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Joy

5 small things that made us smile this week

Your weekly cheat sheet to the best of the Internet

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Life can be bleak, so we’re going to be celebrating the small joys while we can—whether that’s a sweet snack that boosts your mood (courtesy of our friends at All In), or a dad joke so epic you'll hurt your eyes from rolling them so hard. These momentary mood boosters are everywhere you look—you just have to be able to find them underneath all the noise. And that’s where we come in.

Consider this weekly web series your cheat sheet to the best of the Internet—not just random memes to make you laugh, but examples of people truly finding something extraordinary in the mundane. Each Friday we'll be delivering five pieces of media that allow you to stop for a second, take a breath, and feel just a little bit brighter among the daily stress—and this week, in honor of Father's Day, it's dad-themed.

Ready to smile? Here we go.

1.The "soulmated so hard" trend

@breezeb3a

I’ll never recover from losing you 💓

♬ The Winner Is... Version - DeVotchKa

This is a TikTok trend that’s both wholesome and, at times, actually jaw-dropping. The premise is this: Pets can be our soulmates, and sometimes we “soulmate” so hard that our pets leave a lifelong impression on us. This trend has people showing how big of an impression their pets have made on them, even after they’ve crossed the rainbow bridge. In one video, user Brianna Kay shares an ultrasound of her baby with what looks like the outline of her dog kissing the baby on the forehead. In another video, an owner asks her soulmate cat to send her a sign from beyond the grave that she is at peace. The response (here) will shock you.

2. Dudes getting flowers

Why is it that men (traditionally speaking) are the ones who give flowers, and not usually the ones who get them? We don’t have a good answer for that, but it’s clearly time to flip the script. This week, our friends from All In are hitting the streets of New York and delivering bouquets to men, and they are absolutely loving it. Let’s make this a regular thing.

3. A new grandpa gets good news  

@ellelauricella In my feels today remembering my dad’s reaction to meeting my baby ❤️ We named his middle name after my father and kept it a surprise my whole pregnancy. This was one of the happiest moments of my whole life. #postpartum #dad #dadsoftiktok #dadanddaughter #grandson #firstgrandbaby #birthvlog #hospitalbirth #momsoftiktok #fyp #firsttimemom ♬ Stuff We Did (from 'Up') - Piano Version - your movie soundtrack

Just in time for Father's Day! There’s almost no better way to honor your dad than naming a new baby after him, which is exactly what happens in this video. It’s almost impossible not to cry (happy tears!) seeing this new grandpa learn the good news from his daughter, who’s already weepy from postpartum hormones. (We’re not crying, you’re crying.)

4. Dad's loving dogs

@aubree.avery I had to make a PowerPoint to convice my parents to let me get her & now she is four years old and my parents beg me everyday to let them keep her. #dogmom #doodle #doodlesoftiktok #dogs ♬ Kiss me Sixpence None The Richer - whitelinesprettybabyy

Speaking of adorable dads: It seems like there’s this universal experience where when someone brings a pet into a household, the dad of the household will refuse to bond with it (at least at first). TikTok has latched on to this truth and is now flipping the script, showcasing dads who initially refused to accept the family pet and are now treating it like their precious firstborn. Search “dads and the dog they didn’t want” on TikTok and you’ll find some hilarious examples (like this dad, testing every couch inside a furniture store to make sure he’s able to adequately rub the dog’s belly from his seat on the sofa).

5. A dog who just cannot handle a prank 

@haleyandthepets spoiler bro got mad instantly #foryou #foryoupage #dogs #fyp #dunkindadawg #viral ♬ snoopy von - joro.mixes

We can never share enough dog content, right? (That was a rhetorical question, because the answer is of course not.) Dogs are adorable. They’re hilarious. And they have some very strong feelings. In this video, one easygoing dog gets his “nose stolen” as a prank, and every time he finds out, he shows his owner that he is absolutely not having it. Give that baby her nose back!

For even more “extra”-ordinary moments, come find us on social media (@upworthy) or on upworthy.com!

For scrumptious snacks that add an extra boost of joy to your day, be sure to check out All In.

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Pura
Pura Fragrances
Justice

Walking Alongside Martu: A journey with one of the world’s oldest living cultures

Pura’s inaugural impact collection honors both sacred traditions and sustainable futures.

James Roh
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In a world driven by speed, efficiency, and immediate results, it’s easy to forget that lasting change is built on trust. Real impact doesn’t come from rushing toward an end goal or measuring success through lofty metrics. It comes from falling in love with the problem, building a community around it, and sharing a vision for lasting transformation.

Pura, the smart home fragrance company that marries premium fragrance with innovative technology, recently launched its inaugural impact collection with K Farmer Dutjahn Foundation (KFDF) and Dutjahn Sandalwood Oils (DSO). The Pura x Dutjahn partnership began with a clear purpose: to source a sacred ingredient directly from its origin while honoring the land and the people who’ve cared for it. Our goal wasn’t simply to find sandalwood — it was to find a community and an ingredient that embody exceptional land stewardship, ethical harvesting, and transformative, community-led impact. After careful research and over three years of development, we saw an opportunity to secure a premium, luxurious ingredient while supporting a regenerative supply chain that invests in Indigenous-led education, economic opportunity, and land stewardship.

James Roh

Over the past several years, we’ve walked alongside Martu, an Indigenous tribe from the vast Western Australian desert. Martu are one of the oldest living cultures in the world, with a history spanning 60,000 years. As nomadic hunter-gatherers, they have unparalleled ecological knowledge, passed down through generations, making them the traditional custodians of the land. Their approach to sandalwood harvesting isn’t driven by market demand but by a deep respect for seasonal rhythms, land health, and cultural law. Their work adapts to the environment—whether it’s “sorry time,” when mourning pauses activities, or the harsh desert conditions that make travel and communication difficult. Martu operate on Martu time, a deliberate rhythm shaped by millennia of experience, far removed from the rapid-swipe, hyper-productive pace of Western systems.

Martu’s ecological knowledge isn’t documented in baseline reports. It’s lived, carried in stories, and practiced with rigor and respect for the changing needs of the ecosystems. True partnership means unlearning the typical approach. It means standing beside—not in front—and recognizing that the wisdom and leadership we need already exist within these communities. Our role isn’t to define the work, but to support it, protect it, and learn from it.

James Roh

Tonight, as I spoke with Chairman Clinton Farmer and the KFDF team about our focus for this piece, I learned that Clinton’s truck had broken down (again), leaving him to “limp” back to town from the desert at low speeds for hours and hours. He had been awake since 3:00 a.m. This is a common and costly setback, one that disrupts the harvest, demands days of driving, and brings real financial and emotional strain. These barriers are relentless and persistent, part of the harsh reality Clinton and his community face daily. It's easy for outsiders, detached from the reality on the ground, to impose rules, regulations, and demands from afar. Rather than continuing to impose, we need to truly partner with communities — equipping them with the resources to operate sustainably, avoid burnout, and protect the very land they love and care for. All while they endeavor to share these incredible, sacred ingredients with the world and build an economic engine for their people.

There is much to learn, but we are here to listen, adapt, and stay the course. The future we need will not be built in quarterly cycles. It will be built in trust, over time, together.

To learn more about the partnership and fragrances, visit Pura x Dutjahn.

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Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Health

Is safe and stable housing the key to our health and wellbeing? This docuseries says yes (and has the footage to prove it).

A moving docuseries explores housing, equity, and personal health and well-being through the lens of three unforgettable stories.

Photo by Ryder Haske, People's Television, Inc.

Four Bands Community Fund helped Tammy Granados (pictured here) navigate systemic barriers that are common among Native homebuyers.

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When you think of a home, what comes to mind? For many, it’s the classic vision of a house—four walls, some doors, a roof. But research has shown that home ownership is so much more than just a physical structure. Instead, it’s an opportunity for families to have stability, a way to build and pass down wealth to future generations, and a foundation for a healthy life.


In a three-part docuseries from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), filmmakers explore the systemic barriers that keep safe and accessible housing out of reach for many Americans, such as racial discrimination, access to credit, and poverty. The docuseries, From Hope to Home, follows the story of three families affected by these barriers and shows how, with the help of community organizations, they are able to break free from these barriers and access safe housing—something RWJF believes is essential for health and wellbeing.

Four Bands Community Fund helped Tammy Granados (pictured here) navigate systemic barriers that are common among Native homebuyers.

Photo by Ryder Haske, People's Television, Inc.

In the first part of the docuseries, entitled “What We Came Here For,” viewers meet Tammy Granados, a young mother of four children, who experienced housing insecurity when the rent was raised on her family’s two-bedroom apartment.

Granados reached out to Four Bands Community Fund, a community development financial institution (CDFI) that helps create a path to homeownership for underserved communities and individuals—something that is particularly complicated for Native Americans.

“Most of the issues our homeowners face have to do with barriers set up around the land that we have no control over, that were set up through treaties with the US Government,” says Lakota Vogel, executive director of Four Bands Community Fund. Native communities, for instance, work through the Bureau of Indian Affairs to buy and sell tribal land rather than a traditional realtor, which can make home ownership seem even more out of reach.

“Who do you call when you want to buy a house?” says Vogel, of the typical home buying process for Native communities. “We don’t have realtor companies.”

These kinds of structural barriers, Vogel explains, put a significant strain on the health of Native communities.

“It’s like a chronic stress that’s overtop all of us, and our populations experience these unprecedented health disparities,” she says. “We adopt this scarcity mindset and our bodies sort of respond by increasing a stress hormone called cortisol. Having a home decreases that stress response.”

Four Bands not only understands these particular barriers and the harm they cause—they’re also able to help Native communities break through them.

“The first thing we do within a Native American reservation is sort of demystify the process,” Vogel says in a panel discussion led by RWJF, in partnership with Upworthy. “We look at the land site with the community member and talk them through every step of the process.” Four Bands then matches them with any available capital that will help them purchase the home.

Through a partnership with Four Bands, Granados was able to move her children into safe, secure, and affordable housing where they’re able to thrive.

“Becoming a homeowner gave me freedom to show my kids that you don’t just have to work to survive,” says Granados in the film. “You can work to thrive, you can work to live, you can work to grow your spirit, you can work doing something you enjoy. This is what your spirit came to Earth for.”

“What We Came Here For” is part one of From Hope to Home, a three-part docuseries from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Emmy®-nominated creative studio People’s Television. It is available to stream here.

Shala Staple and her daughter outside their home in New Jersey. Staple was able to secure an affordable house in a safe neighborhood thanks to a 1975 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that mandated each municipality set aside housing for lower-income homebuyers.

Photo by Ryder Haske, People's Television, Inc.

“Moving Day,” the second part of the docuseries, shines a light on discriminatory housing practices in New Jersey, one of the most diverse areas in the nation—and also one of the most segregated.

“People want to be able to control where other people, especially people of color, live,” says Adam Gordon in the film, who works as the Executive Director of the Fair Share Housing Center. “The KKK didn’t want black residents to be in the same town, and yet these are still the same [rules] we use to govern our communities today,” he explains.

These discriminatory practices, known as “exclusionary zoning,” kicked off years of activism that eventually led to the New Jersey Supreme Court’s watershed Mount Laurel ruling in 1975. The ruling found that exclusionary zoning practices were unconstitutional, and declared that every town in New Jersey must provide their “fair share” of each region’s affordable housing. Organizations like the Fair Share Housing Center help enforce these housing laws and compel municipalities across New Jersey to set aside housing units for lower-income families.

Because of that ruling, more than 400,000 New Jersey citizens—like Shala Staple, who is featured in the film—can now access secure housing in neighborhoods that would otherwise be out of reach.

“Affordable housing made me feel able to provide for my children,” Staple says. “I’m just really excited for their futures.”

However, “Moving Day” shows that there is still more work to be done, as several New Jersey communities continue to push back against affordable housing mandates. Fair Share Housing Center and other advocacy groups will continue to fight to ensure every community is accessible to New Jerseyans.

“No community should be closed to anyone,” says Gordan in the post-screening panel discussion. “Every community has to do its fair share of [providing] affordable housing, and every town, even the wealthiest ones, have to be part of the solution.”

“Moving Day” is part two of From Hope to Home, a three-part docuseries from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Emmy®-nominated creative studio People’s Television. It will be available to stream here starting April 15.

Ashleigh Bowman (pictured here with her three children) was able to secure her home with help from a community land trust, which allows her to build wealth while keeping her home affordable long-term.

Photo by Ryder Haske, People's Television, Inc.

Finally, in “Roses and Thorns,” director Milena Mikael-Debass shows viewers how community land trusts, or CLTs, can improve access to housing in Lynchburg, VA.

A CLT, the film explains, is a regionally-based nonprofit organization that acquires land, holds it in a trust, and then leases out the land for home-building, farming, and more. CLTs were first created in 1969 as a response to segregation under Jim Crow laws, allowing black farmers to gain equal access to farmland and black families to secure affordable housing. These trusts continue to help people like Ashleigh Bowman, a single mom of three kids, participate in home ownership when they normally would not be able to access it. Home ownership through CLTs also help marginalized communities build generational wealth.

“If something happens to me, I will be able to pass on this home to my children,” says Bowman in the film, who purchased her house through a community land trust after a life-altering event. “[They will] be able to afford it because the community land trust guarantees that this land will not be volatile with the market.”

Organizations like Grounded Solutions Network are looking to scale this type of shared equity home ownership model across the country, says Alex Cabral, Senior Principal of Innovative Finance at Grounded Solutions Network.

To do so, Grounded Solutions Network partners with other organizations and provides support like policy advocacy, education, research, and housing technology solutions to help them implement these models all over the U.S. Their latest goal is to produce one million affordable houses within the next ten years, acquiring corporate-owned rental homes and transitioning them into affordable housing opportunities across the US. This will help ensure a safer, more secure, and healthier country.

“Everyone has the right to a safe and secure home,” Cabral says. “And those who seek to be homeowners deserve that opportunity.”

“Roses and Thorns,” is part three of From Hope to Home, a three-part docuseries from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Emmy®-nominated creative studio People’s Television. It will be available to stream here starting April 22.

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Ocean Wise
Be Ocean Wise
Planet

Enter this giveaway for a free, fun date! 🌊 💗

It's super easy, no purchase or donation necessary, and you help our oceans! That's what we call a win-win-win. Enter here.

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Our love for the ocean runs deep. Does yours? Enter here!

This Valentine’s Day, we're teaming up with Ocean Wise to give you the chance to win the ultimate ocean-friendly date. Whether you're savoring a romantic seafood dinner, catching waves with surf lessons, or grooving to a concert by the beach, your next date could be on us!

Here’s how to enter:

  • Go to ocean.org/date and complete the quick form for a chance to win - it’s as easy as that.
  • P.s. If you follow @oceanwise or donate after entering, you’ll get extra entries!

Here are the incredible dates:

1. Staycation + Surf Lesson

Hang ten on the ultimate ocean date! Whether you're beginners or seasoned surfers, a cozy stay by the ocean and surf lessons will have you riding the waves and making unforgettable memories together.


2. A Year of Netflix

Get cozy and explore the wonders of the ocean right from your couch! Whether you're diving into breathtaking documentaries or finally watching My Octopus Teacher, enjoy a full year of streaming on us.

3. BeachLife Festival Tickets

Soak up the sun and enjoy Lenny Kravitz, Sublime, Alanis Morissette, and more at BeachLife Festival May 2-4, 2025. Celebrate your love for music and sea at the LA’s Premier Beach Music Festival!

4. Private Cooking Lesson with Michelin-starred Chef

Learn how to make a delicious meal with Matthew Kammerer who has earned a Michelin green star due to his commitment to sustainability in addition to two Michelin stars for his restaurant - Harbor House Inn.

5. Dinner for Two at Wrench and Rodent

Sustainable seafood isn’t just delicious, it’s an excellent way to combat overfishing. Enjoy dinner for two at the incredible Wrench and Rodent, courtesy of Chef Davin Waite in San Diego, California. Wow your date with both a delicious meal and the knowledge you’re supporting a healthy, thriving ocean!


Giveaway ends 2/11/25 at 11:59pm PT. Winners will be selected at random and contacted via email from the Upworthy. No purchase necessary. Open to residents of the U.S. and specific Canadian provinces that have reached age of majority in their state/province/territory of residence at the time. Please see terms and conditions for specific instructions. Giveaway not affiliated with Instagram. More details at ocean.org/date

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