Moon Rocks Wanted (guest episode)

(Guest episode) On September 18, 1998, an unusual ad ran in USA Today — a company called John's Estate Sales was looking to buy a moon rock. But the phone number on the ad didn't lead to, say, a store front in a strip mall. Instead, the phone number belonged to Special Agent Joe Gutheinz at NASA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Nicola Twilley?

  Hello, listeners. You're listening to Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history. I'm Nicola Twilley.

• 0:09Cynthia Graber?

  And I'm Cynthia Graber. We are spending this month creating some mouthwatering new episodes for 2025.

• 0:15Nicola Twilley?

  If you're sober curious, or doing a Dry January thing, or even just want to know what all the fuss is about, we have an episode coming up just for you. If you've ever wondered how on earth they get the booze out of beer, wine, and cocktails? We've got the answers.

• 0:30Cynthia Graber?

  Plus, we can't report on alcohol-free booze without actually tasting it. If you've been wondering how it tastes, so did we, and we have the scoop.

• 0:37Nicola Twilley?

  And that's just one of the smorgasbord of fabulous new episodes we're cooking up for you. Coming up, we've got Andy and so-called superfoods, we've got the world's most popular fruit, we've got an astonishing story of sacrifice and seeds.

• 0:52Cynthia Graber?

  And we've got the scoop on the newest research about ultra-processed foods. What are they, and what might they be doing to you?

• 0:59Nicola Twilley?

  But while we get busy tasting, chatting with experts, and going behind the scenes, we've got a little something to keep you going in between. A guest episode from our friends at Criminal. Criminal is a podcast about crime with stories of people who've done wrong, been wronged, or who got caught somewhere in the middle. And this particular episode is a banger. It's about moon rocks, actual rocks from the moon. Need I say more?

• 1:24Cynthia Graber?

  Definitely give it a listen. And if you're looking for other podcasts to add to your rotation, there's a new one out from our friends at the Food and Environment Reporting Network. It's called Buzzkill. It's all about the importance of bees, butterflies, bats, and bugs to our food supply, what's putting them at risk, and what we can do about it. Check out Buzzkill wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy Criminal, and we'll be back in two weeks with a brand-new episode.

• 1:49Cynthia Graber?

  As soon as autumn rolls around and you swap your iced lattes for pumpkin spice, that's your signal to start thinking about the holidays. The decor, the gifts, the shopping lists, but more importantly, the holiday treats. Cheese cakes, cookies, is there anything better?

• 2:09Speaker 02

  And when the recipe calls for cream cheese, there's only one option. Philadelphia, the original cream cheese, made with fresh milk and real cream. This holiday season, whether you're going all out or keeping it simple, make it really Philly good. Find your favorite holiday recipe at creamcheese.com.

• 2:36Speaker 03

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• 3:13Speaker 04

  I was glued to the TV when Apollo 11 launched. It was, I was glued to the TV when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon.

• 3:25Speaker 04

  I watched Apollo 12. I was, I watched Apollo 13 and worried about that. Apollo 14, 15, 16, and 17. And I wished that we had 18, 19, and 20.

• 3:38Speaker 05

  Did you ever think about becoming an astronaut?

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, probably not. Was not really in my forecast that that would be something I would do. But about six months ago, I almost bought Neil Armstrong's house that was being sold, but then they upped the price and I was out of the market.

• 4:01Speaker 05

  You almost bought Neil Armstrong's house?

• 4:03Speaker 04

  I almost bought Neil Armstrong's house, yeah. Six-car garage.

• 4:09Speaker 05

  Do you have six cars?

• 4:12Speaker 04

  No, but I would have gotten a couple more.

• 4:17Speaker 05

  Joe Goodheinz was a special agent at NASA's Office of Inspector General from 1990 to 2000. When he first started, he worked out of Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where all of the Apollo missions launched from.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  You know, you're driving into the center, past the guards. You're looking at the Vehicle Assembly Building, which is one of the tallest buildings in the world. You have a line of sight at some points to the launch pads, OPM, the Orbital Processing Facilities, and so forth. Really cool stuff. When you walk around the center, you actually see alligators and wild animals out right along where the astronauts or NASA officials would be walking. It's really a different world.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  Joe Goodheinz later moved to Johnson Space Center in Texas. His office was next to a group of Russian scientists who were stationed there after the end of the Cold War. He investigated many crimes involving NASA. Once, he found someone was using fake leases with NASA to steal millions of dollars. The man used the money for a pizza chain, to make a horror movie, and run a candy business. In 1997, Joe Goodheinz investigated the cause of a fire on the Russian space station Mir, while an American astronaut was also stationed there. Another time, a man showed up at Marshall Space Flight Center, claiming he was an astronaut.

• 5:54Speaker 05

  He had sent them a fake resume that also said he had worked for the CIA. He was allowed into the mission control room. Later, he tried to get clearance to fly a jet. Joe Goodheinz tracked him down and arrested him for impersonating a federal officer.

• 6:12Speaker 05

  But none of this is why we called him. We called him to talk about something else.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  The thing about moon rocks is that it's like the ultimate collector's item. You're getting something that was brought back from space by man to Earth that nobody is allowed to own because NASA treats them as a national treasure.

• 6:37Speaker 05

  In the United States, in most cases, it's illegal to privately own any artifacts brought back from NASA's missions, like moon rocks.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  Who paid the money to go to the moon? The United States government, right? And what do we do on the moon? Essentially, we mined for moon rocks. I mean, we just picked them up off the ground, but we had a very expensive venture to go to the moon, collect the moon rocks, and bring them back. And then the United States government said, OK, these moon rocks are now US property. They're a national treasure. They belong to the people. They belong to history. They don't belong to individuals. And that was the thinking of it. Nobody has a right to a moon rock unless the government that owns those moon rocks gives them up.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  And the United States was pretty tight with their moon rocks.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  On July 24, 1969, Apollo 11's crew returned to Earth with 47 pounds of rocks and dust from the moon. That same year, people started trying to sell fake moon rocks. Newspapers reported that a woman ran an ad that she was selling moon dust for nearly $2 an ounce in California. In Florida, a salesman was selling moon rocks door to door.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  He was a vacuum cleaner salesman in Miami. He was knocking on doors, saying, hey, look, I got a moon rock from Neil Armstrong. Would you buy it for $5? And there were a lot of people that said, well, gee, that's a great deal. And they bought the dirt that he had in his hands, that of course was not from the moon, for $5. And it was the perfect scam, if you think about it. You go into a party and you say, hey, look, guys, I shouldn't be showing you this, but I got an Apollo moon rock. And you know, this means a lot to me, but I could let it go for X amount of money. But you can't tell anybody.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  And they would take it and they would put it in their safe and they'd lock it away. Of course, at some point, the word gets out and, you know, some guy, relative or whatever, will say, "Hey, you got scammed." But until then, it's the perfect con. You don't know about it until months later, years later, or maybe never.

• 9:06Speaker 05

  In 1995, two brothers, Ronald and Brian Trockman, tried to sell a moon rock through an auction house in New York. They said that astronaut John Glenn had given the rock to their father in honor of his work for the space program. But John Glenn was a Mercury astronaut, not an Apollo astronaut.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Mercury did not go to the moon.

• 9:29Speaker 05

  The Mercury missions were test flights NASA was conducting to see if they could put an astronaut in orbit around the Earth. First, they sent up empty ships, then a chimpanzee, then ships with humans, and then, in 1962, a ship went into orbit around the Earth. That one was piloted by John Glenn. John Glenn was the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth. He named his ship the Friendship Seven, after the seven original astronauts selected for the Mercury missions. He said he came up with the name with his kids. When news about the Trockman brothers' fake rock broke, John Glenn issued a statement.

• 10:10Speaker 05

  He had never owned a moon rock and had never given anyone a moon rock as a gift. Ronald and Brian Trockman were charged with conspiracy and wire fraud. A man named Richard Keith Mountain said he had mooned dust from the Apollo 11 mission. Between 1996 and 1998, he sold it to people in the United States, Canada, and Australia. He said the dust had been verified by Buzz Aldrin. A NASA laboratory tested the dust and said it was not from the moon. Richard Mountain made over $90,000. He was sentenced to nearly two years in prison.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  Joe Goodheinz didn't see the fake moon rock market ending anytime soon. So he came up with a plan. He called it Operation Lunar Eclipse.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  My idea was put an ad in USA Today with an astronaut jumping on the moon and under the caption, "Moon Rocks Wanted." And then putting our fictitious address and their phone number to contact.

• 11:16Speaker 05

  When someone called the number, it would ring a recorded phone line, an answering machine in Joe's office at NASA. The message would say that they had reached a company called John's Estate Sales. Joe would pretend to be a man named Tony Corriasso.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  Corriasso was actually taken from my uncle, Dr. Corriasso's last name. And I had a rich buyer and I was, who's interested in all things NASA. And you tell me you got a moon rock. We're very interested. Let's talk more.

• 11:49Speaker 05

  The ad ran on September 18th, 1998. About two weeks later, Joe Goodheinz got a phone call.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  I get a call from a guy by the name of Rosen, Alan Rosen. He says, Tony, you know all those guys that are calling you about moon rocks? That's bull. He said, I've got the real thing. And I'm going like, okay. He said, Tony, here's my web address. I want you to click this in and take a look at what I got. And I click it in and it's this huge, long thing. It's not, you know, a short deal with a bunch of symbols, the whole nine yards. I pull it up and I see a 10 by 14 inch plaque with a lucite ball with a rock in it,

• 12:40Speaker 04

  the flag of recipient country and two metal plates.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  And I kicked back and I go, this is unlike anything we expected to see. It's unlike any scam that I've ever heard of. I thought to myself, oh, this is the real thing. When we started Operation Lunar Eclipse, I was looking for con artists selling bogus moon rocks. I was not looking for people selling real moon rocks. I didn't even know it was a problem. Nobody knew it was a problem.

• 13:16Speaker 05

  I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

• 13:24Speaker 05

  We'll be right back.

• 13:33Speaker 05

  Support for the show comes from Google Gemini. You know that moment when curiosity strikes? You're exploring a new city with the family and a sculpture catches your daughter's eye. What is that? Who made it? With Gemini, you can snap a picture and get a fully interactive breakdown of its history, architecture, and even hidden secrets. Gemini is built for moments like that. Whether you're learning something new, solving a problem, or looking for your next favorite thing, Google Gemini is here to help. Download Gemini, Google's AI app, or visit gemini.google.com to learn more.

• 14:12Speaker 06

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• 14:46Speaker 03

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• 15:24Speaker 05

  Between 1969 and 1972, the Apollo missions brought back around 840 pounds of rocks and soil from the moon. Most of these are stored at Johnson Space Center in Texas and at a facility at White Sands, New Mexico. They're kept in special pressurized cabinets in an atmosphere of nitrogen. No one is allowed to touch the rocks directly in the lab. Scientists have used them to try to figure out how the moon formed. When the first lunar samples from Apollo 11 were brought to Earth, they were taken to a lab and placed in containers with animals, like mice and shrimp, as well as dozens of different kinds of plants.

• 16:06Speaker 05

  Scientists wanted to make sure the samples wouldn't cause any harm before anyone was allowed to study them.

• 16:14Speaker 05

  In the 1970s, the United States gave moon rocks and moon dust to 135 countries in all 50 states as gifts. The samples are mounted on a plaque with an inscription. "This fragment is a portion of a rock from the Taurus-Lithro Valley of the Moon." They were called goodwill rocks.

• 16:36Speaker 05

  When Joe Goodheins saw Allen Rosen's picture of his moon rock, he knew it had to be one of the Goodwill rocks. But he didn't know which country it belonged to.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  The plaque, the center of the flag was blocked out. And the name of the recipient country was blocked out. I find out that in Central and South America, there are half dozen countries with the identical flag, except for the center of the flag. And so what he was telling me is one of these six countries. And so I start to check around.

• 17:11Speaker 05

  He started calling government officials in the six countries, but no one knew where the rocks were. Joe set up a call between Allen Rosen and an agent from the US Postal Service, who was undercover as John Marta, the man interested in buying a moon rock. His real name was Bob Krieger. When he asked Allen Rosen about the history of the rock, Allen Rosen claimed he had bought it from a retired Colonel in Central America. Bob Krieger asked if they could meet in person. They arranged to meet at a restaurant called Tuna's in Miami. Instead of their usual suits, Joe Goodheins and Bob Krieger dressed casually.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  I've kind of got a windbreaker on, and I got my Glock and my belt in the back. Krieger has a fanny pack on, and he has his gun there.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  Under his windbreaker, Joe Goodheins was also wearing a wire. Two US Customs agents were stationed two blocks away, listening in.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  So Allen Rosen comes in, and another guy who identifies as his financial advisor. And we sit down.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  Is he suspicious of you?

• 18:27Speaker 04

  Always. He would tell me from day one that he thought we were undercover agents.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  They didn't trust us. That he was very suspicious that our intent was to kick in the door and grab the moon rock. You know, he wasn't a dumb guy. He had some brains and he was, he was testing us all the way along.

• 18:50Speaker 05

  Alan Rosen told Joe Goodheinz that he was nervous that people were looking for him.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  He's talking about how he half expects some South American military, paramilitary guys to come around the, the side of the wall with AK-47s or something like that.

• 19:09Speaker 05

  Joe Goodheinz asked how the rock had been brought into the country. He wanted him to admit to smuggling it in. But all Alan Rosen would say was that there was no paper trail. He had brought photographs of the rock, but not the real thing. He said he still didn't trust them yet. Eventually, Joe Goodheinz told Alan Rosen that he wanted to buy the moon rock.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  I said, I want the whole moon rock. I want the plaque. I want the whole nine yards.

• 19:36Speaker 05

  And Alan said he wanted $5 million. NASA considers moon rocks priceless. Because they're so rare, it's hard to put a value on them. But in 2002, three interns at NASA stole a safe containing moon rocks from Johnson Space Center. During the trial, NASA estimated that based on how much the Apollo mission had cost to retrieve these samples, each gram of moon rock that had been stolen was worth about $50,000 in 1973. Today, that would be nearly $370,000 per gram.

• 20:20Speaker 05

  After their meeting with Alan Rosen, Joe Goodheinz and Bob Krieger drove back to Texas from Miami.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  And Rosen calls again. He says, I think, I think this is a sting operation. I think you're undercover agents. I said, How can we prove it? He said, give me five customers from John's Estate Sales right now. I'm going to call them right now and I'm going to, to see if there really is a John's Estate Sales. So Krieger and I start calling five agents at home. I say, hey, look, you're going to get a call. Sorry about this. You're now a customer of John's Estate Sales. The Inspector General, Roberta Gross, wonderful Inspector General, good person, was not happy

• 21:11Speaker 04

  that I gave up the phone numbers of, private phone numbers of five agents.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  Alan Rosen was satisfied. Afterwards, Joe heard that NASA arranged for the agents to get new phone numbers.

• 21:23Speaker 04

  It sold it. He believed that there was a John's Estate Sales after that because he couldn't believe that anybody would set that up in the middle of the night like that.

• 21:34Speaker 05

  So you passed the test. He calls these fake clients and agrees to, to sell the rock. But he was asking for a lot of money.

• 21:45Speaker 04

  That was test one. Test two comes up. He wants proof that we have $5 million to buy the moon rock. I go, hey, no problem. Call NASA, hey, could you, could you set aside $5 million for the sting operation? No. FBI, no. Postal, no. We went to DC. Somebody even called the CIA, no. Nobody had $5 million.

• 22:15Speaker 05

  And then Joe Goodheins got an idea.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  My father was a big fan of Ross Perot. My father was a career Marine and Ross Perot was known to be good to the military.

• 22:30Speaker 05

  Ross Perot had served in the US Navy as a young man. He became a millionaire in 1968 when his technology company went public on the stock market. In the 1970s, he tried to rescue two of his company's executives who'd been arrested during the Iranian revolution.

• 22:48Speaker 05

  In 1989, someone poisoned the tree deoak in Austin, Texas, which has been called the most perfect specimen of any living tree in the country. We did an episode about it called Perfect Specimen. Ross Perot got involved, offering a blank check to save the tree. We called him for that episode.

• 23:07Speaker 07

  And they called me and they asked me and I did it. And that's all I can tell you.

• 23:13Speaker 05

  Joe Goodheinz wondered if Ross Perot would help with money for the moon rock.

• 23:18Speaker 04

  I'm looking at Krieger. I'm going, I wonder what would happen if I called up Ross Perot's company in Dallas and asked him if he could come up with $5 million bucks.

• 23:31Speaker 05

  This was six years after Ross Perot had run for president. Joe Goodheinz got Ross Perot's secretary.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  And I basically said, look, I'm with NASA. I'm a special agent and we have a sting operation that we're doing and we need his help. And so she says, OK, I'll let him know. And so I'm literally hanging up the phone, looking at Krieger, and I'm going like, can you believe that? I got through to his personal secretary.

• 24:03Speaker 05

  A half hour later, Joe Goodheinz's phone rang.

• 24:06Speaker 04

  I mean, that quick. Ring, ring. Pick up the phone. Hello, Joe. This is Ross Perot. How can I help you?

• 24:16Speaker 05

  When he explained Operation Lunar Eclipse, Ross Perot said yes, he would give them the money.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  He actually said, hey, if you need me to go down there and help you with it, I'll do it. I'm going like, no. I got into a bit of a pickle on this. I didn't go through my chain of command to ask about calling Ross Perot. I just did it.

• 24:42Speaker 05

  Ross Perot sent the money to an account at the same bank in Miami where Alan Rosen was keeping the moon rock in a safe deposit box. Joe Goodheinz got a letter from the bank's vice president as proof of funds for Alan Rosen.

• 24:57Speaker 05

  Alan Rosen agreed to sell the rock, but he didn't want to do the deal directly. He wanted to go through an intermediary. He wanted the intermediary to meet him in Miami. And before he'd show anyone the rock, he wanted Joe to prove he was in Texas, not Florida.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  I said, OK, how can I do that? Stand by your phones. I'm going to call you. Now, Rosen, he was a smart guy, but I don't think he understood the way cell phones work. And I'm going like, my cell, my phones are cell phones. So that area code goes wherever I go. But I'm not going to tell him that.

• 25:39Speaker 05

  The plan was for Alan Rosen to meet with a bank employee who had photographed the rock and send it to Joe as proof that the rock was real. But the bank employee was actually an undercover agent from US Customs. When Alan Rosen opened the safe deposit box and handed over the moon rock, the customs agent presented him with a warrant.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  So we seized the moon rock. Later that day, I took the moon rock, put it in my pants pocket, had a briefcase. I had my Glock underneath my jacket coat, boarded the plane armed with the briefcase, never leaving my hand. And the bottom line was the, you know, the idea was anybody would be focused on the briefcase, not my pocket. So I walked around with $5 million bucks in my pocket for a day or so.

• 26:36Speaker 05

  Well, how big is $5 million?

• 26:40Speaker 04

  1.142 grams. A little pebble, little pebble.

• 26:47Speaker 05

  So you were just carrying this little pebble around in your pocket?

• 26:51Speaker 04

  For a day.

• 26:52Speaker 05

  I mean, was it in something spare? Did you wrap it up a little bit or?

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Uh, uh, uh, no, it was just in my pocket. Just in my pocket. Didn't try to make any type of big deal about it. Uh, if anybody noticed me at all, I wanted to notice the briefcase. Uh, you know, the idea they could knock me down, take the briefcase. But the, the moon rock was gonna be, uh, secure. And, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, nobody really knew at that point that we had a, uh, seized the moon rock, right? So it was not like anybody was looking for me walking on the plane with a moon rock. And I gotta tell you, I've felt the moon rock and it feels like a, um, a rock.

• 27:40Speaker 05

  No magical powers coming out of it.

• 27:42Speaker 04

  No magical powers, none.

• 27:47Speaker 05

  We'll be right back.

• 27:57Speaker 02

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• 29:19Speaker 05

  When Joe Goodheinz got home to Texas, he had the rock tested by a geologist at Johnson Space Center, who confirmed it really was from the moon. What was the reaction when you brought the moon rock into NASA?

• 29:41Speaker 04

  Celebratory. It was like a major victory. Everybody was giving high fives. It was really something that nobody had ever seen before. It was certainly not the way we expected our case to go. And so it was high fives all around.

• 30:02Speaker 05

  In 2001, the rock was taken to Miami. It was met by a team of customs agents at the airport. It wasn't clear if the rock had been stolen or not by the Honduran Colonel. So it wasn't clear if Allen Rosen had done anything wrong, or if the United States had the right to seize the rock from Allen Rosen. There was a trial. United States versus one lucite ball containing lunar material, one moon rock, and one 10-inch by 14-inch wooden plaque. The court decided that the Colonel had illegally gotten the rock from the President of Honduras, and the United States did have the right to seize it from Allen Rosen.

• 30:45Speaker 05

  But in the end, Allen Rosen was not charged, and the rock was returned to Honduras.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  I would actually fly to DC and be present when they presented the moon rock to the Ambassador of Honduras, who had his son present. It was very cool. He seemed to love the moon rock.

• 31:05Speaker 05

  It's now in a children's museum. In 2000, Joe Goodheinz retired from NASA. He opened a law firm with his sons. And he started teaching criminal investigation classes. One day, a friend of Joe's told him, "You're the only one teaching." He used to work at NASA.

• 31:26Speaker 04

  My mentor said, "You should incorporate something in your class that's unique to your experience."

• 31:35Speaker 04

  And I thought immediately, moon rocks.

• 31:37Speaker 05

  After Operation Lunar Eclipse, Joe realized that many goodwill rocks were unaccounted for.

• 31:43Speaker 04

  The countries I was contacting, nobody seemed to know where their moon rocks were. So I'm going like, okay. I'll also create what I'm going to call the Moon Rock Project and teach my future investigators how to conduct an investigation that's safe, because I'm not going to allow them to interface with people, only over the phone, over the lines, and so forth. They could go to museums, but that was the extent of it, no face-to-face type things. And so the bottom line was that my students, basically, they were coming back with goose eggs.

• 32:25Speaker 05

  As part of their project, his students were supposed to publish an editorial in a local newspaper with their findings. In Alaska, one of his students found that the state's moon rock was supposed to be in the Alaska Transportation Museum, but it had disappeared after a fire in 1973. When she published her findings in the Capital City Weekly, a man named Coleman Anderson came forward claiming he had the moon rock.

• 32:52Speaker 04

  Anderson is one of the skippers from the first season of The Deadliest Catch.

• 32:58Speaker 05

  He claimed he found the moon rock after the fire, when he was a teenager. He thought it was a, quote, "neat souvenir."

• 33:06Speaker 05

  Coleman Anderson sued the state of Alaska. He wanted to be given legal ownership of the rock, or to be paid for its return.

• 33:13Speaker 04

  And so they had a lawsuit that went through, and, long story short, he loses. And NASA gets back the moon rock, which now is in the hands of Alaska.

• 33:27Speaker 05

  Another one of his students found that Colorado was missing its moon rock. No one had seen it for years. Governor John Vanderhof had accepted it on behalf of the state in 1974.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  So there's a front-page story about the conclusions of his investigation. That day, John Vanderhof picks up a phone and says, "I got it. It's been on my wall for 35 years."

• 33:54Speaker 05

  He says that he and his students have found over 70 missing goodwill rocks, including ones for West Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, and the countries of Romania and Canada. Once, one of his sons gave him a present, a spinning globe inscribed with the words, "Moon rock hunter." Joe Goodhines keeps it on his desk. What did your students think when you told them that they'd be looking for moon rocks?

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Well, you know, initially, I get this reaction from the first class, like, really? I'm going like, yeah, well, we could be looking for widgets, but the moon rocks have a little bit more value. But after the first class, everybody was wired in on it. And whenever I would teach a class about the moon rock project, I would say to my students, I interviewed an astronaut talking about Operation Lunar Eclipse, and I said, how much is a moon rock worth? Because I'm trying to find out if, when I'm negotiating with this guy for $5 million, if I'm just insane to do that. And he says, I don't know.

• 35:06Speaker 04

  I said, well, thank you very much, I'm closing up. But he said, I'll tell you what it's worth to me. And I'm going like, okay. He says, when I was a kid, I always wanted to be a pilot, always wanted to be a pilot. And he said, then I go to this museum, and they have this NASA section. He says, he starts walking towards the moon rock display. And he says, somewhere between starting on that journey to that moon rock and actually arriving at that moon rock, he had decided that he was going to be an astronaut. I would say to my students, this is why it's important that nobody should privately own

• 35:51Speaker 04

  a moon rock, because we want some kid to be able to walk into a museum and be inspired to do something the way that astronaut was inspired by that moon rock. And having some millionaire walking around with a moon rock in his pocket doesn't do anybody any good.

• 36:09Speaker 05

  If all of these moon rocks were recovered, what would you do then?

• 36:15Speaker 04

  Well, I wouldn't be talking about them as much, but no, I'd be probably visit a few of them. You know, they've been part of my life since 1998, so I probably would go and take a look at some of them.

• 36:35Speaker 05

  Joe Goodhein says there are still 150 moon rocks missing.

• 36:46Speaker 05

  Criminal is created by Lauren Spoor and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Zdžeko, Lily Clark, Lena Silson, and Megan Kinnane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julianne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter. We hope you'll join our new membership program, Criminal Plus. Once you sign up, you can listen to Criminal episodes without any ads, and you'll

• 37:24Speaker 05

  get bonus episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spoor, too. To learn more, go to thisiscriminal.com/plus. We're on Facebook and Twitter @CriminalShow and Instagram at Criminal underscore Podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

• 38:07Speaker 02

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