A two-thousand-year-old institution, ensconced in pageantry, and shrouded in secrecy – that’s what Delia Gallagher, class of 1991 at the University of San Francisco, has covered for decades as CNN’s chief Vaticanologist. With a front row seat in the Rome-based press corps, she’s chronicled both the sacred and the profane and navigated contrasting papal styles: from the terse, professorial Benedict to the mystical, freewheeling Francis. It is a beat like no other, one attentive to both the heights of moral power and the intimacies of personal faith. In episode 4 of Formative, we talk about the intercultural nuances of working at global headquarters, her longing for depth amidst the superficial pressures of the news media, and why you should follow your bliss and be surprised where it takes you.

Public opinion polling is a powerful practice: It legitimizes sentiment, crystallizes reality. It’s irresistible to political journalists. And, for several decades now, John Zogby, class of 1970 at Le Moyne College, has been one of its highest profile practitioners – featured in The New Yorker, a repeat guest on The Daily Show, and namechecked on The West Wing and House of Cards. From his near-perfect call of Clinton in 1996, Zogby has polled across the aisle and around the world. A self-professed political junkie, he once ran for mayor himself – and knew just how much he was going to lose by before election day hit. He’s written books about tribal identity in America and the global sensibility of its millennial generation and advocated on behalf of his fellow Arab-Americans through the dark discrimination of the War on Terror and the attempted Muslim ban. In episode 3 of Formative, we talk about whether polling has gone haywire on Trump, the high that comes from knowing what’s going to happen in the future before anyone else does, and what it’ll take to find some common good that might put our broken nation back together again.

You can judge a civilization by how it treats its most destitute – those who, in the words of Matthew 25, represent the least fortunate of God’s people. For five decades on the streets of Philadelphia, Sister Mary Scullion, class of 1976 at St. Joseph’s University, has served as a woman for and with others. Through her Project HOME organization, she’s helped shepherd thousands out of the cycle of homelessness – offering them not just a shelter roof, but health care, education, and employment. She’s an activist for raising the minimum wage, homeless voter registration, and decriminalizing loitering; she’s also been arrested for passing out food and has taken over city building basements during freezing winter nights. A beloved local hero, she’s won the Laetare Medal, American Catholicism’s highest honor, and made Time Magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. In episode 2 of Formative, we talk about the inspiration she drew from Father Pedro Arrupe, the exhausting trauma of ministering through a pandemic, and what the homeless usually see when those with housing look at them.

Division 1 college sports demands a herculean focus and discipline – to say nothing of trying to make the pros. Sean Guthrie, class of 2001 at Boston College, has that just that drive. It took the former defensive end captain of the Eagles to the grueling crucible of the NFL. And it’s vaulted him onward to work in a setting some might think is just as tough and punishing: middle school. But it’s there that he finds his inspiration; it’s there that he finds his flow. In episode 1 of Formative, we talk about the limits of the human body, why sometimes a kid needs a Tom Coughlin and other times a kid needs a Tony Dungy, and what defines the shameful inequalities of America’s education system.