Name: The Neurodivergent Genius Who Invented Formula 1 For Marbles
Uploaded: 2025-07-19T17:05:08.000Z
Duration: 8 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Modal verbs - B1

These marbles might seem like toys, but they're actually internet celebrities with a dedicated fan base, gaining over 140 million views on YouTube.

Wow, what a move by Robo Uno, shooting by for the gold!

Step aside, Formula 1. This is marble racing.

Behind the doors of this warehouse, a group of people are working hard to keep a world of marbles alive.

Some of the world's most exciting marble races are created under the guidance of these two brothers.

Together, they've embarked on a journey that's unlike any other.

The wait is finally over for the most prestigious event in all of marble athletics.

We've made around 500 races in the past eight years.

Wait a sec, 500 marble races? That's quite an adventure.

Marble races are like Formula 1 races, but with marbles.

There's a circuit, teams competing against each other, and all sorts of marble fans cheering from all around the world.

It's all about that last little push, and that last little push is what made all the difference on the near lane for Team Momo.

Here's our team. That's my brother Jelle.

He's the genius mind behind the design and build of nearly every new racetrack.

That's me, Dion. I come up with the concept, create the scenery, choose color combinations, and think about fun shots or scenes.

This is our editing team. It's Jelle and Kars, and most importantly, Greg Woods from IOI US.

Oh, and they've exited it! This is going to be very close.

Another important figure for Jelle's Marble Runs is Minos Vylaktos.

He's from Greece, from Athens, and he makes the music, does the audio, and he does a lot of other tasks.

And finally, there's our father Pete, who recently retired, and helps us with mostly everything.

Our parents played with them, our grandparents.

We all share the universal love for marbles, evoking our childhood memories.

Growing up with autism, Jelle loved his collection of marbles and could spend hours just placing them in perfect rows on his bedroom floor.

I like marbles because of their colors and their movement.

I remember as a kid spending the entire day laying down my marbles collection on the floor and trying to find out if one was faster than the others.

As I grew up, I started building simple tracks using objects I'd found at home.

In 2006, he wanted to film his marble races, so he started his YouTube channel, Jelle's Marble Runs.

In 2015, I asked Jelle, do you want to make a living out of your passion?

Minty Maniacs! A good launch out of the gate, but the Hazers respond well and stretch the lead.

And hold on, that's a new Marble League record!

In the pandemic around 2020, it got viral.

We came up with the Olympic Games for Marbles.

We were called by John Oliver and he asked us to sponsor the Marblelympics.

The number of fans kept growing and growing.

Jelle and Dion's project got featured on Last Week Tonight on HBO.

They also have merchandise for each marble team and even have their own video game.

For me, the most interesting part is to be creative.

I think about the scenery, but also new concepts.

Some fun elements, details, like marble streakers.

Climbers fans are too happy for some reason.

People are going to try to clean that up.

Referees and security guards moving in front of the climbers fans.

It can be difficult because you need to be sure that every marble has the same chance to win.

Sometimes you need to fine-tune something to make the balance or to avoid that the same marble will win over and over again.

Keep in mind that it takes more than two weeks to come up with the Marble Race video concept, to build it, film it, edit it, and publish it for our fans.

Once we staged a complex ceremony, it took two days to film it.

The marble run community is very passionate and extremely invested in each race.

It created whole communities around our marble teams.

Fans were rooting for one special marble.

Sometimes we do a poll for names on a marble team or some ideas from the fans we use in our videos.

The magic of marble racing is that it feels like a competition.

So you pick a marble and you follow it from the beginning to the end.

I think it's human to have that feeling for competition.

Their fourth marble is ahead of everyone else.

So Dion, could you introduce us to one of your favourite marbles?

This is Momo Mo, one of our most famous marbles.

We had a fidget spinner event and a piece broke off.

Oh, there you can see it, a big chunk came off.

Oh my goodness, that is a great concern to them.

There were so many fans who were messaging us, came with questions about injury updates.

Here you can see the piece that broke off.

Now it's glued again so you can see the stitches.

Is it difficult coming up with new ideas for every race?

YouTube is never sleeping, so you have to keep up with the tempo, come up with new videos and everything.

I came up with the idea to go to a large sand hill and make a very long sand track and let marbles race through them.

I have a lot of respect for my brother Jelle.

He's doing a very good job and he's a great inspiration for a lot of people with autism.

It seems that Jelle and Dion won't be giving up their passion project just yet.

I'm happier when people watch my videos and love it.

Jelle's Marble Runs represents for me the light-hearted, fun videos that distract you from the reality in real life.

I really love to see people enjoying the videos.

We are very humbled that we can give this to people.