When the world loses its marbles

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

If you’re like me, sometimes you need a break from the troubling world for an hour or two. Between the coronavirus and ongoing protests around the country about racial injustice, the daily storm of antics that comes from the White House and the slow onset of an economic recession, it’s downright scary just to look at the news some days.

The racers line the gate for another exciting Jelle’s Marble Run. Courtesy photo.

While it’s an important task to stay current with the happenings of our world, it’s also crucial to step away to let your brain recover a bit.

In that spirit, I bring you… marble racing.

For all the gut-wrenching horror that is social media, there are also just as many fine examples of human creativity at work. There is a channel on YouTube called “Jelle’s Marble Runs” that has, for the past few years, conducted a series of marble races with every bit of the intensity and drama of a professional sporting event. The marbles have teams and fans, and there are fantasy leagues to pick the overall winners.

The organizers of the channel build dozens of courses for a series of marbles to run down, competing for time in specific heats. Some courses are outdoors, with the run smoothed out of a sand dune that stretches 100 feet to the bottom of the run. Others are water courses with marbles in “rafts.” Others are Formula One-style races, with fast courses built for speed and maximizing the corners and short cuts.

Behind each run are stands constructed to contain the “spectators,” which are, of course, marbles. Sometimes a marble coach gets “ejected” from the team, other times a specific “famous” marble is pointed out on the jumbotron.

The races are all commentated by a man named Greg Woods, who utilizes an upbeat, sportscaster style and infuses drama and excitement into each race. If you were to close your eyes and listen to the races, you wouldn’t have any idea that Woods is announcing a bunch of marbles someone tossed down a hill — it almost seems as if you’re transported back to the 1930s and are listening to the Kentucky Derby.

The production value and thought that goes into each of the episodes makes it one of those channels I turn to when the going gets tough. For five or 10 minutes, I can shut off the anger and frustration, the uncertainty and divisiveness, and watch a bunch of marbles race for a meaningless prize. 

When I first saw a marble run video in the recommended folder of YouTube, I watched with confusion, wondering to myself who in the hell spends 10 minutes watching a bunch of marbles roll down a hill? Then I found myself rooting for one specific team — the Oceanics — which placed well in regional qualifiers but lost out to the Crazy Cat’s Eyes, who dominated the sand rally event.

Now, I’m all in. After deadline night, when we are as beat-up and raw as we get in the course of a week, I find solace watching these little rolling orbs compete for nothing. It’s what the world needs right now, because it seems when the world loses its marbles, the best defense is to roll a bunch of them down a hill and film it. Makes sense to me.