Episode 78: The Power of Transcendent Thinking

With Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Available October 14, 2025

“What does it mean to be a self-actualizing, fully integrated, socially contextualized human being in this new world order? And how would we design opportunities…to help a young person develop not just what they know now, but to potentiate in ways that change who they could become?”

Neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang returns to New View EDU to share the work she and her team at USC CANDLE are doing to answer these, and other, deeply provocative questions about the science of teaching and learning. Her new research hones in on a specific type of cognitive process, which she terms “transcendent thinking.” And as Mary Helen explains during this conversation with Debra Wilson, transcendent thinking may be the key to unlocking long-term developmental outcomes for students.

Guest: Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “So what we have here is this incredible suggestion that when kids dispositionally engage with complex, curious, deep thinking about big ideas. Not only are they deeply engaged by that, but they are physically and functionally growing their capacity to think in ways that over time produces a neural substrate that supports wellbeing. So we're actually growing a robust brain that enables us to be well, to manage in relationships, and to feel good in our own skin and to develop identities that transcend that are about big ideas and purpose and values.” (18:21)
• “What we show is that teaching well is not more work, it's different work. It's work in which you really engage with the thought patterns, what it feels like for these students to be thinking. What are their emotions about here? Are they having emotions about, you know, the amazing power of right triangles to help us, you know, sort of understand the geometry of the world and how powerful it feels to really engage in that kind of mathematical thinking? Or are they having emotions about, yay, I did it, I'm done. Or, boo, I didn't, and now I'm freaking out because I'm going to flunk, right? Because when the emotions are mainly about those outcomes, what we're finding is that the school is not promotive of development in the same way. It may be promoting quote unquote learning, maybe, but in the service of what? What are you going to use that learning for?” (33:33)

Related Episodes: 75; 72; 69; 59; 58; 47; 35

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