In a 24-minute audio interview, author Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung discusses the origin of the notion of the seven deadly sins in the desert monastic communities, and its development in the middle ages. The idea, she says, wasn’t to pick out the seven worst or most common sins, but the ones which, once they take root, proliferate into other sins. In DeYoung’s curriculum, The Seven Deadly Sins and Spiritual Formation, youth are invited to engage the language and imagery of the deadly sins to diagnose issues and problems in their lives – the bad habits of character – and to explore the corresponding virtues that can replace them and move a person toward the imitation of Christ.