Moms, Mats and Manuscripts

About Moms, Mats and Manuscripts

Moms, Mats and Manuscripts is a podcast hosted by Ksenia Volkova Tomaz, a former molecular biologist, yoga teacher and mindset coach for scientists, and mom. This is a space for honest, unpolished conversations about the parts of academia and ambition we don’t talk about enough. Here, we explore the mental and emotional load of being a young scientist or high-achieving woman: the pressure to constantly produce, the identity crises, the inner critic, the fear of slowing down, the guilt around rest, the invisible labour of motherhood, and the messy process of redefining success on your own terms. I share personal stories, science-backed insights, and yoga-psychology tools to help you navigate burnout, self-worth, boundaries, and the overwhelming push to “do more.” Think of this space as a friend's couch, where you can have a cup of coffee, relax, exhale and be seen.

Publisher

Ksenia Volkova Tomaz

Category

kids & family · science · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

24 May 2024

Latest episode

21 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

48 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 Jul 2026

   E47 - “I had a panic attack": becoming a mom as an assistant professor (with Dr Liz Berry)

   Dr. Elizabeth Berry, Assistant Professor at New York Medical College, returns to Moms, Mats and Manuscripts pregnant and really honest about all of it: the panic attack over due-date math, the fear that visible pregnancy would affect how colleagues saw her ambition, and the uncertainty of how the "mom" label would land on top of scientist and professor. We also go on a couple of rants neither of us saw coming - about childcare costs, people's desire to share horror stories instead of po...

2. 

   12 May 2026

   E46 - Due dates & deadlines: pregnancy in the last year of a PhD and figuring out who you are after (with Dr Katerina Danezi)

   In this episode of Moms, Mats, and Manuscripts, I sit down with my friend Katerina Danezi. Katerina finished her PhD with a baby on her hip, literally. She wrote 330 pages of her thesis in mere weeks, eight months postpartum, while breastfeeding and running on almost no sleep. In this episode, we talk about what it actually looks like to navigate pregnancy in the last year of a PhD: the lab politics, the guilt, the colleagues, the supervisor, and everything in between. We also get into the p...

3. 

   28 Apr 2026

   E45 - Not lost - becoming: matrescence, postpartum recovery, and radical rest (with Munirah Razak)

   After an emotionally challenging birth and a postpartum recovery marked by chronic pain, relationship breakdown, and identity crisis, my guest Munirah Razak, a yoga teacher, postpartum massage therapist, and matrescence coach, found her footing. Now she helps other mothers do the same. In this conversation, we explored matrescence - the profound, multi-dimensional transformation of becoming a mother, and why most of us are navigating it without a map, a village, or even a word for what we're ...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

922

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Spotify

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 51 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

62

Social presence

0

YouTube

66

Engagement

32

Contact Moms, Mats and Manuscripts

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.