Keeping and maintaining friends as an adult is hard, especially with the demands of life, travel and work. In volunteering, I encounter more people like myself, which is nice, but sometimes it’s difficult to participate without a lot of commitment to the organizations. I’m wanting to explore smaller, intimate groups to build community with people who I share similar values with. I’m interested in self-growth, psychology, games, mindfulness and yoga. I loved the L.A. Times story “Awaken your inner child at this welcoming collage club for adults” and I would love to know about similar activities. Thanks! —Marlen I.

Here’s what we suggest:

Marlen, I couldn’t agree more. As we get older, it can feel more and more difficult to sustain friendships, especially in Los Angeles, where people live so far apart and have busy lives. This struggle is exactly why so many social clubs have been sprouting up in L.A. over the last few years. From board game clubs to junk journaling meetups, there’s so many different ways to connect and maybe try something new. I’ve compiled a list of social clubs and community spaces that I think you’ll enjoy.

Since you’re already familiar with Art+Mind Studios, you should definitely check out Junk Journal Club. Junk journaling is essentially a craft practice that combines elements of collaging, journaling and scrapbooking. With the rise of junk journaling content on social media, the once solo pastime has turned into a lively social scene. Junk Journal Club, dubbed “the original junk journal club,” hosts monthly meetups, which can be found on its Instagram page. When my colleague Malia Mendez went to an event recently, people told her that attending Junk Journal Club “has made befriending strangers easy,” and many of them stay in touch.

Another craft-centered event that’s worth exploring is the Crafters Clubhouse, which founder Victoria Ansah calls “a creative third space for adult makers.” She hosts monthly arts and crafts workshops including activities like scrapbooking, punch needle embroidery and clay art.

Given that you’re interested in yoga and mindfulness, you may like WalkGood LA, a community-centered wellness organization that hosts a variety of activities including a run club and accessible yoga classes. During the pandemic, I found solace in attending their weekly yoga classes called BreatheGood. The outdoor sessions take place every first Sunday at Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area and feature free chiropractic adjustments and healthy food vendors. The vibe of the intergenerational event feels warm and welcoming. All you have to do is show up with your yoga mat. The organization also hosts various classes including yoga, breath work, mindful meditation, mat Pilates and step aerobics at their studio, the WalkGood Yard, in Arlington Heights.

Another social club I recommend is Love, Peace & Spades, which my friend Kevin Clark started in 2022, to create a space where people could play the card game with others. With music provided by a live DJ, the monthly game night feels like being at a family cookout. Spades can be extremely intimidating to start as a beginner playing with pros. But don’t worry. Love, Peace & Spades has instructors who can teach you how to play.

If you’re interested in chess, L.A. Chess Club is “an event with the laid-back ease of a chill game night and all the social and romantic possibility of a night out on the town,” according to Times contributor Martine Thompson, who wrote a story about the event. At the weekly gathering, which features a food vendor, cocktails, tattoo artists and DJs, you can “competitively play chess, learn the game, meet new friends or mingle as a single person,” Thompson shares. Another fun event is RummiKlub, a monthly Rummikub game night that takes place in elevated, design-forward spaces across the city.

L.A. also has several fun creative venues that regularly bring people together, such as Junior High, a nonprofit art gallery and inclusive gathering space that hosts artist showcases, comedy nights, pottery workshops and more. There’s also Nina in Atwater, which holds a variety of gatherings including a monthly series that focuses on mindfulness called “Be Here Now: Simple Tools for an Everyday Nervous System Reset.”

I hope that these suggestions are a good starting point for finding the group, or several groups, that are an ideal fit for you. Just by putting yourself out there and being open, you are bound to build and find community. Best of luck on your journey!

Perhaps the reason Project Hail Mary hits the spot in the spring of 2026 is that novelist Andy Weir, who wrote the 2021 novel and also the book The Martian, is fundamentally an optimist. Both stories concern men who are alone, facing impossible odds, far from Earth. And both stories posit that for anyone stranded under these conditions, the most important assets are accumulated knowledge, patience, curiosity, and the understanding that you need collaborators. Not magic, not muscle, not weapons, not even bravery, really. Just this: Know your stuff. Stay calm. Solve one problem at a time. Get help.

Problems of the natural world can be addressed through, and only through, mastery and cooperation might seem like a truism, but in Weir’s stories, it emerges as an expansively hopeful thesis.

In the new film Project Hail Mary, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Ryan Gosling plays Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher whose background is in molecular biology. He wakes up in a berth, bedraggled and weak, unable to remember why he is floating through space on a ship in which he is the only living crew member. With time, he’s able to put together that a woman named Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) recruited him to a team she was assembling to solve the gravest of problems: The sun is dying. The rest of the mission details are filled in through flashbacks, but the short version is that Grace was sent into space to figure out how to stop a sort of celestial infection that’s wiping out star after star — not just our sun.

Because there are other suns involved, it’s not surprising that there turns out to be other life involved, too. Other beings are trying to save themselves from the same menace that’s threatening Earth, and eventually, Grace makes contact with one: another scientist in another ship, whom he decides to call “Rocky,” because the guy looks a little rock-like. Also a little dog-like.

It is one of the greatest threats to making a good film out of Project Hail Mary that Rocky is very cute. In fact, he is adorable. He is also a skilled engineer dealing with his own isolation and his own losses. But Grace finds a way to communicate with him and eventually to outfit him with a human voice (provided by James Ortiz, who’s also Rocky’s puppeteer), and at that point, there is a lot of buddy comedy in the mix. It would have been easy to turn this into a nonstop series of gags where Ryan Gosling — who, after all, is also often adorable — cracks jokes with his alien pal. There are parts of the film that are that, and they are terrific.

But Weir is a really thoughtful writer (as is screenplay writer Drew Goddard), and Gosling can be an exceptionally quiet and sympathetic actor (as he was when he played Neil Armstrong in the underappreciated First Man). And in this story, they also find a lot of opportunities to explore questions about how to carry on in almost impossible circumstances.

Grace’s story is a lot of fun, but, like The Martian, which became a movie in 2015, it’s also an examination of how to get by and avoid despair. It’s about what Grace needs in order to persevere: a plan, a sense of purpose, and some company. It posits that people (and maybe beings other than people) need friends. They need allies. Grace needs Rocky, for help with the science but also because for him, alone is bad, and not-alone is better.

This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.

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Animated Australian sensation “Bluey” has arrived in Disneyland, and the titular anthropomorphic pastel-coated canine has come ready to play. And dance. And to race some “barky boats.”

The Walt Disney Co. first teased that the Blue Heeler puppy and her younger sister Bingo would be coming to the Anaheim theme park in 2024. Bluey is now the star of a performance-focused takeover of the park’s Fantasyland Theatre, which officially opened Sunday.

Two shows, games and spontaneous dance parties are hallmarks of the experience, as Disneyland’s live entertainment team sought to translate the show’s particular broadcast-based appeal to the real world.

“Bluey” works because it’s charmed children and grown-ups alike, emphasizing imaginative parenting skills as much as it does Bluey’s playful spirit. Though only about seven minutes, each core “Bluey” episode unfolds patiently, often centered on make-believe, wonder and childlike ingenuity. Subtle life lessons, such as cooperation, understanding one’s self-worth, overcoming a fear of the unknown and much more, dot seemingly simple scenarios.

In many episodes, Bluey’s mom (Chilli) and dad (Bandit) indulge in their daughters’ penchant to play pretend, so much so that a friend of mine with a young girl joked that she needed to watch the show to learn how to be a better mom.

I arrived at “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” as a childless columnist, and yet I came away enchanted by what Disneyland’s live entertainment team, led by Susana Tubert, had concocted. It’s a little silly and corny, yes, but manages to vary the tempo and can even tug at one’s heartstrings by showing the bond between siblings.

Theme park fare, especially when aimed at a preschool set, tends to fall back on high-energy, photo-op-based treatments, and while there’s plenty of amped-up goofiness here, “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” understands that’s not why the series was the most-streamed program in 2025, according to data from research firm Nielsen.

Two core shows are featured in the experience, and some “Bluey” regulars make an appearance. The overbearing, bratty hand-puppet Unicorse, for instance, plays key roles in launching each performance. Set to play continuously throughout the day, with breaks for Bluey and Bingo to appear on stage and dance or play with youngsters, each has a slightly different tone and feel.

One emphasizes an adventure story, its themes encouraging Bluey to flash some bravery and dispel stereotypes. The other takes a lighter touch, with some of the softer, almost ballad-like songs from the show, such as “Rain (Boldly in the Pretend),” highlighted, seeking to emphasize the bond between Bluey and Bingo. Here, I thought of Bluey’s more tender moments — those, for instance, that emphasize becoming comfortable with growing older and letting go.

“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” features live music, puppets and dance breakouts.

(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)

“We try to hit the humor, the play — shared play — and some of the more profound experiences that these characters go through,” Tubert says. “At the end of the second show, you’ll see a moment that is really quite beautiful. It’s a tribute to sisterhood, and how these two characters of Bluey and Bingo connect with one another.”

While one can certainly sit in the Fantasyland Theatre’s stands and simply take in the two shows, there are plenty of moments geared at getting audiences moving. Dances, for instance, may mimic animal behaviors, or reference popular moments from the series, such as getting grannies to floss.

A nod to the attention-seeking fairies — here, less Tinker Bell and more a metaphor for being noticed — inspires a “Riverdance”-like breakout. The five-piece, brass-heavy band gets a workout when Bluey’s impossible-to-control toy Chattermax has a cameo. The squawking plaything can test even Bluey’s patience.

Throughout, performers walk a line between teaching the maneuvers to the crowd and getting lost in the moment themselves. The challenge for Disney choreographer Taylor Worden was to create dance moves that also doubled as audience encouragement.

Spin, for instance, like a flower in the wind, or lightly snap your fingers to recall the sound of rain. Bounce with your hands in front of you as if you’re driving a car down a rocky street, or put your hand above your head and try for an elegant, ballerina-inspired twirl.

“It actually was letting go of all of those technical things that I’ve learned and letting that inner child come out,” Worden says. “As imaginative as Bluey and Bingo are, I wanted to hone in on that. I want everybody to enjoy, have fun and play. Play is at the forefront of everything. It’s so easy to get set in our ways, and even as an adult, it’s so hard to actually play nowadays. This has been such an experience to get to a childlike state.”

“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” references many show moments from the series, including one with nods to the fairies.

(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)

There’s more, however, to “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” than the two performances. The Fantasyland Theatre has been outfitted with pop-up installations. Some are purely photo ops, such as an opportunity for little ones to take a class photo with Bluey and her pals, while others aim to inspire exploration, such as a mini gnome village or fairy garden.

Taken as a whole, the feel is something of a fair, like hanging out with Bluey and Bingo at a backyard barbecue. The theater’s walk-up food window is serving pizza-inspired baked potatoes, a colored chocolate pretzel meant to mimic an asparagus pretzel wand, and more.

There’s also a place to race some “barky boats.” In the show, barky boats is a game that takes place on a tiny stream with tree bark, but there’s no water here. Instead, look for a track in a nook above the seating area, where one can race wooden blocks affixed with wheels — think Pinewood Derby — down a track painted to mimic a waterway. Throughout the theater, the colors are springlike and muted, pastels that are lightly bright and storybook-inspired. Even the dance costumes adopt this soft, crayon-like color palette.

“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” at the Disneyland Resort invites audience participation.

(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)

“The color palette works perfectly with the set,” says Trevor Rush, a manager with costume design and development. “Lots of pastel colors. ‘Bluey,’ that world, focuses very much in that primary world. You won’t see a lot of black represented.”

“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” does not currently have an end date, but is expected to be a Disneyland staple throughout the spring and summer seasons, with showtimes currently set for the late morning and early afternoons. For Tubert, who has an extensive background in theater, “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” is meant to highlight the theme park as a place of play, where one can be a bit silly, and maybe even a little vulnerable.

“There’s a nonjudgmental safe space that we’ve created in ‘Bluey’s Best Day Ever!’ that invites everyone to feel uninhibited and the joy of playfulness,” Tubert says.