What if confidence begins long before a child enters a classroom?
Stories from the Mat, with Jan brings together families, educators and experts to explore the ideas, stories and practical tools that help children become confident learners from the very beginning.
Hosted by best-selling children's author Jan Falconer, each episode combines thoughtful conversation, practical insight and real-world experience to help parents, grandparents, carers and educators support children with confidence.
Because the smallest moments can shape a child's future.
Episode 24: Matoaka: The Real Story Behind Pocahontas
Most people know the name Pocahontas.
But her story begins with another name: Matoaka.
In Episode 24 — Matoaka: The Real Story Behind the Name Pocahontas, Jan takes a different approach to storytelling because the person at the centre of this episode was real.
Matoaka was born around 1596. She was also known as Amonute, while Pocahontas was a nickname. She was the daughter of Wahunsenaca, whom the English knew as Chief Powhatan, and she belonged to a world, family, culture and homeland that existed before the English established Jamestown.
Jan examines the famous claim that Pocahontas saved Captain John Smith's life with particular care. Smith later said that she did. Another interpretation suggests he misunderstood a ceremony, while the Mattaponi oral history says Matoaka wasn't present. We don't know exactly what happened.
The surviving history follows Matoaka through changing relations between the Powhatan peoples and English settlers, her capture by the English in 1613, captivity, conversion to Christianity, marriage to John Rolfe and the birth of their son Thomas.
In 1616, Matoaka crossed the Atlantic to England, where she was presented as Lady Rebecca Rolfe. She died at Gravesend the following year, aged only about twenty-one, before she could return home.
But stories continued to grow around her.
Jan follows one particularly uncomfortable part of that legacy into Virginia's 1924 Racial Integrity Act and its so-called “Pocahontas exception”. She then moves forward again to actor Edward Norton, whose family story of descent from Pocahontas was investigated through documentary records on Finding Your Roots.
Throughout the episode, Jan resists filling the gaps in Matoaka's story with imagined thoughts or feelings. What survives comes from accounts made by other people and Indigenous oral history, and those sources sometimes contradict one another.
Perhaps after four hundred years of people telling stories about Pocahontas, it's worth remaining curious about Matoaka — the real young woman underneath them.
Explore further
National Park Service — Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend
Explore the surviving written history and Mattaponi oral history, including the places where the accounts differ:
https://home.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/pocahontas-her-life-and-legend (https://home.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/pocahontas-her-life-and-legend)
BBC News — Edward Norton's Pocahontas ancestry discovery
Read about the genealogical research into Edward Norton's family connection to Pocahontas:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64158055 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64158055)
1 Nov 2026
Episode 23 : The Tortoise and the Hare: Are You Running Your Own Race?
Most of us know the moral attached to The Tortoise and the Hare: slow and steady wins the race.
But Jan has been wondering whether slow is really the important word.
For her, it's steady.
In Episode 23 — The Tortoise and the Hare: Are You Running Your Own Race?, Jan returns to one of Aesop's best-known fables and hears something slightly different in it.
There's nothing wrong with the hare being fast. Speed is useful and natural ability is wonderful. The problem is that the hare thinks being fast is enough. The tortoise, meanwhile, keeps moving towards the finishing line.
That opens a reflection on preparation, practice and the difference between genuine improvisation and simply winging it. Jan turns to Ella Fitzgerald, whose extraordinary improvisation and scat singing came from a deep knowledge of her craft. Preparation didn't make her rigid. It gave her freedom.
Jan also reflects on Tony Hudgell, who suffered terrible injuries as a baby and lost both his legs. At five years old, using prosthetic legs and crutches, Tony set himself the challenge of walking ten kilometres — and completed it step by step.
And then there's Jan's own race.
This is podcast number 23.
She could compare herself with somebody who has made 500 episodes. But why? That's their race.
Perhaps the tortoise understood something important. He wasn't trying to become the hare. He knew his pace and where he was going.
Jan is careful about one thing: preparation doesn't guarantee recognition, applause or success. Sometimes people prepare beautifully and somebody else gets the prize.
But perhaps applause isn't the only measure of accomplishment.
Sometimes the satisfaction is being able to say:
I did that. I finished it. And I did it properly.
So is the tortoise really teaching us how to win?
Or might he be showing us how to finish?
Explore further
Tony Hudgell Foundation — discover more about Tony and his story:
https://www.tonyhudgellfoundation.org/?utm_source=chatgpt.com (https://www.tonyhudgellfoundation.org/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)
Ella Fitzgerald — explore the music and work of the extraordinary Lady Ella:
https://www.ellafitzgerald.com/#/ (https://www.ellafitzgerald.com/#/)
25 Oct 2026
Episode 22: Finn McCool: When the Landscape Tells a Story
What happens when human beings look at an extraordinary landscape and wonder how it got there?
In Episode 22 — Finn McCool: When the Landscape Tells a Story, Jan travels to Ireland and the Giant's Causeway, where thousands of remarkable stone columns stretch towards the sea.
Today, geology gives us an explanation involving volcanic activity, cooling lava and basalt. But storytellers had another answer: a giant built them.
Finn McCool — the anglicised name many people grew up hearing for the Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhaill — builds a great causeway across the sea to confront the Scottish giant Benandonner. Unfortunately for Finn, when his opponent arrives, he is much bigger than expected.
Fortunately, Finn's wife Oonagh has a plan involving a cradle and a very large “baby”.
It's a story Jan loves because it's ridiculous, clever and funny. But it also opens a much wider reflection on the stories people find within landscapes.
From the Giant's Causeway and a brief visit to Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, Jan returns to Aotearoa New Zealand and the kōrero of Maunga Taranaki that she grew up knowing.
She is careful not to equate the stories. The kōrero of Taranaki is not a Māori version of Finn McCool. They come from completely different peoples and carry their own whakapapa, meanings and traditions.
What interests Jan in placing them beside one another is something recognisably human: people look at landscapes and wonder why they are there, how they were formed and what happened.
Then somebody begins to tell a story.
And sometimes, once we've heard that story, we never see the landscape in quite the same way again.
Explore further
Jan has included this Puke Ariki resource as a doorway into the Taranaki kōrero, allowing listeners to explore the story from Taranaki rather than relying only on her telling of the version she grew up with:
https://terangiaoaonunui.pukeariki.com/story-collections/taranaki-stories/the-journey-of-mount-taranaki/ (https://terangiaoaonunui.pukeariki.com/story-collections/taranaki-stories/the-journey-of-mount-taranaki/)
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