Reactions to The Bad Bunny Halftime Show, Jimmy Lai Sentenced, And Pope Leo on Olympics
The LOOPcast
CatholicVote
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 64 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show sparks a culture clash online. What happened, and is the outrage justified? Meanwhile, outspoken pro-democracy media tycoon and Catholic convert Jimmy Lai is sentenced to 20 years in a Hong Kong court. And finally, Pope Leo writes a letter on the value of sports. All this and more on the LOOPcast!
00:00 Welcome to the LOOPcast
04:00 The Bad Bunny Halftime Show Â
34:40 The Story of Jimmy Lai
41:15 Good News
53:22 Twilight Zone
1:03:14 Closing Prayer
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Tom: https://x.com/TPogasicÂ
Erika: https://x.com/ErikaAhern2 Â
Josh: https://x.com/joshuamercerÂ
O Jesus,
through the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
I offer You my prayers, works,
joys and sufferings
of this day for all the intentions
of Your Sacred Heart,
in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
throughout the world,
in reparation for my sins,
for the intentions of all my relatives and friends,
and in particular
for the intentions of the Holy Father.
Amen.
All opinions expressed on LOOPcast by the participants are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of CatholicVote.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We're live. Welcome back to the Loopcast. It's Tom Erica and Josh. The gang is back together. |
| 0:05.4 | Erica, you enjoyed yourself in Arizona, I believe. I did. I got to be in Phoenix. Shout out to the |
| 0:11.4 | Catholic women of Phoenix. I got to go keynote actually at their their women's conference, |
| 0:16.8 | which was such a treat. Shout out to Roberta and the team if you're listening today. Thank you for |
| 0:22.3 | your hospitality. And I got to have dinner with the great Bishop Olmsted. I got to hang out for about |
| 0:29.3 | two hours just like right next. What an amazing man. What a blessing to the church. What did you guys chop it up |
| 0:34.5 | about? I'm always curious. I'm not so much, I can't say too much, but he's a big fan of Pope Leo. We bonded because we were both so excited about John Henry Newman being a doctor of the church. So we got to bond over John Henry Newman. It's classic. We talked about Brian Birch, how great the Birch family is. Catholic vote. |
| 0:54.6 | He loves you, Josh Mercer. |
| 0:55.8 | He loves the Loop. |
| 0:57.8 | So it was a wonderful, wonderful weekend away. |
| 1:01.6 | And while it was negative 17 degrees at my home here in Connecticut, it was 85 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona. |
| 1:09.5 | So that was another blessing. |
| 1:11.1 | A hundred degrees warmer. |
| 1:27.5 | A hundred degrees warmer. Yeah. Thank you for pumping Josh up there. You kind of needed a little boost after Rachel Beauvard came on the pod and and ripped him another one on the talking filibuster. Very fun. If there's any other niche topics, we would like to debate. I'd be happy to. I was just laughing about that over the weekend. |
| 1:28.5 | And like, yeah, I wanted to debate. |
| 1:30.8 | Like, Rachel's like, I really want to debate the talking filibuster. |
| 1:30.3 | I was like, that sounds like a topic people are going to enjoy. Let's go ahead and throw it. |
| 1:35.1 | Hey, you know what? We don't care. Sometimes we've got to have vegetables on the plate because |
| 1:38.5 | that's right. Vegetables on the plate. Absolutely. Yeah, I actually like that. I would like to do more of that. Maybe a little chat income or sorry, not chat feedback. Welcome. Sorry, I did not sleep very well. I met someone. How could it possibly be the case you didn't sleep well? Like, you don't have young kids at home. Do you? You don't have babies. No, no, no. So another story. I almost like we got to talk about the Super Bowl. All right, whatever. But I met another person that listened to the podcast at Mass on Sunday. And the way that I met her was unique. You listed in the loopcast at Mass? That's not appropriate. No, not appropriate. But it was also a female. But I, my son had ran out of the church and was about to run into the street. And so I yelled to stop him and he stopped and turned around. |
| 2:21.2 | And then another person turned around. |
| 2:22.6 | I was like, do you have a podcast? |
| 2:24.6 | And I said, yes, I do. |
... |
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