The Herd with Colin Cowherd - The Favorites - History Of Betting The Pope

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Hours before the selection of a new pope at the Sistine Chapel, Action Network hosts Chad Millman and Simon Hunter welcomed back Anthony Dabbundo of The Ringer to provide the history of betting on this sacral event. That history stretches back more than 500 years, and Dabbundo dives deep into all the angles in his highly-entertaining article this week. Hear their thoughts on the candidates, the process and Simon's checkered Catholic past. #VolumeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the favorites, the podcast, part of the volume podcast network. I am Chad Milman of the Action Network. Today, I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, my companion, my compadre, my BFF professional better Simon Hunter. Hello, Simon. Hello, Chad. How we doing?

I am so psyched for today's episode, which came together quickly because it's very rare that you get an opportunity in which the entire world attention is on a singular event, in this case, electing the new pope and the conclave that is happening right now. And it also happens to coincide with a massive, worldwide historic betting market. But that's what we have today. Right now, the biggest betting event in the world. the world is trying to figure out how you can make money off of who is going to be the next pope. And by the way, this goes back five centuries. People have been betting on who will be

the next pope going back to the early 15 hundreds. I cannot wait to discuss this with you, Simon, and have everybody find out what your confirmation name was. But we're going to bring in our guest because it is incredibly difficult to really understand and handicap who the next pope is going to be. So, our very own Judas, a man who walked away from action, joined the ringer, and today has a fantastic story up on the ringer called Who Wants the Smoke trying to predict the unpredictable papal conclave, a man who calls himself the holy trinity of Italian-American, Catholic, and gambler. Welcome back to the show, Anthony de Bundo.

I'll be honest. I did not expect to be called back to talk about the papal conclave. And if you had told me that two weeks ago, even four days ago, I probably would have laughed at you. but I'm happy to be here, excited to break down this incredible event that really we only get a handful of times in our entire lives. This is probably the second one for you and Simon. Third. Third. Third. Right. Third one. So I guess this would be the fourth one for me because I was alive when John Paul the second got the gig. And then Benedict and then Francis and now whoever will be next, which we're going to determine.

today. I'm super excited because I did not know this until we came on the air. Anthony, Catholic, Simon, Catholic, Matt Mitchell, went to Catholic school. Gifford Gould, producer, went to Catholic school. There's one Jew on this show who does not really know anything about Catholicism. So I'm excited to get educated as we talk about this. By the way, don't forget everybody. Chad Milman, go subscribe. Find lots of content there from the show. Other stuff, gambling history of which this is a core part. You can wager on who the next Pope will be at a number of unregulated offshore sports books. We like to keep things legal and above board on this show. We're going to be referencing Kalshi, a prediction market that is legal in all 50 U.S. states, election betting,

Fed rate betting, basketball, trading. They call it trading. They don't call it betting. But they actually allow you to buy and sell positions on practically everything newsworthy from pop culture and news headlines to multiple markets related to the announcement of the next Pope, if you haven't signed up for Calci yet, use code action. Let's sign up for a $10 bonus. Link to do that quickly and easily is in the description. Build some papal positions. All right.

Before we even get to it, let's define your Catholic bona fides here because we don't want people to think you're being, you know, sacrilegious or inauthentic. Simon, tell us how good a Catholic you really were. I was not a good Catholic in any sense of the word. But I started going to church, like any good 90s family. My parents made me, my three brothers go to church from, I want to say pre-K. Like they would stick me in this Sunday classroom until 7th, 8th grade, until I got my confirmation brother.

So I went to Sunday Mass for, I don't know, 10 straight years, which looking back is insane that this is before cell phones or anything. you just stick some kids on a wooden bench and just be in the most boring place in the world for an hour while people just sing around you so god god bless my parents but yeah i got a confirmation name my name is insane check is british people old-fashioned used to have two middle names so my full name with my hunter his last name is simon edward thomas damien hunter so damien is my confirmation there is a saint damien out there and there's a uh little shithead seventh grader. I made that my confirmation to get back at my teacher who just God bless this woman just would just absolutely hated me. Her name was Mrs. Dickerson. I don't know if she's still around, but obviously with that last name and me being a little smart ass, it was a long eight years of having me in her CCD classes. So yeah, been a Catholic and still to this day, you know, we still go to the Sunday Mass. Like there's two, I would say people like me who are fake religious people, if they're Catholics. We go to Sunday Mass and Easter Sunday. Probably haven't

been chatting about eight, 10 years. I don't even know. But I have had settled under that. Someday I might get married and I might have a wife that's like, we got to go. So if I meet a nice Jew, I'll go to temple. If not, I'll probably back in the church. So I'm trying to hold out as long as I can until I have to go back, brother. By the way, it says I got two Philly guys with me today, one of my favorite Always Sunnis. I think it's season one. It's like episode, it could be episode three, four, five, whatever, almost an entire episode about whether or not you can say the word Jew or if like all of a sudden that becomes anti-Semitic, which was just a classic, classic episode. All right, Dubundo, give us your Catholic bona fides so we know that

none of us are going to hell. We come to this from an honest, proactive, positive place. Debatable. I, you know, it's definitely not, it's frowned upon by some in the Catholic Church to bet on anything, but especially the papal outcome. But yeah, I went to Catholic school in kindergarten, went to public school for the rest of my education, but I was an altar boy for a few years in kind of, I think it was like sixth and seventh grade. I made my confirmation, all the sacraments, my communion. And, you know, maybe one day, we'll see. I'll get married. in the Catholic Church, but it's a part of my family. It's not a huge part of my family. And so it's something that it kind of comes and goes. My Catholicism, definitely have my fair share of issues

with the church we won't get into. But I think that it is a fascinating experience to grow up a Catholic. Well, in the Bible, I believe it says in some form, I might be paraphrasing here, money is the root of all evil. Am I correct? Yes. boys? Correct. Technically. So what are we doing here? I feel like we're just, we're raising the money. It's not even about the money. It's about the fun. Raising the stakes on going to hell. That is true. We would have been excommunicated from the church for this if we did it for a period of about 320 years. Well, thank God. Whatever Pope decided it was okay has modernized the times. And that's really what we're here to talk about today. Will the conclave, will the Cardinals,

when the white smoke billows have chosen a pope who is along the progressive and liberal lane that Francis had been on during his reign, which was what, 12 years? Will they go more conservative? Anthony, before we even get into that, your story is great. What did you learn about the history of betting on the pope that makes us feel better about this? Yeah, so it starts, and as early as we can tell, dates back to 1503. So in Rome, when they were choosing the new Pope, kind of like if you saw the movie Gladiator 2, where in the movie they're like horse trading on the street, betting on who they think

the winner of the Gladiator games are going to be, it's similar to that. And that was kind of how betting worked where you could have brokers and Roman banking houses that would take bets on who the next pope was going to be. And back then, it was just always a much smaller process. It wasn't the same massive conclave that they have now super secretive. The oath of secrecy has become a newer thing. And so back then, I'm sure there was a lot of insider trading. There was a lot of who knew a guy, who knew a guy's cousin.

But basically, the church decided we really don't want this because in 1591, they said, we don't want anybody betting on this. So we are now saying you are excommunicated from the church if you decide you're going to bet on the Pope. But they lifted it in 1918. So we're back technically. We're back, baby. But the reality is it kind of never left.

Almost 110 years of betting on this Pope. But it never really left because you can go back to 1903. The Italian government was offering bets on when the sick Pope Leo the 13th would die. So you can literally bet on like, will this guy live for X amount of time? So clearly like betting on Pope outcomes is something that even when the church didn't like it, it was still happening regardless, which is similar to, you know, how betting works on sports in America, right? It happened long before it became legal, but now we just get to talk about it more openly. It doesn't go away. It just happens somewhere else.

That's really the gist of the story for betting and just about every other vice that has ever been, that anyone has ever tried to legislate. eradicate or control, it's just going to happen. Water finds a crack. That's just how it goes. Simon, give us your take. Is there a wise guy market that you're hearing about amongst all your scumbag, filly friends that is going on for the Pope right now?

Unfortunately, I have not. If those text messages I'm being left out of, like I've heard a little bit about it in some chatter, but that's honestly in my own personal life, not from better. So like we just talked about, this is a market that is real, but I don't think it's one that like, you know, pros dedicate their lives to because like we just said, it's once and every 12 years. It could be once every 25 years.

It's just such a niche market, but you know me, Chad. I'll bet on anything. I've done Deadpools before. So like this is nothing to me. And question for Anthony though is, you know, being on the East Coast, what time do they burn the paper like is it one o'clock two o'clock east coast like when do that when does the smoke happen is that just a random time every day or is it a set time that they they burn and let us know the black smoke or the white smoke yeah so they have the first day which was wednesday first day

the conclave they gather in the evening and they have the first vote uh so the first vote already happened as of now we're recording this thursday morning the first vote already happened and it was black smoke so no new pope no two-thirds majority the second day and every day and every date they're off after. So starting on Thursday, there will be four votes per day, two in the morning. So they've already happened. We're recording this 11 a.m. It's 5 p.m. in Rome. They've already had the two morning votes. Then they'll have the evening votes, if necessary. Then after the fourth round of voting, they break for the day. They come back the third day. So we don't know when the smoke will turn white, but it could be as early as tonight, as this afternoon, really, because it'll be around three, four o'clock

p.m. Eastern, which was yesterday, it was 3 p.m. Eastern that they put out the black smoke. I suspect it'll be around the same time again today. So around three, four o'clock Eastern, you'll get the, uh, the smoke. So your advice to people listen to this would be, whatever you give out here, try to get to this mark and attack it now because it could happen literally today. Pope Francis was elected on the second day. Traditionally, it's been longer, but it's gotten shorter as time has gone on. So usually it's like three or four days. You have to remember, like you're being sequestered, right? So these cardinals, as much as the sacred process, they don't want to be sitting in the, you know, there was a joke about how they're raw dogging it

without their phones. They don't want to be doing this for months on end, weeks on end. They want to get to the solution as well. Or doing, the one thing we know they're not doing is checking Instagram because their devices have all encompassing. I believe the kids call it raw dogging it if you're going to go through a long period of time with no electronic device. Oh, right.

Well, they're of a certain age, so they might be used to. Yeah, it's not 1600. There's other things to do now. I want to explain a little bit of what Kalshi is so people understand when you're going to play. on the platform, what you're really doing. It's essentially a trading platform. And you're trading what are called contracts. You're buying and selling. You're making a bit on a price on a market. You're selling a market. That's how you're operating on these platforms. I think they're fascinating.

I think it's the direction a lot of this is going. Everyone should go and check it out. I've played with it a ton. And for the book that I've talked about on the show, I think prediction, markets over the next two to three years are going to become more and more influential. I have no doubts that especially when we get to a 2028 presidential election, there are analysts on the desks for all the major broadcasts that are looking at what is happening in the election from the perspective of the prediction markets. It's a great source of truth on what people with actual money in the line are doing. It cleans up, I think, a lot of the noise from the polling data that is becoming

less and less accurate and reliable. So I'm a huge fan of what these platforms are doing. They are now offering a lot of different markets in sports. But like I said, you'll go, you'll check it out, you'll see the Pope, you'll see what's the Fed going to do. You can see markets about what Elon Musk is going to do. You can see markets about Tesla. It's like any market that anyone has a decision on or in a

opinion on can be posted and then bought and sold. It's really, really fascinating. So, Anthony, in your story, explain how the makeup of the Cardinals has changed during Francis's time, because I do think that's going to have a huge impact on how voting may play out. Yeah, so you hear about like stacking the courts, packing the courts. Francis did a little bit. little bit of conclave cardinal packing. 108 of the 133 members are new and appointed by Francis. So this is their first conclave. So many of these people, they've never met. They've been doing a lot of listening sessions and conversations before the doors were even locked to kind of get to know each other, to get to understand the different factions that are forming. And so this really

is incredibly uncertain as a result of that, because it can go two ways. One hand, you could say, hey, they're new. They're more likely to listen to the quote unquote elders. Or you could say they're new, they could want to continue and push the church even further in the progressive direction. And so I think there's a lot of questions about how that will actually manifest itself. But one thing that is certainly true is that the makeup geographically is vastly different than it was 12 years ago. Europe used to be the center of power of the Catholic Church. It still is, but much less now. So Africa has more cardinals than it ever has, South America, and Asia. all have seen significant increases in their percentage of the vote.

And so those voters have more weight now to throw around, whereas it used to just be, all right, Europe would kind of just pick their guy. Usually it was an Italian. We had a German, we had a Polish guy. But now with, you know, Francis's election, and now his reign, the church is much more worldwide than it used to be. And if they want to continue that, they could end up picking somebody who's not Europe. This is where it starts to get interesting.

The politics of the church really are in play here because Francis, as I said at the beginning, has been considered to be a more liberal, more progressive pope. There are players in the church who would like the church to lean more conservative. But to me, in your story, the way you handicapped it, there were only one or two people. who really had a chance as conservative sort of backers to become the next Pope, break it down sort of how the moderate, liberal, conservative factions can influence this. Yeah, it is hard because, you know, the way we think about politics as Americans is inherently a little different than how religious politics work and then how, like, even in,

Europe, how that works. Because there's different kinds of theory, right? Because you could be a progressive on certain issues that the church takes up. Like, how do you feel about mass immigration? How do you feel about climate change, which were things that Francis would be considered very liberal on? But then you could also be more conservative on like the actual Bible, the religious text, the theology of it all.

And so you might not see yourself. And you could take multiple different positions. And so I think that's where it gets a little bit tricky when you try to just like line people up on a scale from one to the other. But certainly, like, I think the most conservative frontrunner is Peter Erdo of, from Hungary, who has been a key figure in the conservative block. But he's not, like, if you watch the movie and I made this joke in the movie, like the, the conservative guy, Tedesco, I don't know if you've seen Conclave, but he's like this very, like, loud, bombastic, like, my way or the highway type. That is not really how Erdo is, is

characterized. He's seen as kind of a consensus builder. And so, we've seen a rightward shift along a lot of political institutions in Europe especially. Elections have gone the way of right-wing parties, but this is not an election of your average Catholic voter. This is people, again, that France has picked. And so if Francis's influence is going to weigh on this conclave, and he seemed to be pretty well respected by the majority of the voters in this conclave, then how do you form a two-thirds consensus without people who liked him and want his legacy to continue? That's where I think it does get hard. for the more conservative candidates.

I like Erdo because you can say post hoc erdo proctor hock. And it almost feels like you're back in the West Wing. That, by the way, is Latin for after this, therefore, because of this. But we did a little wordplay. It's ergo, not erdo. Simon, Matt Mitchell's probably going to cut that out. playing to about one other person. Here's what I like about this.

Completely from a handicapping exercise, there is literally zero information available, right? And unless you're the, you know, Vatican Bureau Chief for the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Guardian or any other international media outlet, there's no sourcing. None of those reporters are in the conclave. And a lot of those reporters have probably never met the Cardinals who are coming because a lot of the Cardinals have never met

each other because they're coming from outposts. So it's almost like this is a clean slate handicapping opportunity, right? Like how would you even, you say you'll bet on anything. How do you even go about trying to figure out how to make an intelligent trade on this? Well, it feels like the more I read about it, it feels like there are angles to it. attack with this. So that's what I'm interested here. Anthony is going to say about it because it's like, it seems like people who are smart and like him have done a ton of research on this all because I had no idea about them, you know, having more guys outside of Europe because what he just said is true to me,

where it's just all these old guys who are all in Europe picking their buddies to be the next boat. Like that's just always the way it's always been. So this year is interesting, right? We have a couple of long shot odds that I can't wait to hear Anthony dive into. That's like, Is there a good value there? Like, because we're, like you just said, it's a lot of unknown. Like, there's a lot of hearsay taking angles because, you know, I mean, Matt Mitchell sent his stuff about guy's body weight and skinny popes. And it's like, I love it all.

It's people are just grasping a straws here. But there's value that you can, you can take these weird angles to make these weird bets. And I mean, it could be hitting a huge home run. Like there are some crazy long shot odds here on some of these popes. 33 to 1. That were the odds on Francis in 2013 at one book. Well, look, that's the thing. He was 13th favorite.

Right. He was 33 to 1. Because there had never been a Pope from South America. So people were like, why would we see this guy as a favorite? But Benedict wasn't, Benedict didn't have short odds. You know, John Paul didn't have short odds. They never do. So it's almost like you need to discount the top of the board.

But for purposes of housekeeping, give us like the current odds and a little bit of background on each person. so people can understand what they're looking at when they go on to Kalshi and they see sort of some of these markets. Yeah, so I'll say right now I think there's a clear top five consensus on who the people really should be here. The favorite, and he's been kind of the favorite since the beginning, is Pietro Parolin, he's Italian. He would be considered kind of the moderate-ish version, a continuation of Francis. The main reason he's seen is the favorite. One, he has the most connections to the other cardinals, right? he's kind of been there the longest, kind of the elder statesman of the Vatican.

And he was also the Secretary of State of the Vatican, which is like the deputy pope, they call him. And so he's very close to Francis, very close to how things work in the Vatican. He's kind of the insider, moderate continuation choice. The church could go that way, and I don't think anybody would be surprised. The second favorite is Luis Antonio Tagglet, and he is the, they call him the Asian Francis. He's from the Philippines. There's never been an Asian pope.

He is a pretty progressive guy. who has spent time both at his outpost in the global south, which is, I think, an interesting part of this, developing country, kind of similar to what Francis's path was to the papacy, but he's also been in the Vatican too. So he's served in the Vatican in an administrative role as well. So he's kind of been around,

and he's at 25% right now. Paralline's at 33. So those are the two favorites. I would say the buzzy, dark horse that everybody likes is Pierre-Battista Pizza Bala, which is, quite an Italian name. He's gotten a lot of juice because he got put in a really tough situation. He's a young guy who is now the first person serving in the Catholic Church in Jerusalem,

which he got the job one week before the October 7th attack by Hamas. So he gets thrown into a war zone, basically, week one on the job and has made a lot of positive headway and headlines and gained a lot of respect, I think on both sides of that war, because of how he's handled it. He even offered himself up as a hostage to say, trade me for these hostages. I'll, you know, be taken in. And I think a lot of people like him. He is too young, though. And that is one thing we've seen where, like, if you're really young, the papal conclave is like, you know, we don't want you to serve for 30 years. We want like, you know, eight to 10 years and then we'll pick somebody else. Because if you pick somebody and he serves for a really long time and you don't like him. Now the church has gone very far and very long without the next

conclave. So it is a bit of a power grab. And then Mateo Zupi, we talked about Erdo. He's on the mix too. Mateo Zupi, it would be the progressive insider choice. He's the archbishop of Bologna. He is a very close friend of Francis. They call him Don Mateo. He's well liked in those circles. Another insider choice as well. Hey, it's us, the Jonas brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news? Huge news. We created our own podcast. called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it.

We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how did we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it.

Oh, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was... This is how you guys remember it going down. Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, Hey, Jonas, and then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast.

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The French Open is one of the toughest tests in tennis. And I know firsthand because I competed there myself. I'm Renee Stubbs, and on the Renee Stubbs' tennis podcast, I'm breaking down everything happening. at Roland Garris, every match, every upset, and what it really takes to win on Clay. Jenchen won. I mean, she went down at three to Rabakina, but I'm delighted. She's an outsider to win the French for me.

And she likes Clay. Listen, Lena Rubakina is arguably the best player in the world right now, and I actually can win on any surface, because if she's serving, well, good luck. Consider this your court-side seat to the French Open. Listen to the Renee Stubbs Tennis podcast on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Have you gone back and tried to calculate the average odds for,

I don't even know if there were odds for John Paul or how we would find them, but what were the average odds for Benedict? What were the average odds for Benedict and Francis? And who's in that position? because as we've said, the favorites never win, and it ends up being someone who nobody was thinking about, which I think is inherent in the process, right? Because they need a two-thirds majority

and immediately people start jockeying and peeling off votes. And again, all my knowledge about what happens in a conclave is coming from the movie conclave, where, you know, like someone, is politicking behind the scenes. So who's in that sweet spot of odds that we should be looking at? Yeah, so I have the last five papal elections and shout out to the smoke-filled room substack written by Brendan Higgins.

He has done some incredible research and honestly was a huge part of the piece writing this. So Francis was seen as 32 to 1. He was not the favorite. Three to one was Benedict in 2005. He was the favorite, 25%. There were no odds listed for John Paul the second or first. So they weren't even on the board and they got picked.

And that was a weird conclave because John Paul I first gets elected. He dies almost immediately. There was a lot of conspiracies about that. Then John Paul the second comes in right after him. He serves for almost 30 years. So they were not on the board. And then John the 23rd in 1958, he was the favorite. So this list has 10 names.

on the board, going back to 1503, which we have odds for. Only three of them were favorites. And, you know, three of the last four were not seen as top of the board picks. I think if you're looking for the Benedict type candidate, or sorry, the Francis type candidate, it's probably Tagley. But the thing is, we all just saw the Francis thing happen. So now everybody's kind of hypothesizing that Taglay is the new Francis. So if this were 2013, Taglet's odds would have been what Francis's odds were, but now we're kind of a little smarter to it that they might want to look forward and and their membership in Asia has been growing pretty big pretty big in the last 10 years so and the Philippines is like a a fighting ground in religion so I mean that very Catholic too yeah

yeah so that's that's also another interest part of that where it's like that's that could give them a big edge in that region that they're looking for because it's like they're not that they've given up on the Western civilization like America and Canada but you definitely see they're they are attacking Catholic religion is really trying to spread, I shouldn't say attacking, spreading in Asia. Yeah. And Africa. The two fastest growing Catholic outposts in the world.

And so if the church is saying, hey, we want to, you know, think long term here, that could be a thinking. But it's still, it's still saying, like, we're still trying to make history here by picking an African pope or by picking an Asian pope. You're still betting on something that, you know, probably makes a lot of people in that room a little uncomfortable. I wonder why that is. They just picked a South American pope, and that was historic.

And now the makeup of the conclave is so different. And if you're thinking practically, why wouldn't you choose a pope who can represent either Asian or African nations, where you are the fastest growing, where there is a huge populace, where you have an opportunity to spread the Catholic. religion when you're not making as many as much headway in Western civilization as Simon points out. I prefer, I prefer not to call it attacking the Asian and African continent as Simon would, but maybe that's just his bias. I just like, Chad, that you're shocked at the end of the day.

The church cares a lot about survival. It's about growth. It's about the future. Yeah. That's what I mean. So it doesn't make sense. You're like, shocked that the Catholic Church is an accepting of other cultures. it's like, come on.

Oh, my God. I'm not shocked at all. Well, that's what makes my favorite dark horse pick interesting. John Mark Avelin, he's French, serves in Marseille. He's the Archbishop of Marseille. The story is that he was Francis's favorite bishop. But he's kind of at the mix of all of this, right? He's European, but he's not Italian.

He was born in Algeria. His family emigrated to Marseille. He's lived in Marseille forever. And Marseille is one of the most multicultural kind of like, melting pot cities in the world the way that that country and city has dealt with poverty to migration to assimilation

so there's been so much there and he could end up being if they say hey we want a European again but we don't necessarily want to just hate it back to the Italians he could end up being the compromised moderate candidate who emerges and he's at 3% right now 3% on Kalshi

I think that's where I'm going to go yeah I believe the thing is the French have always been a little weird. They don't love the French. They don't. They do not love the French generally. I don't know. It just seems to me like we got to take someone who's at the bottom of the percentage odds here. And anyone who is being publicly discussed, what's that line in the story you had? Anyone who, you know, the next pope always walks out as a cardinal? Yes. So anyone who thinks they have the upper hand and is going into the conclave with the expectation that it could be them, let's take the top five off the board.

Usually it doesn't happen that way. It's true. It doesn't happen. They're going to be a cardinal. They're going to stay a cardinal and they're going to be really happy. And inside, it's going to be a knife fight when they get out and everyone is talking about it. It's going to be, we found the right person and we're super excited about it and the consensus was easy because straight out of the movie represents our values.

It's exactly what it's going to be. All right, Anthony, give me your plays. And Simon, after this conversation, you are a professional better who's got a keen insight into psyche. I want to hear what your play is, and then I will give you mine. Yeah, so I did take some taglay.

I do think that his popularity, his emerging markets kind of play is the most interesting angle of this entire conclave because of his opportunity. I think Africa doesn't have, on paper the same consensus person that the whole continent could rally around, they're pretty split in how they're broken down from Robert Serra, who's more conservative, to Turksen, who's a bit more moderate, to other candidates who are more liberal.

So there's more names that have emerged. But if the Asian block gets behind Taglay early and ends up being the clear guy, then I think it could end up happening as early as today, to be honest, with him. But Avaline is my favorite dark horse. I found the equivalent of 20 to one on him, so I took some of that. I think once you get below that, you might as well just start drawing straws. I don't know how you even come to certain conclusions on that, on other candidates, but there's never been an American pope, so I would not bet on the Americans,

especially given the current geopolitical climate. But you never know. Ultimately, Avaline and Taglay are the two I settled on. Who are the who's even like the American candidate? Yeah, there really aren't necessarily any at the top of the board. Raymond Burke was the number one. And he made headlines because he wanted to not allow, I don't want to get into politics,

but he didn't want to give Joe Biden communion. So like that was a whole thing. He said like he's at like 1%. Robert Provost is probably the other American at the board. He's 2%. So there's a couple names, but not, not a lot, not many. All right, Simon, you've heard it. You're a handicapper.

At the end of the day, it's a blank slate. You're not coming to this with any edge. There's no power ranking you can make. There's no model you can do. Hearing everything you've heard, chatter you've had from your Catholic Philly community, what do you got? Well, first, I want to give props to Anthony

for just smoothly listening off all these guys' names. It took me forever. Pretty amazing. I practiced this morning. morning. Because I did a lot of reading for this, but I didn't do like that much listening. And so when you're writing the names, it's easy. But then I was like, oh, shoot, like, let me make sure I have Pierre Batista Pizabala pronounced correctly. Honestly, I watch a lot of soccer. So that does help with the foreign names. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, like, again, it's a rare opportunity where, you know,

Luis, the guy from the Philippines, he's the right age. Like, he's 67, I think. So to me, that's like what they're looking for. They want someone like right around that age. He's not the main guy, which I feel like you nailed a chat. We're like men inherently are weird and jealous creatures. And the guy who is the man of the group, he might not be the man to a lot of people, but they act like it to his face.

And they wait for these type of moments that in secrecy, they can take away some of his power. This guy who thinks he's the shit. It's like, no, you're not. And we're gonna give it to someone else who's more deserving. So yeah, I just think that whole market, the fact that they're, trying to spread in Asia that just makes more sense to me to vote in a guy who seems like a good guy

seems like he's well liked and like even just reading about him before he came on today it's like this guy is well traveled like he's done a lot in his years of service so um i didn't know i didn't realize his age to me that's the big factor here is the fact that he is 67 68 like that's a big deal when they do these votes chad so yeah i'm going with the 20 percenter guy not the greatest odds but i'll take it i think i'm with avalien i feel like I feel like, A, he's also up there. I think he's what, 66, 67, number one, number two. I think if we're talking about, and if we're talking about the makeup of the conclave,

still heavily European. 49%. To them, to them, France may be Asia. And what I mean is they could be looking at this as, that Asia and Africa might be one step too far. But we get a guy from Marseille and that is a melting pot and that has been a town in France that has been in the epicenter of what a lot of has been igniting

anti-immigration sentiment in France and a lot of conflict within the country. As you can see, I'm very well read. And so I think this guy can represent something that is, you know, not 10 degrees off center, but maybe three degrees off center and to what is ultimately a very conservative body, as no matter how much we talk about liberal, moderate, progressive, and conservative, this is ultimately a very conservative body. I think he represents change given what we've seen so far.

if we're playing a guy who's not even on the board, basically, who can reach a plurality of voters who is moderate but not progressive can be a little bit different. He's not Italian, but he's not African. I think it's him. I would be fine with that. I got some action down on him. Like I said, he was Francis's number one friend amongst the cardinals,

amongst your favorite bishop. He seems like a really likable guy. And the one big thing politically for him is he has been very pro-immigrant, but he's been against kind of the idea of forcing mass migration onto cities. And he said, like, look what's happened in Marseille when we've tried these things.

And the other big thing I think that he's really hung his hat on is communication between faiths. And we'll see what the church thinks about that. But he lives in a city where that is kind of expected and needed because of how diverse it is. There's a big Muslim population. as well in Marseille. And so if that plays, if Catholicism is trying to look toward more cooperation between faiths,

then he could end up being the guy. What I like here is I paused to get a reaction from Anthony and Simon to Catholic-raised boys from the Philly area. And the first response is Anthony, I like that. And in my head I was thinking, oh, as a Catholic, he likes that. And then the next line was, I got some money on that. So I'm glad to see that during this enlightened, thoughtful, culturally contextualized conversation, your priorities, Anthony de Bundo remain the same. Anthony, listen, you did a great job breaking that down.

You did a great job writing that story on The Ringer. It's fantastic. People should go check it out. Link in the description for both YouTube and the podcast link. in the podcast page. Well, well done. We're going to find out. By the time the next episode airs, we're going to know who the Pope is, and I'm super excited to see

what the final resolution, what the white smoke says. Simon and I will return with our next episode of the favorites Tuesday on the Action Network YouTube page. Don't forget. Also, subscribe at Rio Chad. Millman, download us from Spotify, Apple Pods, wherever you get your pods. Rate, review, subscribe. Leave us five stars. Say whatever you want. Feedback is the gift. Until next time, love you.

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