WEBVTT - The Original Prediction Market Was Betting on the Pope 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:14.000 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:21.320 Hello and welcome to another episode of The Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:22.840 I'm Tracy Alloway. 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:23.800 And I'm Joe Wisenthal. 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:24.840 Joe. 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:25.759 Prediction markets. 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:26.800 Yeah, I love them. 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:32.480 I know you do. I find them mostly entertaining versus insightful, 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.600 and I like looking up things that people are betting on. 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:38.200 So I saw today people are betting on the temperature 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:41.440 in New York. There's one pool for will Doge and 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:45.120 Elon Musk claim there's missing goal at Fort Knox before May. 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.160 There's political stuff obviously, like who will be the next 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.559 German Chancellor, But we haven't actually done that many prediction 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.280 markets episodes. We did one with Nate Silver late last year, 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:57.920 but we should talk about them more. 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:01.560 No, I totally agree, and I'll see two things in 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:05.440 their defense. One is, I to the point like it's 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:08.480 interesting to see what people are betting on. It's sort 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:12.520 of an interesting news filter in and of itself, because 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:14.759 I'll look at a polymarket and it's like I didn't 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.720 even know people were talking about this. Whatever it is 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:20.120 is someone going to have a baby, is so and so, 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:22.520 you know, gonna be with so and so on. Love 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:25.360 is blonde or whatever. Try don't watch, but you know 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:27.240 it like gives you a read on like, Okay, this 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:30.680 is interesting right now. And I do really think there's 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:34.240 something to be gleaned that's in the price that in 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.120 several of these And it's not that they're right or wrong. 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:40.920 And I've never thought about the usefulness of prediction markets 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:44.680 from a right or wrongs standpoint, but more like, you know, 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:47.640 if you have an opinion on something, how does it 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:52.080 differ from conventional wisdom right now? Is there a big 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:54.920 gap between your sense of something happening in the market 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:57.720 sense of something and so sort of taking the temperature 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:01.120 of the betting public, and it is a narrow slice. 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.720 You know, not everyone bets, but you know, generally speaking, 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:09.440 there isn't gold lying on the ground, right Like generally speaking, 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.200 there aren't tons of obvious opportunities to make money from 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:13.919 these markets. 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:16.320 So I will just say one of the big debates 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:19.080 is whether or not this has social value. If you 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:23.200 add financial incentives into betting the betting mix, do you 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:27.280 actually get better predictions? As you say, there tends to 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:29.520 be a certain type of person who is betting on 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:32.919 something like polymarket and Calshi, so maybe it's a good 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.920 thing for getting a read on a particular slice of 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:39.680 the population, but I definitely have questions Anyway, all of 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:43.240 it kind of got me thinking we've probably had some 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:47.520 form of early prediction market, way way back before we 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:50.440 had things like poly market and Calshi and I guess 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:55.000 getting philosophical. All markets are essentially prediction markets. People think 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:58.200 a company will do well or bad. But there must 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.680 be some early examples of people betting on very specific 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.399 social things. And it turns out there is one. There's 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:09.520 a really good example, and it is the PayPal prediction market. 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.320 This is crazy to me. I had no idea this existed. 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:15.480 Yeah, so in Renaissance Rome, betting on who would be 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.600 the next pope was a thing, and in fact, a 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:21.440 very interesting market was built around it. So we should 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:23.800 talk about that. And I'm glad to say we have 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:28.040 the perfect guest to talk papal prediction markets. We're going 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:30.920 to be speaking with Ryan Izako. He is the author 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:34.440 of the No Dumb Ideas sub stack. So Ryan, welcome 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:35.000 to the show. 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:36.080 I'm thrilled to be here. 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:40.360 Why did you decide to become an expert in Renaissance 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:41.640 papal betting? Markets. 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:44.840 It's a good question. It goes back to I was 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:47.720 writing a substack about prediction markets in general. I typically 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:50.480 write about economic or social ideas through the lens of 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:53.440 a business pitch, and I wrote one about the idea 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:56.520 of paying lobbyists through prediction market contracts, and that got 0:03:56.600 --> 0:03:59.080 me onto poly market regularly to check what the latest 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.440 bets were. And I saw when the Pope was in 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:04.120 the hospital and I'm glad to say he's doing better 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:05.600 that one of the top markets. 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:07.680 Or recording this March eleventh, I could. 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:10.119 Go, yeah, one of the top one of the top 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.520 markets on polymarket was new Pope in twenty twenty five, 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:15.680 and that just seems so shocking to me. It's like 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:17.720 such an outrageous thing to bet on. And when I 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:20.640 went to the comments, which were a mix of compassionate 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:22.960 and tasteless, I saw this idea that you could be 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:27.000 excommunicated for gambling on this market, and while that's actually 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:29.480 no longer true, that led me down this rabbit hole 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:32.720 of trying to understand what were the dynamics around this, 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:34.520 why was this put into place, what did it mean? 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:37.520 And I started looking at the academic literature and I 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:39.359 saw there wasn't a lot of public facing writing that 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:42.360 went any deeper than this market existed, and you could 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:46.000 be excommunicated for it. And so I figured, if not me, 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:47.720 then who else that's warted writing about it? 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:47.880 All? 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:48.080 Right? 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:51.120 Keep going? So what years are we talking about? When? 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:55.839 At what point did the Catholic Church have a ban 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:57.440 on betting on the next pope? 0:04:57.560 --> 0:04:59.679 Yeah, so the ban was put into place in fifteen 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:02.719 ninety one. It was called Colgetos. That's my attempt at Latin. 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:06.280 And this papal bowl was just sort of a decree 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:08.200 that has the rule of law in the Catholic Church. 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.840 Banned all forms of betting on cardinals' duration of a 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:16.640 pope's length, duration of a conclave, and who the next 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.520 pope would be. And in the bowl it had a 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:24.560 punishment of automatic excommunication. Is which the bowl b U 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.440 l L animal. It's like the animal. And so it's 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:31.000 a it's a papal decree that essentially has the rule 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.279 of law. And papal bulls made up a lot of 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:38.200 historical Catholic law until nineteen eighteen, which is when there 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:41.520 was a massive reform of the entire canon law, all 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:43.919 the law of the Catholic church, and the bowl was 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:46.480 not renewed as part of that that reform of the law. 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.839 So let's back up a bit and talk about early 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:54.440 fifteen hundreds. What was this market exactly and who were 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:56.440 the participants? Who was making the bets? 0:05:56.640 --> 0:06:00.880 It's a great question. So there were three broad types 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:03.320 of groups that were making bets on these markets. The 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:06.320 first was what you might call gentlemen's bets, so aristocrats 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:08.640 cardinals would make side bets with each other. There's records 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:13.000 of cardinals betting things like gloves, jewelry over the outcome 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.680 of the conclave, and the conclave, just to take a 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:18.040 step back, is the process that happens where the new 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:18.720 pope is elected. 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:22.159 When I saw the movie good, yes, I still. 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:24.600 The movie is a pretty accurate representation of the process. 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.200 And so group one was just sort of you can 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:29.840 imagine it being kind of equivalent today and making a 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:32.400 bet with your friends over a sports game. The second 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:36.040 group was the biggest one, and this was a group 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:39.720 of brokers called sinsally who would take bets from all 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:42.560 social classes, from regular workers all the way up to 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.360 aristocrats and also cardinals sometimes and their attendants. And these 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:50.440 brokers were often people like cloth merchants, spice traders. They're 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:54.960 often tied to the Florentine financial industry, and they took 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:57.520 bets on everything, not just papal elections. It took bets 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:01.120 on the outcome of sports matches. The most popular games 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:05.040 in Renaissance Room was essentially kind of translated as boy 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:07.360 or girl. They would find a pregnant woman and they 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:09.120 would take bets on whether shoes and give birth to 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:11.240 a boy or a girl. Wow. And this was an 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:13.960 incredibly popular game. It was so popular that it actually 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:19.120 was banned in the late fifteen hundreds. And they took 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:23.200 bets on everything from will new cardinals be nominated? Who 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:25.920 will the new cardinals be? How long with the pope rain? 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:26.040 For? 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:28.480 How long will the conclave run? For? Who will the 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:33.000 new Pope be? And alongside these these market makers were 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:36.200 it was a whole information ecosystem. You had handwritten newsletters. 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:37.920 There was a lot of gossip going around, a lot 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:39.960 of room or spreading, and you can talk about that 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:43.480 in a minute. Maybe it's fascinating the rumors that went around. 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:46.480 And the last group was actually sort of an early 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.920 form of risk catching. So you had financial institutions banks 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:55.160 that would in the same ledger give updates on shipping 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:58.760 insurance that an investor had underwritten and the results of 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.640 their paper bets, and so these same institutions would actually do, 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:05.120 would actually offer both. There wasn't a clear distinction between 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:08.720 gambling and financial investments in some of these environments. And 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:10.120 you sort of think this is an early form of 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:14.400 political risk catching. Because in the fifteen hundreds, the pope 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:16.360 ran a major country, the Papal states, it was going 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:18.080 to think of it as covering a large part of 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.960 central Italy, and when a new pope came in, it 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:24.960 often meant it was a new family that had political influence. 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:27.880 It often meant that projects or taxation policy would change, 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:31.160 You might might might go to war, and so there 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:33.559 was really a big policy changes that would happen as 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:38.520 popes switched. And it makes sense that some investors might 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:40.920 want to hedge against that money real money. 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.160 There's so much meat here that's interesting. I mean, first 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:45.960 of all, you know, Tracy said in the beginning talk 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:49.679 about some of the social utility, there's certainly the disutility 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:52.559 when you mentioned Cardinal's betting, right, this is what we 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:56.080 worry about with modern prediction markets, that there are actors 0:08:56.320 --> 0:09:00.079 who might try to influence the outcome of a specific 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.520 event that's being bet on to make their bet payoff. 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:06.440 And so that is one reason we might be concerned. 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:10.920 I'm just fascinated by the sheer proliferation because this is 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:16.000 the characterization of society right now, whether it's pure betting 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:21.120 on sports, something that's a little then crypto, and then 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:23.200 you get a little closer to the spectrum of like 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:26.920 real trading or something options and then stocks. We have 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:30.400 this incredible spectrum of opportunities to bet or trade. 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.520 That distingmbling culture is I would call it. 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:36.920 Yeah, we live in a clear gambling culture. Talk to 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:41.240 us more just about that gambling culture that proliferated. Why 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:43.200 was it so big? What was going on? 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:46.200 Yeah, I mean gambling goes back historically in Rome, all 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:48.560 the way back to the Roman Empire. There's lots of 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:51.560 stories and lots of media about gambling on gladiator games, 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:56.520 around the outcome of wars, and in Rome there were 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:58.760 two big drivers of it. When was this this historical 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:01.280 culture of of gambling. The second was that it was 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:03.760 a center of politics and intrigue, and so a lot 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:06.880 of our information on the odds throughout the conclaves, and 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:10.400 the fifteen hundreds comes from ambassadors from Venice, from France, 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:14.560 from Genoa. And because there was all this interest among 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:16.000 all these other foreign powers, there was a lot of 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.200 information that leaked out of the conclave. And so when 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:21.320 there's a lot of information and there's a market where 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:23.400 you can try to make money off at information, you 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:25.600 can sort of see how the incentives aligned to drive 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:28.319 a lot of interest in the market, and because sew 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:30.440 the incentives align to try to do market manipulation. So 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.400 one of the more interesting stories was in fifteen to 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:36.080 fifty five, I believe it was Cardinal Carraffa, who was 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:39.200 one of the favorites to when about seventy percent odds 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:42.280 to when a rumor went out after he missed Mass 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:44.800 that morning that he had died, and his odds dropped 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:47.240 down to thirty percent. People who clearly didn't fully believe 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:49.480 that he had died, but there was enough to see 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.160 some change in the odds, and it turned out he 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:55.160 was very much alive. He was elected pope, And you 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:58.400 have to imagine that there were some unscrupulous brokers and 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:00.240 rumor spreaders who made a lot of money off of 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:01.520 the shifting odds there. 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:05.000 That reminds me how did bookies actually make odds, because 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:07.880 I will admit I don't really understand how bookies make 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:11.040 odds nowadays on sports games and things like that, But 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:13.920 for something like who the new Pope will be that 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:17.560 seems even more complicated, especially when we're talking about the 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:22.800 fifteen hundreds, where presumably information flow is not as fast 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:24.200 or as heavy as it is now. 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.840 Yeah, it's it's a interesting point. So I think there 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.240 were two big drivers what I've been able to uncover. 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:31.600 The first one is that there was a lot of 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:35.520 insider information, not just cardinals but also their attendance. People 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:39.280 involved with bringing in food or wine. They would bring 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:43.120 back information on what had happened, and so bookies had 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:46.280 some level of information on what was happening in the conclave. 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.800 These are also really politically. There's contentious elections, and there 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:53.640 were factions, and so if you know all the players 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:55.760 and you know the dynamics with foreign powers, you have 0:11:55.880 --> 0:12:00.000 some indication of which alliances of factions might come together 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:02.720 to elect of pope and who the kind of logical 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:05.800 compromise candidates would be. There was an idea, and I'm 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.320 going to butcher it at the Italian Papa Belli. I 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:11.080 think of this person who was sort of seen as 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:15.559 a potential future pope, and so the people who were 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:18.120 candidates who were likely to be chosen were already sort 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:21.000 of identified in the public sphere. And then the last 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:25.320 dynamic that would drive odds was money flow. So if 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:27.120 you set odds and you started getting a ton of 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:29.320 bat on those odds you set, that would create pressure 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:32.079 to lower those odds and to make to basically protect 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:35.400 yourself from offering two good of odds on a candidate 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:38.360 who might win. And so there was a direct flow 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:40.680 of that, where you know, people would adjust their odds 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:43.000 based off of the flow of wages. There is also 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:46.199 sort of a proto secondary market. We have some records 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.440 of people saying they sold their ticket after the odds changed, 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:50.000 so sort of like a prediction market, right, you buy 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:51.600 it at ten cents, you sell it at fifty cents. 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:54.160 People would sell their tickets that were at one hundred 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:55.360 to one odds when they went up to ten to 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:58.480 one and lock in their gains. And so that's that 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:01.439 also I've made, but I didn't cover exactly how prevalent 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:03.720 that was. But that also could have been a driver 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:06.559 of setting prices for these different candidates. 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:25.320 One of the things that you mentioned is that there 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:28.880 were real stakes involved for some of the participants by 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:31.559 who the next pope was going to be, because major 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:35.840 policies could change, because you know, there was geopolitical consequence 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:38.520 of this, and so therefore there is you know, what 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:40.880 they would say, real money at stake, and then you 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:43.600 can obviously have people ride along that who have nothing 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:45.760 really at stake, but they just want to bet, which 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:50.880 is characteristic of all markets today, including the popular prediction markets. 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:53.400 Some of the prediction markets like so and so going 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:55.560 to get pregnant, there probably isn't the real money. You 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.440 probably don't really see much activity there, but you know 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:02.080 a lot of things certainly areas like presidential elections or 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:05.240 midterm elections. It's some of both. But the other thing 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:08.600 I'm really interested in is, you know, Tracy and I 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:12.280 work on financial media, which is subsidized by people who 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:15.920 want to sell access to investment products, and these days 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:18.880 it's more ETFs, but et cetera. This idea that like 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:23.120 betting has always been a subsidy. Betting or investing or 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:27.040 gambling has always been a part of what subsidizes the 0:14:27.160 --> 0:14:28.800 existence of news media. 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:33.200 Yeah, one hundred percent. I mean, it's interesting because there's 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:35.600 a mix of the idea and then the proliferation of it. 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.600 So the idea of these newsletters was really common. This again, 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:40.760 this is a longstanding Roman culture. If you ever look 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.280 up Roman graffiti, you'll see this. There's a long history 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:48.240 of spreading rumors and spreading ideas in Rome. But you're 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:51.080 right that the demand for these newsletters was shot through 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:53.640 the roof because of a financial incentive. And there wasn't 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:56.680 just it wasn't just the newsletters that spread information. There 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:59.800 was also taverns people would spread rumors and share information, 0:14:59.840 --> 0:15:03.040 and caverns. So there's a statue called the Pekino which 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:05.280 has been for hundreds of years, this place where people 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:09.200 would leave anonymous notes to spread information. And so those 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:11.560 notes often had information on what was happening inside of 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:15.440 the conclave. And the other piece that it was interesting 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:18.760 was that the diplomats, the foreign diplomats who were in 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:22.400 Rome would report back to their kings, monarchs, whoever, whoever, 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:24.800 the leaders on what was happening inside the conclave. And 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:26.520 so that definitely created a lot of demand for getting 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:30.200 that initial firsthand information which presumably was passed off informally. 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:34.440 And one other piece that set odds your question earlier. 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:36.760 Another piece that set odds was if a certain person 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:38.760 who was considered in the know would make bets. So 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:42.040 you had certain people like if a Venetian ambassador made 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.240 a major bet, that would be a strong signal that 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.760 person had some insider information and that they this person 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:48.480 was likely to win. 0:15:49.840 --> 0:15:52.040 So, Joe, I don't know if you've ever looked at 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:54.480 the comments section on something like polymarkets. 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:56.880 Yeah, definitely, it's I don't. 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.120 Know how to describe it, a bit of a mess maybe, 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:02.640 But one thing that does happen there is everyone talks 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:05.840 their own book, right, Everyone is trying to sway the 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.520 odds and get their prediction right. Did we see that 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:10.400 in Rome as well? 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:12.400 Yeah, you did see a little bit of that. So 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.440 you definitely saw people hype up their their candidates and 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.600 even saw people try to force the hand. So just 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:20.760 take a step back. The way a papal election works 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:23.320 is up two hundred and twenty cardinals go into a 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:26.440 locked room. They swear not to share any information, which 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:28.360 I think is better in force today than it was 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:32.400 back then, and they vote up to four times a day, 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.240 and every time they vote, if there's no if no 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:38.080 one has a two thirds majority, they burn the ballots 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:41.640 this black smoke, oh yeah, yeah, famous, the famous black smoke. 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.920 And they try again up to three more times that day. 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:47.360 And some of these conclaves were on for months. They 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:50.280 were conclaves where they had odds and how long the 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:52.240 conclave would go for, and there was a ten percent 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:54.640 actually implied odds of never in one of the conclaves 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:58.800 that they would never pick up hope, and so they 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:00.640 this is also a piece with these rumors could try 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:03.040 to force the hand of these these cardinals. So in 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:06.640 fifteen ninety Paliotti was considered one of the cardinal Palioti 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:08.920 was considered one of the favorites to become the next pope, 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:11.479 and he's about seventy percent chance, and someone put out 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:13.600 a rumor that he had actually already been elected, and 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:15.760 the rumor spread so rapidly that the city started to 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:17.280 put up his coat of arms. He started to set 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:19.200 up as if he had won. If they sent guards 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:21.439 to protect his house, because typically after pope was elected, 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:23.560 they people would go and raid their house. It's an 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:27.159 interesting cultural norm and it turned out he hadn't won, 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:30.240 he hadn't gotten two thirds, and so there's an implication 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:31.800 that that was done in part to try to pressure 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:34.480 the last few cardinals to make that yeah, make that 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:38.800 bet and acclaim him. Didn't work, did not work. Instead, 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:42.160 we got Pope Gregory the thirteenth, who started the crackdown 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:45.320 in earnest on some of the paper gambling that was happening. 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:50.080 Did the premature victory like turn people against him, like 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:53.280 would he have probably one had it not been for 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:54.240 or do we not know? 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:56.359 It's a good question. I don't know for sure, all right, 0:17:56.600 --> 0:17:58.040 but you can imagine for sure. 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:02.520 So this brings me to a very important idea, which 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:06.800 is did all this betting actually have an impact on 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:10.760 the church in the sense of, you know, I imagine 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:14.359 the Catholic Church isn't a big fan of betting, and 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:17.480 you have this huge betting culture that's pegged to the 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:21.160 internal political dynamics of the church. Did it change people's 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:23.840 perception of the Catholic Church. 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:26.720 It's a really good question in terms of the perception 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:29.520 of the Catholic Church. I'm not as sure. The Catholic 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:32.600 Church certainly felt threatened by it, and so the Catholic Church, 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:36.399 starting even before the hammer really came down, had tried 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:39.240 to ban these types of bets from happening, and so 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:42.080 they had issued bans, they'd sent police freights out, but 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:45.720 they were never rigorously enforced because there was enough intermixing 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:47.959 between the betters and people in the Vatican that there 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:51.000 was there wasn't a lot of impetus for aggressive enforcement. 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:54.679 But when we as you get to the late fifteen 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:57.000 eighties and into the early fifteen nineties, you started to 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:00.520 see popes do really really aggressive crackdowns, and the level 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:02.359 of aggression implies that there was a real threat to 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:06.080 the church, and so they would they would raid broker 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:08.400 shops and arrest everybody in torture them to find out 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.760 who had place bets. They set up a system of 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:14.600 thirty if proved brokers that were allowed to take bets 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:17.320 on some things, not on the election of cardinals, not 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:22.040 on the boy er girl, bets for pregnant women, and 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:24.679 if you if you made bets outside of those thirty groups, 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:27.520 the punishment was five hundred scooty, which I did a 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:29.680 little bit of calculation, I think it's about seventy five 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:33.280 hundred dollars, which a year's wage for a rural work 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:35.600 was about fifty scooty, so ten times the wage of 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:38.159 an average worker. And you can even be sentenced to 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:41.000 serve on the galleys, so being kind of conscripted into 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:44.800 the military for being caught on this. But the real 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:48.080 crackdown came with Kogetos, which is the Papal Bowl, banning it. 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:50.280 And I actually brought a copy with me from the 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:52.320 from the Yale Binding Key ra Book Library. 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:53.879 What is this amazing old document. 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.240 Yeah, so when this was issued, this Papal Bowl was 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:01.360 translated into Italian, posted around the city, hosted on tavern 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:05.280 city gates, given to all of the bishops and priests 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:09.240 around Europe, particularly in Italy. And if you read the translation, 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:12.360 you actually see that a lot of the it kind 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:14.000 of implies what some of the issues might have been. 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:17.320