There was a lot of attention paid this week to James Talarico’s spiked interview with Stephen Colbert. So much so that it boosted Talarico’s chances of winning on Kalshi and Polymarket and helped Talarico raise $2.5 million. And so even if you are almost certain Talarico will win, the 78% chance it currently hovers at isn’t as tempting as the 61% it sat at just a week ago.

But, to paraphrase Yoda, “there is another (market)” — and it’s still delightfully tantalizing with lowish odds.

There is a “Texas Senate Democratic primary 1st round margin of victory?” market on Kalshi that chops up the win margin into tinier, more exciting (for longshot lovers) odds. And this is where Beto O’Rourke comes in.

If you don’t remember Beto O’Rourke, he was a Texas congressman from 2013 to 2019 and ran for a Senate seat in 2018 (he lost to Ted Cruz by about 3%), President in 2019/2020 (he pulled out in November 2019), and Governor in 2022. In that final race, he lost to Greg Abbott by 11% after polling around 8% behind.

The thing with O’Rourke was he had national fame — Twitter loved him, cable news loved him, journalists loved him — but all that mattered was Texas. And so as Talarico grows in national fame, he might not be doing that in Texas. Sure, he may still win the nomination, but perhaps by not as wide a margin as the recent media fervor suggests. And that brings me to Talarico winning by 3-6% at 17 cents. It’s comfortable enough of a margin if you still think he wins, but closer than the national public may think — Texas Democrats, tanding in that booth, could have flashbacks to the sting of Beto O’Rourke’s spiral, and if Talarico reminds them of him, they could just move to Crockett, who has a metric ton of charisma, is media savvy, and could have a better shot at a general election win than Talarico.

The downside, of course, is that the 17% market will likely stay close to that number — it’s not like we’ll be able to sell it for 70 cents a week before the March 3 election. But as a future bet for those of us who remember history? Welcome to the portfolio!

As late as 4:30pm ET on Thursday, we all could’ve had Alysa Liu shares for about 28 cents. She was in third, she still had hope, but there was general gloom and doom surrounding the US figure skaters following Ilia Malinin’s troubles and Amber Glenn’s short form.

Liu, of course, won the gold Thursday and will be a giant superstar — she has a fantastic story and look and vibe that figure skating needed. even Glenn rallied from a rough short form to take 5th overall when the dust settled; despite her bad day, she also has big superstar potential. But Liu, man… we knew she was going to be good, we knew she had a shot, we all had a chance to get it on the magic… and we didn’t.

Actually, we did. We still got to watch it and cheer and celebrate the whole thing. But I regret not sticking with my pre-Olympics research (aka 3-4 hours of reading stories about her) and getting in while she was in third.

I hate to keep going back to politics too much, but those markets are so intriguing in their human nature-driven ways.

The “Who will attend the State of the Union” market is just chock-full of storylines, but two stand out: Dana White (15% yes) and Barron Trump (37%).

With Netflix announcing the Ronda Rousey/Gina Carano fight on May 16, the UFC will need something to swing the pendulum back to them for their June 14 card on the White House lawn. What better way to promote the card and gobble back some of the spotlight than pointing out White’s attendance in the rafters and letting him wave to everyone?

Barron Trump was the only Trump Kid to not be in attendance last year, but he was 18 and in his freshman year of college in New York. This year, with a more public role in World Liberty Financial and his reported attendance at NYU’s Washington campus — he really has no choice but to show up.

I don’t LOVE either of these, but the logic outweighs the risk in both.

We’ll be back tomorrow with more. Add some comments, email us some ideas, check out out YouTube and Instagram pages for more fun stuff in different formats. And thank you, as always, from the 7 Oracles!