The durian, a spiky fruit that grows across Southeast Asia, has a polarizing reputation for its pungent odor and strong taste. There are the durian haters — people who experience waves of revulsion at the mere thought of consuming one.

And then there are the superfans who sing its praises and travel the world to experience the rare and complex bliss it inspires on the palate. Those who relish this fruit say there’s a lot to love. It can be eaten raw (shortly after falling from the tree) or prepared as the hero of both sweet and savory dishes.

In this episode, host Ari Daniel travels with his children to a San Francisco restaurant to interview its chef and owner, Azalina Eusope, about her love of durian and the cuisine it inspires. And he speaks with Smithsonian contributing writer Tom Downey about his trip to Malaysia to experience the euphoria of fresh durian firsthand.

To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes about using fruit depicted in Renaissance paintings to rescue modern agriculture, an award-winning restaurant in New Orleans that showcases Senegalese cuisine, and a prehistoric pit that entombed animals for millennia, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions.

From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Sandra Lopez Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.

Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Photos courtesy of Dr. Susumu Tomiya and public domain.

Natural Trap Cave is a pit in northern Wyoming into which countless animals have fallen and met their untimely demise since the Pleistocene. Paleontologists today find the cave a treasure trove — a stunning record of the species that have long roamed the area. The mammalian fossils left behind shed light on the climate, food sources and migration patterns of these species from earlier eras.

Careful excavation work over the years that has involved sifting for bones, extracting ancient DNA, and looking for prehistoric pollen has revealed not just the plants and animals that once populated this part of the world, but also the ecosystems and climates that governed it. It also has required some rather advanced rappelling skills.

In this episode, host Ari Daniel speaks with vertebrate paleontologist Julie Meachen and Smithsonian contributing writer Michael Ray Taylor about what rappelling into Natural Trap Cave reveals about its contents and what it can tell us about Earth’s past.

To subscribe to "There’s More to That," and to listen to past episodes about the sex lives of dinosaurs, the numerous archaeological treasures that await beneath the city of Rome, and the science of roadkill, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions.

From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Sandra Lopez Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.

Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Photos courtesy of Dr. Susumu Tomiya and public domain.

In the fall of 1944, Japanese fighters opened fire on a wave of U.S. planes near Palau, including a bomber carrying pilot Jay Ross Manown Jr., gunner Anthony Di Petta and navigator Wilbur Mitts. Their aircraft crashed into the sea, and the three men were “presumed dead.” They were assigned by the Navy, like so many others, to a purgatorial category—not likely to be alive, but not declared dead, either.

Decades later, a group known as Project Recover worked relentlessly to track down the wreckage and then exhume the bones whose DNA could be tested. They ultimately identified the remains of all three crewmembers, allowing them to be laid to rest and giving a sense of closure to their families.

Host Ari Daniel speaks with Stephen Mihm, who wrote about this effort for Smithsonian magazine. And he interviews Rebecca Sheets, Manown’s niece, about what her uncle’s recovery meant for her and her family.

To subscribe to “There’s More to That,” and to listen to past episodes about the untold stories of the American Revolution, baseball at a Japanese internment camp and a recently solved mystery surrounding the burial of President John F. Kennedy, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

“There’s More to That” is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions.

From the magazine, our team is Ari Daniel, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Genevieve Sponsler, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Sandra Lopez Monsalve and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Our music is from APM Music.

Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Photo courtesy of the Mitts and Di Petta Families. Images via Ike Skelton Combined Arms Research Library and public domain.