12-11-24 Interview - This Book Will Uplift You When You Need It

THIS BOOK WILL UPLIFT YOU WHEN YOU NEED IT if you've ever seen Upworthy on the internet you know they share positive and uplifting stories about all kinds of stuff, and now they have a new book out full of stories of human decency. I'm talking to Gabriel Reilich and Lucia knell from Upworthy about the new book that would probably make an excellent Christmas gift, just saying. Find it here.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are scrolling through your Instagram feeds and then you see
a post from upworthy and you know it's going to
be good, it's going to be positive, it's going to
be uplifting. Well, Now, Upworthy has a new book coming out,
and I'm pleased to have two of the people behind
Upworthy and the new book. We've got Gabriel Raylik and
Luci Hanell on the show today, And first of all, welcome,
And second of all, how lucky are you that you

(00:22):
get to make your living sharing fun and happy, uplifting
stories with people. That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, it's a pretty good gig. No complaints on our part.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
So thanks for having us.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Well, you guys are now branching out into the printed word,
And tell me a little bit about the book and
what you guys, how you chose the stories that are
going in the book.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, you know, this book came about you know, we,
Lucy and I built a really large following on Instagram
at upworthy. There's about five million folks who follow us
now and which is amazing. And one thing that we
started seeing happening on that channel was when we would
share a post, you know about you know, an act

(01:10):
of kindness, or decency that was going on. Other people
would be inspired to start sharing their own stories, and
we thought that was really neat, and Lucy and I
would kind of like screencap these comments and stories that
people were sharing, text them to each other and be like, oh,
did you read this? This is great? And it was
like the best part of our job. So we decided,
you know what, let's see how many of these stories

(01:30):
that we can get and get to know our audience
and the people who follow up were they well, And
so we started asking questions like, who's the kindest stranger
that you've ever met, who's a teacher that you'll never forget,
What's a small thing someone did for you that had
an outsized impact on your life. And we would just
get thousands and thousands and thousands of responses and we

(01:52):
read through them all or we decided that they deserved
kind of, you know, to be preserved forever because they
made us feel so good to read them, and we
thought a book would be the best way to kind
of pay homage to the gravitas and power that these
stories hold. So, you know, we reached out and we
interviewed hundreds of people in our audience and worked with

(02:14):
them hand in hand and with writers to turn them
into the stories that are featured in this book. And
that is what makes up good people, stories from the
best of humanity. And you know, we're really proud of it.
It's a good feeling read we Liza, What are you
some of your favorite stories that you remember that are
in the book that you were especially touched by.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Yeah, you know, there's so many, and I genuinely mean
that every single story in this book is wonderful in
its own way. I really enjoyed the ones that are
about a small thing, a seemingly innocuous thing that actually
had a huge impact on someone. There's a story that
comes to mind called good hair Day, which is about
a woman who had gone through radiation treatment for cancer

(03:00):
her hair and it had just started to grow back
and looked like this, like pixie cut. She was rocking,
and she felt very self conscious, and she was out
and about with her family and this group of girls
looked at her and said, cute haircut, something super simple.
But they had no idea that that actually meant a
great deal to this woman. She had been debating whether

(03:21):
or not she was going to wear a wig to
her son's wedding, and because of that moment, she was
able to say, you know what, I'm not going with
the wig, and she sent us a photo of her
looking radiant and gorgeous at this wedding, rocking her short haircut.
And it just goes to show you have no idea
what people are going through, and a tiny, small thing
can actually have a huge impact on someone.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
What about you, Gabriel, Is there anything that stands out? Oh,
you're muted, You're you're muted.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
I'm sorry about that. Yeah, nothing stands out, just total silence. No,
I mean, look, they all work together. Every story builds
on the last to kind of create a wonderful you know,
breadth and depth of the human experience that speaks to
just what it means to be alive. And I really
that's the power behind it. And so many stick out

(04:16):
to me. There's you know, one about a guy who
takes a different route and when a stranger suggests it
to him in a diner in Texas and he's returning
back from being on leave in the military and he's
going through a hard time and this simple act of
driving down a different road, you know, leads him to
have a completely different outlook on his life and leads
to a well of support and good memories that he

(04:40):
really needed at that time and in difficult times. I
would follow in the future, And so I find myself
thinking about that one a lot. It's actually called a
curly Fries and it closes out the book. It's one
of my favorites.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
How many stories are in the book overall.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
From one hundred and one wow, short stories plus comments,
you know, taken directly from the comment section and sort
of interest first throughout.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Oh, that's very cool. So this is the kind of
book that you can pick up, you can put down.
You don't have to read it in order. You could
just kind of go through at your pace, or if
you're having a rotten day, you could pick it up,
open it up and get something out of that. I
love what you guys do. I so appreciate what you
guys do, because, like I said, the Internet is a cesspool, right,
and part of it is self inflicted.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Right.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
I'm on X you know, I'm on Instagram. Instagram is
actually the best of all of them to me. But
seeing what you're doing and reminding people that even when
we're reading all of these terrible things that politicians are doing.
Seeing these small acts of kindness and the impact that
they can have can really change your perspective and remind
you that no matter how bad the big bad is,

(05:48):
the small things and the people in this country are
really the best of everything. And that's what I'm kind
of taking away from it. I put a link on
the blog so people could buy the book. I feel
like this, if you're the to buy a book for Christmas.
I do buy books for Christmas. I was telling them
that I sent out Larry Read's book on Character often,
but now I'm going to have to add the Upworthy

(06:09):
book because you never know who's going to need a
great little story that day. I do have to ask
you this, out of thousands of people, how did you
what was it about these stories that made you say
that needs to go on the book? When you're talking
to thousands of stories that you were sifting.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Through, you know, the truth is there's probably enough material
in people that we talked to to fill a dozen books,
and so it was hard to decide, Okay, like these
are the ones that make it. But the common thread
I think with and this is true with any good stories,
it's stuff that we wanted to hear more about when

(06:46):
we first had someone reach out with like, hey, this
is something that I want to talk about, and that
we wanted to share it with other people and thought
that folks could benefit from it either because it's a
life lesson or because it's a reminder of you know,
profound goodness or a simple thing. But that's what ties
it together. It's all stuff that deserves to be heard

(07:08):
and can be uplifting, you know, upworthy. It's where the
name comes from.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
The book is called Upworthy, and I put a link
on the blog today so you can just zip right
over and buy it for all your friends. Gabriel Rayleik
and Lucia Nell, thank you so much for making time
for us today.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Thank you so much, Mandy all.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Right, thanks guys. Yeah, if you're looking for the perfect
gift for this hour puss in your life, this might
be it.