The Mindform Podcast

What if there’s no moral rulebook, and you were never meant to follow one? And if nothing is objectively right or wrong, how do you actually live a good life?

Frank Lawton sits down with Ryan A. Bush. Ryan is a practical philosopher, the creator of Mindform, the founder of Designing the Mind, and the author of Become Who You Are.

Ryan doesn’t believe in objective moral truths. Rather than leading to nihilism, he argues, this frees you to build ethics from the ground up, as strategies for what you truly care about: virtue for living well, and systems thinking for building a better world.

In this conversation:

Mindform is an exclusive membership platform that gives you access to an ever-expanding toolkit for mental mastery and a community of passionate psychitects.

What if wisdom isn’t something you wait decades to earn, but something you can collect, train, and level up like a sport? And what if the mental health world’s biggest mistake is making growth feel like treatment instead of fun?

Frank Lawton sits down with Ryan Bush, founder of Mindform and author of Designing the Mind. Ryan has distilled Stoicism, psychotherapy, and self-help into 113 “psychotechnologies,” which are named mental tools you can collect, practice, and master.

His argument is that the real barrier to better mental health isn’t access, it’s wanting it. The fix is to train your mind with the same excitement you bring to the gym.

In this conversation:

Mindform is an exclusive membership platform that gives you access to an ever-expanding toolkit for mental mastery and a community of passionate psychitects.

Is fear actually lying to you — or is it the most honest thing your brain does? And what if the goal was never to become fearless at all?

In this special panel episode of the Mindform Podcast, host Frank Lawton brings together four voices who've spent years studying fear from completely different angles: Nick Day, creator of The Fear Equation; Dr. Jill Stoddard, TEDx speaker, psychologist, and author of Be Mighty and Imposter No More; Ryan Bush, bestselling author of Designing the Mind and founder of Mindform; and Michael MaeRhys, a therapist who came to the profession in his 50s, working from a gestalt and interpersonal neurobiology lens with a focus on anxiety.

Across the conversation, a surprising consensus emerges — and one real disagreement. The group agrees fear is not the enemy: it's a signal, often relational, pointing toward what actually matters. But when Nick openly pushes back on the goal of becoming "fearless," the conversation gets its sharpest edge.

Find the panel:

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What if the good life isn't something you can chase directly? What if trying to "just be happy" is exactly what keeps you from actually flourishing?

In Episode 55 of the Mindform Podcast, Frank Lawton sits down with Dr. Sarah Schnitker, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University and Director of the BRIGHTS Center, who has spent over 20 years building the scientific case for virtue — testing Aristotelian ideas with hard data, over 100 peer-reviewed studies, and more than $10 million in research funding. Sarah's central claim: virtue isn't a nice-to-have, it's likely necessary to actually be well — and cultivating it may be one of the best paths to a flourishing life.

Learn more about Sarah's work at sites.baylor.edu/science-of-virtues

----more----Mindform is an exclusive membership platform that gives you access to an ever-expanding toolkit for mental mastery and a community of passionate psychitects.

In this episode of the Mindform Podcast, host Frank Lawton sits down with Dr. Betsy Chung, a licensed clinical psychologist with over 15 years of experience and author of The Couple Skills Workbook: Manage Conflict, Increase Trust and Intimacy, and Build a Better Relationship. Dr. Chung has spent her career helping people untangle how childhood relational patterns quietly run their adult lives — and in this conversation, she makes the case that growth isn't a destination, it's a lifelong process of trial and error.

In this episode, they explore:

Get Dr. Chung's book, The Couple Skills Workbook: https://www.newharbinger.com/9781648482601/the-couple-skills-workbook/

Learn more about Dr. Betsy Chung at drbetsychung.com

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Mindform is an exclusive membership platform that gives you access to an ever-expanding toolkit for mental mastery and a community of passionate psychitects.

Apply to join Mindform or get the free Psychitect's Toolkit at https://mindform.io/podcast

What if the person you were supposed to trust the most was actually the source of the threat? And why does healing from trauma take years when the damage happened in seconds?

In Episode 58 of the Mindform Podcast, Frank sits down with Dr. Arielle Schwartz — licensed clinical psychologist, longtime yoga teacher, and author of eight books including The Complex PTSD Workbook and The Polyvagal Theory Workbook for Trauma. Arielle makes the case that trauma isn't just a mental wound — it's stored in the nervous system, and healing means slowly teaching the body a new, disconfirming reality of safety.

In this conversation:

Dr. Schwartz's books and free resources: https://drarielleschwartz.com

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Mindform is an exclusive membership platform that gives you access to an ever-expanding toolkit for mental mastery and a community of passionate psychitects.

Apply to join Mindform or get the free Psychitect's Toolkit at https://mindform.io/podcast

Why do so many of the most caring, high-achieving people quietly burn themselves out? And why does it always feel like a personal failure, even when it isn't?

In this episode of the Mindform Podcast, Frank Lawton sits down with Dr. Kerry Makin-Byrd, clinical psychologist, trauma therapist, and author of The Ballad of Burnout and Start Here: A Practical Guide for the Overwhelmed. Kerry has spent her career treating trauma survivors while training other therapists and doctors to avoid the exact burnout that once broke her.

Her argument is simple but sharp: burnout isn't a character flaw or a lack of grit. It's what happens when unrealistic expectations meet unsupportive environments, all wrapped in a culture that tells us to "swan," meaning look calm on the surface while you're drowning underneath. Real recovery, she says, comes down to three skills: Soothe, Transcend, Move.

Learn more about Kerry: https://www.drkerrymakinbyrd.com/

Mindform is an exclusive membership platform that gives you access to an ever-expanding toolkit for mental mastery and a community of passionate psychitects.

Apply to join Mindform or get the free Psychitect's Toolkit at https://mindform.io/podcast

Can you ever really prove there's no God? And if two equally smart, equally rational people can study the exact same arguments and land in completely different places, what does that actually tell us?

In this episode of the Mindform Podcast, Frank Lawton sits down with Graham Oppy, Professor of Philosophy at Monash University, trained at Princeton, and one of the most rigorous thinkers alive on the philosophy of religion. He's the author of Arguing About Gods and Atheism: The Basics, among a dozen other books.

Graham's central claim is simple but unsettling: after mapping nearly every serious argument for and against God, none of them are strong enough to force a rational conclusion. In the end, belief comes down to judgment, not proof, and that means reasonable, intelligent people can disagree forever.

In this conversation, they explore:

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More on Graham Oppy's work: https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/graham-oppy

Graham's Books:

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Mindform is an exclusive membership platform that gives you access to an ever expanding toolkit for mental mastery and a community of passionate psychitects.

Apply to join Mindform or get the free Psychitect's Toolkit at https://mindform.io/podcast

What if the voice yelling at you inside your own head isn't actually you? What if your rage, your anxiety, your worst habits are all trying to protect you?

In this episode, Frank sits down with Nell Pennington — a certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist with almost 30 years in health, first as a nurse and now as a counsellor whose own adult ADHD diagnosis shaped her deeply compassionate, neuroaffirming approach to therapy. Together they explore the radical idea that the mind isn't singular — it's a whole internal family of parts, each with its own role, wound, and good intention, waiting to be understood rather than fixed.

In this conversation, they cover:

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Mindform is an exclusive membership platform that gives you access to an ever-expanding toolkit for mental mastery and a community of passionate psychitects.

Apply to join Mindform or get the free Psychitect's Toolkit at https://mindform.io/podcast

What if the biggest threat to your relationship isn't your partner — it's your nervous system? What if "good communication skills" are useless the moment your body thinks it's being chased by a lion?

In this episode of the Mindformed Podcast, Frank Lawton sits down with Elizabeth Earnshaw — licensed marriage and family therapist, certified Gottman Method therapist, and founder of A Better Life Therapy in Philadelphia. Elizabeth's central argument: most relationship conflict isn't a communication problem, it's a stress problem — and until you treat the body first, no technique will stick.

In this conversation:

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Find Elizabeth at elizabethearnshaw.com or @LizListens. Books mentioned in this episode:

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Mindform is an exclusive membership platform that gives you access to an ever-expanding toolkit for mental mastery and a community of passionate psychitects.

Apply to join Mindform or get the free Psychitect's Toolkit at https://mindform.io/podcast