] (1:16:45 - 1:16:46) Let's go. [Topher] (1:16:46 - 1:16:57) Yeah, like, my last name's Gardner and. I was horrible at it. Right. And so it was like at age 30, gods smacked me across the face is like, no, you gotta, you gotta make your, your namesake correct here. [Yerasimos] (1:16:57 - 1:17:00) We got a lot of gardeners that are listeners of the podcast. So, you know. Oh, really? [Topher] (1:17:01 - 1:17:02) That's awesome. Of course. [Yerasimos] (1:17:02 - 1:17:13) I mean, we got, we talk about all different subjects, so we got people who live a little bit more off grid or people that have their little home gardens and. So nice. We don't have conversations like this too often. So I'm just curious. [Topher] (1:17:13 - 1:18:31) Yeah, like, I like to mix everything homogeneous just because I'm, I'm a concrete guy. Like, in building, I build with a lot of concrete and I like my mixes to be all even. And I know, like the no till. People get all pissed off when they hear that type of stuff, but obviously if you're digging a hole for a tree, you're doing some tillage. So at that point I'm like, no, I'm just gonna let this be homogeneous. I'm gonna add the microorganisms that I want and, you know, let it go. And we've had, like, really good germination. We've had really good success. Like, this farm that we came to, it was owned by these old people that hadn't tended to the, to the, to their different groves in God knows how long. I don't even know if they knew that they had apricots and they had pears and they had cherries because everything was so overgrown. Like, nobody had been to those trees in years and years. And so we've been Top dressing the soil with the biochar with those trees and they've all fruited. Like we'll have apricots this year. We've been having late freezes during, during our spring, so that kind of hurts, you know how many fruit you're going to have. But at least the trees are producing. So between our pears and our apricots, we should have a, a pretty good crop this year. [Yerasimos] (1:18:31 - 1:18:38) That's amazing. No, it's just good to know because it's like you can get a bunch of bags and just throw it all over the mulch. Just top dress over the mulch. [Topher] (1:18:38 - 1:19:03) Yeah. In the, in the Pacific Northwest, which I was really surprised to hear that there's not that many biochar companies up there. It's probably because it's too expensive to make up there. But I, I have a couple companies actually landscaping companies that are using our products specifically just as a mulch. They, they give that as an option to their, to their clients if they just want to do a biochar mulch. [Yerasimos] (1:19:04 - 1:19:10) So there isn't like, like too much biochar. Okay, gotcha. That's what I was curious about. [Topher] (1:19:10 - 1:21:15) No, there isn't. And then we're also going into cosmetics. Like I'm just working on a deal with a soap making company now. They' our product this year is going to be huge for us because we're getting all this third party verification. Like I had Dr. Marzel Arce, I had her actually look at my biochar on with darkfield microscopy which was pretty amazing in 2025. And this year we're having the University of Missouri. We have two different test plots with them. We have a test plot in their organic field house which is all, you know, it's essentially a big greenhouse. And then we also have an outdoor 1 acre test plot with the University of Missouri where they're just going to be doing standard practices with I believe both corn and I forget which bean crop. It's not soybean, but it's corn and something else. And so when we get all of the independent verification and the soap company is getting us independently verified, then we can like start to put all that on our website and say, hey look, it's, it's just not me talking about nano diamonds. It's like, no, this is like a real deal. Even like the, the, the, the norm. The normal folk are, are seeing the, the good that this does. And, and everybody has always used like you know, carbon water filtration and you know, this is like biochar is just, you know, a lot of these companies will only use, you know, maybe 10% by volume carbon and their carbon filtration or their water filtration. We're working on a pass through water filtration system right now where we use 100% biochar. And like we, I've already done testing on it. Like there's like zero parts per million of particulates on the other side, which is really exciting. So the whole thing is just about for us to really explode. So I'm pretty excited about it. [Yerasimos] (1:21:15 - 1:21:28) Yeah, it's really cool. I'm definitely here for the truth and here for the biochar. So I dig that. So in your opinion, like your tagline, buy biochar, it's going to save the world kind of thing? [Topher] (1:21:29 - 1:22:22) Well, it's not going to save the world. I don't believe in the messiah complex at all. But it will definitely help your garden. It will definitely help you out if you eat it. What, what I could say is I, the claims I can make is when biochar is used with, with best practices, you definitely get, you know, higher yields and higher health from your plants and your animals. So to me, I'm, I, I love Jesus saying, you know, you'll know them by their fruits. And so for me it's like, okay, if my animals are bigger and healthier, if my plants are bigger and healthier, if the fruit is better, if I get a longer fruiting season, all these things, then that lets me know I'm on the right path. And so like, to me, that's just the practical way of looking at whether or not it's a benefit or not. [Yerasimos] (1:22:22 - 1:22:36) Yeah, so with the biochar that you sell and that, you know, farmers are giving it to their animals, et cetera. Like, is it safe? Like, you have to write something safe for human consumption. So like, if I make like a smoothie, I could just throw it in my smoothie and I'm good to go. [Topher] (1:22:36 - 1:22:38) Like, yeah, you could eat it. [Yerasimos] (1:22:39 - 1:22:39) Okay. [Topher] (1:22:39 - 1:23:09) Yeah, we don't, we haven't done like, it, it costs something like forget how many hundreds of thousands of dollars to get something certified or gain. It's really ridiculous because we literally have one of the only kilns in the world that does real pyrolysis. So technically we are literally making the most organic thing in the world. Like, organic just means of carbon. That's what that means. And like I'm literally selling 98.9% pure carbon with a little bit of calcium. [Yerasimos] (1:23:10 - 1:23:13) Like, you're like, you're like the Walter White of biochar, bro. [Topher] (1:23:13 - 1:24:22) Literally. Yeah. What Walter White is to methamphetamines. So it's literally at that level. Like, these kilns are like, dude, as somebody was making these kilns, is it like a backyard dude forever, like the DIY scene. I couldn't have been more wrong. I was like, oh, everybody's gonna want to make their own. No, but there's, like 10 people that want to make their own. And so I just had. I had to adapt and be like, okay. The way what I'm being signaled is people want the char, they want the biochar, and they want the real biochar because that, you know, there's a lot of charcoal products that are sold as biochar, and they're not by weight. They're mostly charcoal. They have a little bit of biochar. In them, but they're are mainly charcoal. So for me, it took me a long time to get to the point, like, it took me, like, 14 years to get to the point of finding a kiln that could do what it is that I wanted it to do and create the team. Like, this isn't like a flash in the pan thing for me. This is, like, quite a. Quite a bit of time has gone into this. [Yerasimos] (1:24:23 - 1:24:44) Yeah. Awesome, bro. Dude, I really appreciate you coming on. I love this. The diversity of this conversation. I know we can keep talking longer. Usually we go around 90 minutes. Are there any final. Any final things you want to. When you want to say to our audience or any. Yeah, man, just a final message to the Here for the truth audience from Topher Gardner. [Topher] (1:24:44 - 1:25:13) Well, it's nice to meet you guys. Hopefully. Hopefully our paths will cross someday. And yeah, if you like this type of conversation. I mean, I'm so glad you guys get into the cosmological side of things. I have a podcast called the biocharisma podcast. That's Biochar Isma podcast. And I have lots of people that. We primarily focus on the cosmology of things and where those particular. Where my guests are innovating in life. [Yerasimos] (1:25:14 - 1:25:15) Amazing, man. [Joel] (1:25:16 - 1:25:25) And the website for biochar is blackgoldbiochar.com blackgoldbiochar.com awesome, man. It's nice to meet you, Topher. [Topher] (1:25:25 - 1:25:26) Everyone else, nice meeting you, Joel. [Joel] (1:25:26 - 1:25:29) You too, bro. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time. Take care.