Shawn Fitzmaurice

Episode 4. The Ashes of Echoes

Shawn Fitzmaurice — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 15:15:41 +0000

“Nothing’s ever truly gone, and nothing gained nor lost. It just transforms, unnoticed… forgotten… ’til it’s not. Like sickness, or a story, or a lifetime, or a plot.”
— Author Unknown

What is can never die. It transforms in the ashes of echoes.

Science Communication is Often Done Through Art

Shawn Fitzmaurice — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 16:47:29 +0000

Scientists are often not the greatest communicators, so most often, to bring science to the public requires one or more forms of art. But who teaches the artists, whose job it is to captivate you, about Science?

Evolution and the Predictive Power of Science

Shawn Fitzmaurice — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 21:57:25 +0000

Some of the great scientific theories unify our knowledge and have fundamentally changed the way we look at the world. Heliocentrism, for example, is the theory that the Earth and other planets revolve around the sun. Though the community soundly rejected it at one time, it best explained the motions of objects in the sky. In […]

Baby, I’m a Star. And so are you!

Shawn Fitzmaurice — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 01:54:40 +0000

You’re made of atoms. The fact that you’re not all hydrogen means that your home star (in your case, the Sun), is made from recycled material. In fact, the Sun is made from atoms that have come into being over several star’s lifecycles; Star is born, star manufactures new and different atoms in its core, […]

Papa Wasn’t A Rolling Stone, Otherwise he would have Obeyed The Law…s Of Physics

Shawn Fitzmaurice — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 12:00:57 +0000

If your papa was actually a rolling stone, his whereabouts would be predictable. If a boulder and a small rock are rolled down a hill together, logic, instinct, and all the insight you have will tell you that the boulder will travel further than the stone. What you might not have realized is that both […]

Boy meets Girl : Moves like Fuxjager *

Shawn Fitzmaurice — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 21:30:28 +0000

Humans aren’t the only members of the animal kingdom that work hard to impress and attract a mate. Often, guys battle it out in front of a desirable girl – hissing, flapping, ramming each other with horns. When the competition is over, the girl either accepts or rejects the boy. In this episode of Sciworks […]

The Carolina Butcher : 2-legged Crocodile Ancestor before the Dinosaurs *

Shawn Fitzmaurice — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 17:42:57 +0000

Crocodiles and their ancestors were around a hundred million years before the dinosaurs. One of the largest of the early crocodile family was discovered right here in North Carolina. It has been investigated and described by Dr. Lindsay Zanno, Director of the Paleontology and Geology lab at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, and […]

Investigating the Purpose of Female Beauty in Animals *

Shawn Fitzmaurice — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 17:42:57 +0000

In this episode of Sciworks Radio, Shawn spoke with Dr. Courtney Fitzpatrick, former postdoctoral fellow at Duke University and a co-author of a paper in the journal Evolution investigating the purpose of female animal beauty. And it’s not as straightforward as you might expect. Male animals are often more “attractive” than their female counterparts – […]

The Dinosaurs in your Back Yard – SciWorks Radio Podcast

Shawn Fitzmaurice — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 17:42:57 +0000

Dinosaurs are still here, and they’re an incredibly successful species. Ok, what about the fact that earth was hit by an asteroid 65 million years ago, resulting in the extinction of the dinosaurs? Three decades of evidence have forced us to re-think the story: Sixty-five million years ago, an astroid collided with Earth, resulting in […]

Blue-Footed Boobies’ Struggle To Survive in the Galapagos

Shawn Fitzmaurice — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 16:59:31 +0000

Winner of the National Science Foundations’s Science 360 Best Science Podcast Award, 2014. The Galapagos islands are famous for their association with Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution by natural selection. But the islands also have species who live there, but did not evolve there; Blue-Footed Boobies for example. Interestingly, they might be relying […]