Tending Your Inner Garden (podcast)

Lincoln Stoller is physicist, mountaineer, software engineer, hypnotherapist, psychotherapist, and author. In this wide-ranging and personal conversation Lincoln shares his lifelong pursuit of truth across disciplines while navigating institutional resistance, personal setbacks, and the messy realities of creativity and human psychology.I discuss a physics paper that challenges conventions and the blowback it received. Science often prioritizes institutional preservation, funding, and reputation over genuine inquiry. Creativity requires stubbornness, tolerance for failure, and resilience against “bad teachers,” and closed-minded experts.Chapters (with approximate timestamps)0:00 Introduction0:43 Overwhelm: Physics Paper Rejection & Moral Obligation to Respond1:30 Background, Childhood, and Path to Science3:28 Mountaineering, Physics, Software, Psychedelics, and Therapy5:40 Boundaries of Open-Mindedness in Science & Irrational Pushback9:40 Practical vs. Academic Physics, Ego in Science, and Quantum Mechanics13:50 Fusion Energy Failures, Institutional Inertia & Parapolitics16:20 Challenging Quantum Orthodoxy & the Cost of Creativity19:50 Limits of Science & Personal Growth25:19 The Rule of Three Questions – When Curiosity Becomes Revolutionary30:37 Innovation, Criticism, and Preaching Morality to those who are not innovative34:33 Why Dreams Are More Inscrutable Now39:51 Trauma, Processing, and Reality Disintegration45:50 Sociobiology, Motherhood, Bears, and Loving-Kindness48:36 Alternative Education: Summerhill School & Democratic Learning55:58 Hypnosis, MK Ultra, Suggestive vs. Exploratory Hypnosis1:05:23 Trauma Bonding, Group-think, and Societal Conditioning1:08:06 Child-Rearing Advice: Autonomy, Community1:14:28 Closing: Website, Books, Blog, “Dreaming Yourself into Being”First-person highlights:* On his childhood: “I felt ignored... I ended up looking outward... wanting to get answers and wanting to connect.”* Creativity and institutions: “To be creative means there’s a lot of monkeying around... you have to be okay with failing.”* Science and Ego: “You’re not going to get a mathematical rebuttal... You’re going to get an ego rebuttal.”* Dreams: “Dreams... exist to disintegrate your world... They confront me with what I don’t know.”* Therapy vs. Physics: “Psychotherapy is a welcome relief. You get to deal with other people’s problems and you get to criticize and judge and get paid for it.”* Final reflection: “We’re all stupid... You really have to try to improve yourself... consider yourself as a garden that needs to be tended.”The conversation flows into Lincoln’s marriages and recurring dream figures (parents and ex-wives), the value of dreamwork over psychedelics, alternative education models like Sudbury/Summerhill schools, the sociobiology of motherhood, hypnosis (suggestive vs. exploratory, and its broader cultural role), and practical parenting advice: give children more autonomy, real consequences, and community exposure rather than helicopter oversight.Listen on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/episode/7IZfkBCwNYBmVV4sZoUR6h?go=1&sp_cid=34f0878aa8a4cce95943b359bda4ec0d&utm_source=embed_player_p&utm_medium=desktop&nd=1&dlsi=5476ec62fc1e400cListen on Acast:https://shows.acast.com/innerskilled/episodes/dreams-therapies-psychology-behind-physics-lincoln-stollerWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tskbyhWNbuc This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mindstrengthbalance.substack.com/subscribe