Fall Favorites EP 476
Best of Both Worlds Podcast
In this episode of Best of Both Worlds, hosts Laura Vanderkam and Sarah Hart Unger share personal updates and highlight their current favorites, blending fall-themed picks with everyday joys. Recorded in person in Philadelphia, the conversation begins with
Key takeaways
- Reconnecting with personal routines after life disruptions can deepen appreciation for everyday normalcy.
- Travel experiences, even long-haul flights, can be reframed as rewarding adventures when paired with intentional exploration.
Main topics
- Personal life updates
- Travel experiences (Sydney, Australia)
Notable quotes
"I had two Victoria Bitters in the course of my four days on the ground there. And cause it took a long time to get there and a day full travel to get home, but it was an adventure for sure."
"It's like a Long Island Iced Tea. Well, it's like if I went to a bar and ordered a Milwaukee's Best right now."
Conclusion
Laura and Sarah wrap up the episode by celebrating their in-person connection,
Transcript preview
Speaker 5 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Speaker 1 (0:02) Guaranteed human. Speaker 1 (0:13) Hi, I'm Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. Speaker 3 (0:19) And I'm Sarah Hart Unger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Speaker 1 (0:28) Welcome to Best of Both Worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long-term career goals, we want you to get the most out of life. Speaker 1 (0:45) Welcome to Best of Both Worlds. This is Laura. This episode is airing in mid-September of 2026. We are going to be talking fall favorites. So not just fall-based favorites, but also favorites in general. And it happens to be fall, right, Sarah? Yes. Speaker 3 (0:59) We thought about doing an entire episode of fall favorites, but realized that we might not quite have enough to get through an entire show. Speaker 1 (1:05) Yeah, we're not huge pumpkin spice latte people, so I guess it's not going to be a... an all fall thing. There's a lot of other stuff though. We managed to incorporate pumpkin into this episode. There will be pumpkin. There will be pumpkin. You can mark that down every time pumpkin is mentioned. Speaker 3 (1:20) Although we'll start with a life update, right? Yeah. So we are recording this in the same room if we'd sound any different. And Laura just got back from like an epic adventure that I knew about for a long time. And I was just like, couldn't tell anyone because she doesn't like to discuss her trips before they happen, but tell everyone. Where you just flew back from? Sydney, Speaker 1 (1:39) Australia. So I gave a speech in Sydney at the convention center there. And it was a gorgeous town. I love Sydney. It's a beautiful place. It's late winter, early spring there, which is a little weird when you are used to coming from summer and not just going to a place where it's a cooler version of summer. It's just actually winter, like the leaves are off the trees and things like that. But it was a long trip to get there. There's no direct flights from the East Coast. So I flew through Dallas and then Dallas to Sydney. And that is going there. It was about a 16 hour flight. Coming back, it was about a 15 hour flight. Long trip. But when I was there, I got to see some cool stuff. I was staying in the Darling Harbor area. And I took little excursions. Like I went and saw the Opera House. Very famous, of course. And lots of stuff along the waterfront. I went to a couple cute little museums. There was an aquarium right by me near my hotel. And I was a little at the beginning thinking it might be a bit of a tourist trap, like the upstairs exhibits were kind of eh. But then they had this full on shark tank and rays and a dugong, which is, I guess. I don't know. Okay. You don't know. Yeah. It's a, I think an Australian, it's sort of like a manatee. Cool. And then. I went to a little zoo that was right there as well. And again, it was like sort of going to Central Park Zoo, like in terms of how big it was. But they had kangaroos and wallabies and wombats and koalas and crocodiles. So you got, I saw all of the major animals there. And this Maritime Museum, which was also cool, they had a lot of ships you could go on. So I got to go on a destroyer. I got to go on a sub. I got to go on a replica of Captain Cook's vessel. Speaker 1 (3:25) Which is, of course, the one that was in Australia in the 1700s and when Captain Cook did his voyage there. So, yeah, a lot of fun stuff Speaker 3 (3:32) packed into a few days. And you got to relive your college days at the Australian bars. Yeah, Speaker 1 (3:37) exactly. So I studied abroad in Australia in 2000. I was a student at the University of Melbourne. And I used to, my drink of choice when I was there was a Victoria Bitter. So vey vey is what you say. The Australian accent. But you couldn't pull it off. You couldn't do it. I could not order a Vebe and not laugh at myself. And so I ordered a Victoria Bitter. But I've sort of been told it's like when I told the adults I was with that I had ordered this, they found that hilarious. It's like a Long Island iced tea. Well, it's like a college drink. It's like if I went to a bar and ordered a Milwaukee's Best right now. Speaker 3 (4:14) See, I ordered Long Island iced tea. They were like a lot of... drink for like not Speaker 1 (4:20) much money. Yeah. Yeah. So it's well, I mean, I still like them. I really enjoyed my veybe as it was. I had two of them in the course of my, I was four days on the ground there. And cause it took a long time to get there and a day full travel to get home, but it was an adventure for sure. I had on my list for the year to speak somewhere interesting. If you want to know Speaker 3 (4:42) what Laura did during every hour of her 16 hour flight or her 24 hour journey. You can subscribe to her sub stack. Yes. Speaker 1 (4:48) I hope you put that one under paywall. Yeah. Yeah. People want to know how I spent, maybe they want to know how I spent 16 hours on an airplane. It is a long time to be on an airplane, but the upside of having endured that is when I got on the flight from Dallas to Philly and it's. two hours and 50 minutes in the air. I'm like, this is nothing. This is nothing. Like there is no domestic flight at this point. That's going to be. That will bother you. That will bother me. I mean, California is like five hours in the air and then it's like four hours and 15 home. Even Hawaii is Speaker 3 (5:18) almost no Speaker 1 (5:18) big deal. It's like two Californias. Yeah, well, it's still a ways, but I will tell myself that when I go. You'll tell yourself that. At least it's not 16 hours in the air. But all time passes and now I am on the other side of it and recovering. I actually. have not been that bad on sleep coming home because I don't think I ever adjusted. I was just like, I mean, I was by myself. I had stuff during the day, but it's not like I had to push myself to do things late at night or anything like that. So I would sleep from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. and just roll with it. That's still an adjustment. Yeah, Speaker 3 (5:49) maybe. Speaker 1 (5:50) It was like a 12 hour shift. Yeah, 14 hour shift, 14 hour shift. Speaker 3 (5:55) I was like, that sounds like my normal life. I mean, close. Speaker 1 (5:58) My jet lagged Australia. Sarah, how Sarah does. Well, the thing, I was waking up very early and using my mornings productively. Like I would work from four to six and then get ready and then go run around the harbor and eat breakfast afterwards. It's nice to have that time. Yeah, I didn't mind it. I didn't mind it at all, but probably not in my normal life. So what have you been up Speaker 3 (6:17) to, Sarah? I just feel like I've been in my... returning to normalcy journey. I mean, not me per se, but like my husband couldn't, after he broke his leg, he couldn't drive for a while. He wasn't at work and now he's walking. He is holding one crutch right now, but I think by the time this airs, he will be walking with no support. He went back to work, which is great. The kids are. They're in school. They're finally, they were home for a long time this summer because we had planned a two-week trip that didn't happen. And so it ended up turning into like, wow, that was more weeks than my kids could be home doing nothing for us not to all go slightly insane. And we're through it now and I'm so happy. And I just, yeah, I like, I've really enjoyed seeing our quintile four rhythms shift into gear. And honestly, it's gone really well so far. So I'm just. in a good place, appreciating my normal life, perhaps more than usual. Speaker 1 (7:08) Yeah, that's good. Kids are back to school. You're back to your routines. Routines are good, especially when you have well-thought-through routines, right? Yes, exactly. And some of these things Speaker 3 (7:20) we're going to talk about in this episode may pertain to said routines. Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:23) Well, so we like to do some of these what we're loving now kind of episodes, especially good when we're sitting here together. We love getting together in person when that works out. Even though we've been recording virtually for lo these many years, we get together probably about three, sometimes four times a year, which is always good. So we're going to have a list some of our things we're loving now. What do you have first, Sarah? Speaker 3 (7:47) I am loving my Friday Starbucks mornings. So this evolved when I started working at a different location on Friday. And I realized I used to drive the kids to school on Friday, but it's in the complete opposite direction of the school. and there's not really a realistic way for me to make it to my clinic on time and also drop everyone off. So great. So it's no longer my thing. Our nanny actually does not work late at all on Fridays. No one has anything late this year. Hurrah. And so I feel fine having her do the morning drive. So she does that. I have complete freedom, which we'll get to a little bit later in one of my other favorites, but I've just been leaving pretty early. And then I have like 30 to 45 minutes where I sit at Starbucks. I order something. a little bit autumnal. So the fall twist here is that right around the dawn of September, I switched from my customary banana bread to pumpkin bread. And I really enjoy it with my cappuccino. And I sit there and I write my five on a Friday blog post. And I'm just like, I look forward to it every Friday. And it's a busy clinical day for me. Like it's actually a very full day, but I framing it this way. And then also the fact that I kind of come home and we don't have any late night kid things. It's I love my Fridays right now. Speaker 1 (8:55) Fridays are good. Fridays are good. I love that. That sounds like a lovely routine. I haven't really gotten into the pumpkin bread, but maybe someday. So one of my current loves is my library halls that I go to the big library in our town and they just have more books than I'm going to be able to get through, I'm sure, at any point. So I usually get about six or seven books and I wind up keeping them more or less for a month because they renew automatically after three weeks. So I go about once a month. And I get a mix of science titles, sort of like essays. I get sometimes history, a lot of coffee table books. And I had a well-timed coffee table book in my most recent haul that I got Dolly Parton's start of the show. And then, of course, we got the news that she passed away. And I was like, oh, I