Soft matter abounds in the natural world. Moreover, soft materials are most often not in thermal equilibrium. I will present a series of vignettes from experiments in my lab that show the remarkable behaviors that emerge in driven soft materials. I will show how drying drops can be used in forensic analysis, how drops can be moved with light, how spiral waves appear in chemical reactions and how they interact with each other, and how the same chemical reaction can be used to induce mechanical motion of a gel.