August 27, 2025 • 49 mins
Is it legal to own a moon rock? Well... that depends. If it's a piece of the moon that made it to Earth naturally, then all good. If, however, it's a sample retrieved on purpose by NASA's Apollo program, you can get in some serious trouble for trying to snag it. In part one of this two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max explore what happens when powerful private collectors try to get their hands on forbidden moon rocks.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Who's that regular man on the moon?
Why it's none other than our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Max Moonman Williams. Yes, a lunar tic if ever there was.
You are Noel Brown. Yeah, I've never been to the Moon.
I don't even think it's real, to be honest.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
And I am Ben Bollen. Oh thanks, who.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Very much believes in the reality of the moon. If
I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Oh gosh. You know, everybody has these childhood dreams of
what they will be when they grow up, and once
upon a time, true story, nol I aspired to be
the first werewolf on the moon.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Figure it out. Yeah, how are you planning on getting
getting like anthropy, getting the bite? How are you going
to expose yourself to this malady?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Well, that's what they would call a sunk cost, that
malign in particular. The idea was if you're always on
the moon, then you're not, you know, vulnerable to the
various downfalls of like anthropy. But you'll riddle me this,
what do we get when we cross an aspiring astronaut
(01:43):
whirlwind summer fleeting, shout out to our research associate, the
one and only Jordan, and a safe full of priceless
moon rocks.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
What do we get? We get ridiculous history, Ben, I
think you know that. And can I also just say
that I do believe that the moon exists. I just
had to make that mention because I recently met a
fellow who said he did not believe that the moon existed,
(02:15):
not that the moon landing was faked, but that the
moon itself is entirely a fraud perpetrated on the people
of Earth.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Oh yeah, by whom who knows?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
They Ah capital they capital t They.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Already got it. We got we got a wild ride
for you today, folks. Combines some elements of a heist.
You know, we love a heist, some history, some science fact.
Maybe a little science fiction will sprinkling there just for
the hell of it. But man, Jordan really found us
a dinger, as they said in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yes, yes, twenty three, scould do on you, Jordan Research Associate. God,
that guy's a legend. I love hanging out with him.
Jordan has introduced us to a guy named Thad Roberts. Now,
Thad is very good at physics, and Thad is also
(03:09):
super in love with his girlfriend and he really wants
to impress her. He borrows a jeep, he wears a
scuba suit. He gets sort of into indus shenanigans. And
this is also a story about moon rocks.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, it is that and his uh which you might
call a ragtag crew of interns. Jr. Jordan rentag our
Boy describes them as horny interns. We'll get to that
pulled off what should have been the perfect caper for
this our space age, and it does involve stealing and
attempting to fence lunar rocks, which triggered a man hunt
(03:53):
skiing operation and ended up with some serious jail times.
So strap in no pun intended for sex on the Moon.
A tale of romance, ambition, federal charges, and geology. It's
gonna rock your very ridiculous world.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Get it rock. That was George's joke. I thought that
was cool.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
There are only two ways to get rocks from the moon, okay,
and only one of those ways is legal. Either they
come to you on Earth or you go to them
via something like the Apollo program and purposely pick them up.
So with that former definition, scientists here on Earth, without
(04:37):
leaving the planet, have collected something north of two two
hundred and fifty pounds worth of lunar material that just
sort of crashed on Earth's surface at some point in
time as meteorites. And most of these things are going
to be recovered from Antarctica, Northern Africa, deserts in western Asia,
(05:00):
or what you would call the Middle.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
East remote mainly inhospitable regions. The rest were obtained that
second way, which we'll call the hard way, from the
surface of the very real Moon itself. The first and
biggest batch were recovered during like you said, Ben America's
Apollo program. And how appropriate that I am joined in
my podcast studio by none other than my very sweet
(05:24):
little space boy, Apollo, the toy poodle. So Apollo gives
you a little puppy wave. They were the astronauts that
is able to bring back a whopping twenty two hundred
samples weighing in at eight hundred and forty two pounds
over the course of six missions between the years nineteen
sixty nine and nineteen seventy two, and these Moon fragments,
(05:46):
which span the geological spectrum from various sizes and grades
of material rocks to pebbles to sand to dust, are
stored very gingerly in controlled, highly controlled situations, including nitrogen
filled cabinets at NASA's Lunar Curation Lab, which is a
thing in order to avoid contamination and oxidization from Earth's atmosphere,
(06:12):
not to mention to potentially contain some space germs that
people were real worried about for a while, but more
on that later.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, and the oxidation, as we'll see, is the primary concern.
Note again, what we're saying here, folks, Again, it's two
and fifty pounds worth of moon stuff that landed on Earth,
and it's eight hundred and forty two pounds of stuff
(06:41):
humans provably brought back from the Apollo program. The largest
moon rock ever recovered from the Apollo missions is a
twenty six pound chonky boy, so chonky that we call
it Big Mulley, named in honor of the geology team
(07:02):
leader of Apollo sixteen, Bill Muhlberger. There's another money to
his friends, no doubt, Well, Big Mulley to his friends.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
There is also the Genesis Rock, which is believed to
be one of the oldest things humans know about from
the surface of the Moon. It's somewhere between four and
five billion years old, which we acknowledge is a heck
of a margin.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, and let's not forget about the Soviets. They went
up there too. They actually sent a dog up there,
quite cruelly, poor little Laika, who didn't make it. Back.
In the early seventies, a trio of unmanned Soviet robotic
probes Douglas thankfully brought back ten point six ounces of
material over the course of three missions. Not nearly as impressive.
(07:54):
No shade on the Soviets. They were definitely, you know,
in the space race, but this is not quite the
hall that the emission brought back. More recently, in the
twenty twenties, we've got China entering the Chat with two
Unmann probes, bringing back around eight pounds of lunar material,
including the very first from the story to Dark Side
(08:14):
of the Moon, famous by the Pink Floyd album. Of note,
of course, it's the only place that was made famous
by that's not true. But the US, as we've mentioned,
and as was probably pretty clear by now, possesses the
vast majority of all this moon stuff. And for the
purposes of this episode, we're gonna mainly be staying in
the US.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yes, because we will get in trouble if we mentioned
the Soviet or Chinese lunar possessions also like a gata space,
but didn't get to the moon, because getting to the
Moon is very, very difficult, Max, if you could give
us some difficult music, something that gives us a sense
(08:57):
of epic adventure.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Perfect perhaps a little adversity, a little bit of tension there,
I love.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
It, yeah, perfectly. So getting to the Moon is already
a crazy endeavor. It is two hundred and thirty eight thousand,
nine hundred miles from the Earth to the lunar surface
and back, and both of those points, point A and
(09:30):
point z are moving the entire time, right.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
And if you hear from people in your day to
day lives who maybe are skeptical about the moon landing
being real, something that we've covered at length on stuff
that don't want you to know, a lot of the
reasoning behind that is the absolute mammoth task that is
going to and from the Moon, the logistics of it
being bonkers, and what was available and possible in the
(09:59):
nineteen sixties. It just seems sometimes on first glance that
this was a way tall order for the technology of
the time. And I do come down the side of
you know, the moon landing was real, just for the record,
but just putting that.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Out there, all right, Well, it's good to dream, Brony.
We all know the moon landings were real. There is
provable evidence you can see with a proper telescope, right,
a consumer level telescope, as Noel said, check out stuff
(10:31):
they don't want you to know. We dive in depth
to that. And what's interesting about what you're saying here, Nol,
is that if we look back in the nineteen sixties,
the boffins already had a very good grasp of what
we would call germ theory, the danger of pathogens, the
danger of bacteria, micro organisms, viruses. So the eggheads are asking,
(10:57):
the moonheads are asking, what what if we land on
the lunar surface and we run into an outbreak situation?
What if we find something small that hitches the ride
back to Earth and gets released in the ecosystem and
it's an alien invasive species.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
And this is maybe the sprinkling of science fiction that
we promised this idea of a moon plague, these alien
pathogens brought back to your point, Ben, hitching a ride
on the old Space Shuttle back to Earth, potentially causing
some sort of catastrophic, potentially even extinction level event. The
(11:40):
idea of back contamination was the same reason that the
astronauts in the first three Apollo missions were kept in
quarantine for three weeks upon their return. NASA spent quite
a bit of money on this real or imagined problem,
around seven point eight million or eighty million adjusted for inflation,
in the form of eighty six thousand square foot lunar
(12:01):
receiving laboratory at the Johnson Space Center there in Houston,
as a place to quarantine the materials and the astronauts.
This is also where the samples were processed in study,
and one somewhat ethically dubious experiment that was carried out
there involved feeding grains of lunar dust to mice, quail, quail,
(12:23):
interesting and other life forms who were then monitored for
any ill effects.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Thankfully, Yeah, everything worked out, you know, uh, people, right,
everything's great. Scientists were in fact astonished at good results,
and they said, look, if you put plants in lunar soil,
they they grow better, they thrive better than they would
(12:50):
in earth soil. However, we're still very concerned about this
idea of back contamination. So if you're a worker at
the lunar receiving laboratory at the Johnson Space Center, you
have to do the whole twelve monkeys thing. You have
to be decontaminated. You got to strip off all your
lab clothes, you got a shower, and then you can't
(13:13):
put on your clothing right after your shower. Instead, you
have to walk naked as atom through an ultraviolet lightmath
and then you get to put on your street duds
and exit. Ultimately, all of this effort was let's see
it this way, it was a an error on the
(13:34):
side of caution. It turned out there was no chemical
evidence of life in any form from these lunar samples,
so there was no insidious germ, microbe, bacteria, or virus.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And I think we all aren't particularly mad at the
idea of airing on the side of caution. There were
a lot of unknowns in these early days, so good
on you science for looking out for the rest of
us here back on Earth. Man Jordan headlined this next
(14:11):
section with a fabulous phrase, which is protect the rocks
at all costs. The other challenge for NASA at this
time was protecting those rocks at all costs from deterioration.
These are very important artifacts, very valuable artifacts, very rare
deterioration that is due to the oxygen and Earth's atmosphere.
As we mentioned, oxidization is the enemy of the Moon rock,
(14:34):
the humble Moon rock. Exposure to air would cause these
rocks to instantly start to deteriorate through that process of oxidization,
which would both damage the rock and make it much
less scientifically viable, if not entirely useless, because it was
effectively contaminated at that point. Yeah. Yeah, because to the
moon rocks, the Earth's atmosphere is the alien bit, right,
(14:55):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, because the idea here is that the oxidization and
would break down the chemical components, right, the overall mixtape
of whatever lunar material means, It would break it down
into an earthly thing, just a collection of stuff you
can find on the planet today, So.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Wouldn't be special anymore.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Right, It's not Christmas every if it's Christmas every day.
Decided to say so. They want to keep these samples
chemically identical right control for variables chemically identical to what
they were when they were on the moon. So they
put in this quite strict, robust procedure for recovery. Let's
(15:43):
say we're all astronauts, folks, you, Max, Noel and yours truly,
we are at the moon. We are trying to get
our moon stuff. And then we get the orders from
mission control and misig Control tells us the following. They say, look,
(16:04):
you got to take your fiberglass bag out with you
on your moon walk, and then you've got to put
your stuff in there. And then you've got to take
your fiberglass bag and you've got to put it in
a vacuum sealed metal container. And if we are the
astronauts talking to Michig Control, we're going to be complaining.
(16:27):
We'll say this smells like gunpowder. This is a weird vibe.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I'm picturing these vacuum steel containers again, just with a
sprinkling of sci fi as being those kind of cylinder
type things that almost look like a giant thermos with
the twisty top on it, and it makes it really satisfying,
you know, when you close it perhaps some dry ice
type steam comes out, you know, I love it.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, this is also the reason they are reporting this
smell or us in this scenario, shout out the quizzard.
We're reporting this smell of gunpowder in the spacecraft because
the moon dust is on our suits and it is
oxidizing when exposed to an earth like atmosphere.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Can't save all the particles. We're gonna lose that dust
to oxidization. But they did the best they could.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
And I love that you're pointing out that that awesome
pH thermos idea with a canister, because there is a
bigger canister at plate. We could say when this lunar
material makes it back here to Tea, the fancy name
for Earth. So instead of having a giant thermos, which
(17:45):
would be an awesome idea, I'm laughing. I'm picturing a
gigantic thermos somewhere in a space center, all right. So
instead of building a giant thermos, there are clean rooms
that essentially function the same way. They are some of
the strictest clean rooms in the world. They have a
(18:10):
small army of air filters, and these air filters ensure
the room contains no more than get this folks one
hundred particles larger than zero point five microns per cubic
feet of air. No offense to anybody living in the
fanciest place imaginable. This room is cleaner than your house.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Oh yeah, I mean in comparison, typical indoor air might
have as many as a million particles per cubic foot,
likely more so for this clean room. Folks entering or
required to wear contamination suits or decontamination suits rather. But
even with these added precautions, the samples are still not
(18:57):
handled directly. Researchers prepared the rocks in a vacuum sealed
cabinet through those kind of gloves you might see in
like a movie like Outbreak, you know, or You're through
the Yeah, of course, multi layered gloves. High purity nitrogen
is then pumped in to keep the samples completely free
(19:18):
of moisture. Some of the practices are a little less
high tech. They used some very uh commercially available like
kitchen gadgets actually to slice these rocks. To bisect them,
a Hobart Deli meat slicing machine a little bit modded
out outfitted with a diamond edged blade.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
This episode is brought to you by Hobart Deli meat
slicer pay extra for the diamond. Also, I think Nolan
and I just forgot we are an audio podcast because folks,
when we when we were agreeing about the gloves, we
were talking about the glass in case that has you
(20:01):
put gloves on yourself up to your forearms or wearing
your suit obviously, and then you put those gloves into
series vapatures that have their own gloves built into the container.
I just didn't want us to miss that because we
are an audio well well.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
And the visual that you missed maybe was Ben and
I both reaching our arms out and wiggling our fingers
at each other. That's the visual. There another low five
technique I guess you could call it would be just
cracking them open with the old rock hammer.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
You getting situations, you know what I mean. And this
is the issue here. NASA went through a lot of
a lot of headaches, a lot of bureaucratic hoops to
construct this facility and to establish these procedures, which, by
the way, would later inform our friends in Soviet Russia
(20:58):
and in China. NASA built the way to encounter this stuff.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Can I just say I think it's incredible that they
you know, with all this money, they did not even
need to invent a new thing because Hobart already did
it with their meat slicer. They were just like, Noah,
it just needs a different blade. Have you? Are you
aware been of the audio commentary for the DVD of
the seminal nineteen nineties apocalyptic space movie Armageddon.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I am lightly aware. I have not listened to it.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Well, I've only heard clips. But the one that always
makes the news's the internet, I guess is Ben Affleck
did his own audio commentary. And you may remember famous
scene where the space boffins kind of face off with
the drill guys, you know, the burly rough and tumbled
the drill team headed up by what's his name Bruce Willis,
(21:52):
and Bruce Willis just dresses them down, saying you don't
know a thing about drilling, and you know you did
it all wrong, this, that, and the other. When they're
presented with the space drill that the NASA guys have
come up with, and he's just like, Ben Affleck just
finds this whole scenario completely implausible and says he said
(22:13):
to the director Jerry Bruckheimer, wouldn't it be easier to
train astronauts to drill than to train drillers to be astronauts,
and Jerry Bruckheimer's response, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Yes, I remember that clip.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Also, our Bruce Willis character here is probably gonna be
the first lunar sample curator, a real job assigned to
a gentleman named Elbert, a King, a dot king. He
gets this first batch of moon rocks. He's supposed to
(22:46):
curate these lunar samples. He is not impressed. In nineteen
eighty nine, he says, the moment was truly history, but
there was little we could observe or say. We counted
the rocks, we described the size.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And shape of each piece. Put him down.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
But they look like lumps of charcoal in the bottom
of a backyard barbecue grill. So Elbert Elbert is being
a bit of a buskill. He's super not impressed. But
this is super big for history, because since nineteen seventy nine,
the majority of what we can call American moon rocks
(23:30):
have been stored at the Lunar Sample Laboratory facility over
at the Johnson Space Center out in Houston.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I do think it's funny to make the distinction of like,
you know, American versus Russian versus Chinese moon rocks, because
they're all moon rocks, y'all, and the moon doesn't belong
to any of us.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
That's right. I was despite that.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Flag we planted, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Oh oh, come on, fellow vex loologist in the crowd.
Study years of flags. It's fun to put a flag
on things.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Everybody likes to put a flag on things, you know.
But I'm just saying I think there were. It is
widely understood that no one, there's no there's no there's
no coling DIBs on the moon, right yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Right there. You're referring specifically to the Moon Treaty from
the United Nations, or sometimes called the Moon Agreement. It
was created on December eighteenth, nineteen seventy nine. Which is
why eighty four percent or about six hundred pounds for
(24:32):
everybody keeping note here, eighty four percent or six hundred
pounds of quote unquote American moon rocks have been stored
at this place in Houston. It's supposed to be like
a doomsday vault. It can withstand one thousand years of
(24:53):
being underwater. But this is where we get to the
reason this episode is two part series. Noel, riddle me this.
Where are the remaining sixteen percent of these American moon rocks?
Speaker 2 (25:09):
I'm so glad you asked, Ben. In the nineteen seventies,
NASA adopted the don't put all your eggs in one
basket approach, which I think we all can get behind.
It's good to diversify, and secretly moved a one hundred
and fifty pound portion of this collection to another installation
for safe keeping in the dead of night. Since two
(25:30):
thousand and two, they've been stored at the White Sands
Test Facility in New Mexico, which you may be familiar
with from discussions of nuclear tests. Isn't that right, Ben,
am I remembering the correct details from history on the
White Sands Test Facility.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
You nailed it.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
You nailed it out there in New Mexico.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
So, over the years, samples of these rocks have been
sort of farmed out or contracted out to a bunch
of research teams across the planet. And these research teams
are equal eggheads and boffins themselves. They're studying everything they
can learn about these samples. Some of them have also
(26:11):
been put into museums. Hashtag Indiana Jones it belongs in
a museum you know you can find Yeah, you can
find them displayed in the American Museum of Natural History
in New York, which I know we both love. You
can find them in the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
(26:31):
And another thing that we always recommend the Griffith Observatory
out there in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Gosh, I love that place.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I love it too, And they've got a really cool
pendulum that kind of helps you visualize the rotation of
the Earth. They have a Tesla coil out there that
was featured in one of the Og Frankenstein films, and
a really really cool old school classic planetarium show that
is often given by aspiring actors. Really give it, they're
(27:03):
all and you got to love that. It's also just
a great hike up from the park at the foot
of that climb up and up to the observatory itself.
It's a really wonderful place, big fan.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
And we also have a pretty great planetarium here in
our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia. Please note, the folks
narrating the planetarium over at Fern Bank are not aspiring actors.
They are aspiring astronomers, and they're very weird people. We
(27:34):
say that with great affection. Look, if you're traveling through
one of these museums, you will see very small lunar fragments.
They're going to be in vacuum cases. They're going to
be embedded in resin. If you go to the Smithsodian
National Air and Space Museum in Washington, d C. Well,
(27:57):
you still can which is free. While you still can't,
you're going to see one of the few moon rocks
on the planet that people can touch. You can walk
up to it and you can put your finger upon
a thing from space.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Indeed, we were talking about the Apollo scientist Farouk el Baz,
who is inspired by his childhood pilgrimage to Mecca, the
holy place where he himself was able to lay hands
on a listen. I mean, I don't know. Moonrocks to
some might be considered a sacred relic, but in this case,
it was the blackstone. There at Mecca, the most important
(28:36):
site to the Islamic faith. It is believed to have
been sent down from the heavens, which I don't know.
It's kind of poetic. There's a poetic parallel there. I mean,
in a way, moon rocks are sent down from the heavens.
I'm behind this.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, And this is why for many of us, fellow
fans of space in space stuff, the idea of stealing
a moon rock might seem heinous, might seem blasphemous.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
D it's a bit of like a national treasure type heights.
You know, we're gonna steal the what is it, the
Declaration of Independence? What do they steal? That's all right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, No,
you're very right, Ben, there is something a little bit blasphemous,
especially if you subscribe, as l Boz seems to have
to this notion of moon rocks in some way being
of the heavens, of the celestial bodies, and something that
(29:35):
deserves a little more respect than our earthly rocks.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
And this is where we encounter the great crime. Shout
out to our fellow rude dudes at ridiculous crime. If
you like us, you'll love them, all right. So there's
this guy named Richard, and this guy named Richard becomes.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Oh yeah that yeah, blame blame old Tricky Dicky for
a handful of things, including perhaps the moonrock heist. At
the very least it happened on his watch.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, So moon rocks have gone missing, and a lot
of this is due to the presidential administration of Tricky Dick.
As he said, Noel or Richard Nixon. He was in office.
He was potised during all of the Apollo mission landings.
(30:29):
And given that the moon rocks are technically property of
the US government, our buddy President Nixon has the final
say over how they can or cannot be distributed. So
during his administration, our buddy Nixon puts out these orders,
(30:50):
and he orders fragments of the rocks from Apollo eleven
and Apollo seventeen, specifically to be gifted to represents of
each of the fifty states of the United States. And
then he also gifts these two hundreds of foreign dignitaries
(31:11):
around the world.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
They called the goodwilled moon rocks.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
It's like getting a piece of the Berlin Wall at
a gift shop or something fantasier than that. There's a
finite supply of both technically, but I'm also a little
skeptical as to whether those pieces they sell us fridge
magnets are in fact from the wall. So of the
two hundred and seventy, like you said, Ben, so called
goodwill moon rocks that were given away under Nixon's watch,
around one hundred and eighty remain unaccounted for. That's right.
(31:44):
Two thirds are just gone, like Kaiser SoSE in the Nights, lost, stolen, missing.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, and these are also by the way, folks, these
are very small samples. They're less than a gram, So
we're not defending the fact that they are lost. We
are telling you they are easy to lose, right totally.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I mean, I guess I don't quite understand is there
an issue here? These were given as like little keepsakes.
There was no like tracking as to what the dignitaries
did with them after the fact, right where they supposed
to check in periodically as to whether whether their moon
rock still was on their mantle or they made it
into a keychain or something.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Right, yeah, how do you track it? That's a pretty
good point, honestly, And it's interesting to look at the
Soviet version of the matter, which we may do in
a later episode, perhaps on stuff they don't want you
to do.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I guess it was up to the origin countries of
the dignitaries as to how they would be. It was
more maybe I'm over simplifying it or you know, being hyperbolic.
It wasn't like they were meant to be the They
were meant to be a gift to those countries, and
then it was up to the dignitaries and said countries
to decide how they might be displayed, whether or not
they were worthy of that, et cetera. So we'll get
(33:08):
into a little rundown of some of the tails, at
least the interesting ones of those missing moon rocks around
the world.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, but also it was Nixon, and Nixon was not
above greasing the wheels of geopolitics, you know what I mean.
So he was sliding some stuff on the side. We
actually we know in retrospect how many estimated pieces old
(33:35):
Boy gave away, but he probably did a lot of
stuff off the books. And luckily we know folks like
Joseph Guntais, who has made it a mission to get
these lunar rocks, lunar material, we should say, these small
(33:56):
shards from the moon back to US management. And he's
not playing around. He founded something called the Moon Rock Project,
and he's an ex intelligence officer.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Absolutely he always gets his man. And we haven't gotten
to the point that maybe I've glazed over a little
bit the monetary value of these items. These are not
you know, paltry little trinkets. These things have you know,
cash money value to them, and we're going to get
to that. To date, he and his associates have tracked
(34:31):
down seventy nine of the missing rocks, and I guess
my earlier point, many of which were just found willy
nilly in like memory boxes, the pro personal possessions of
public officials who either forgot they had them, one of
the most precious substances on the planet, as Jordan points out,
or believed that they were the rightful owners, or so
(34:51):
they claimed. So Ireland, here's a case of moonrock on
display at Ireland was accidentally thrown away after a nineteen
seventy seven fire at the observatory where it was held.
The lunar sample was caught up amid the rubble and
taken to a local landfill, where it apparently remains to
this day. The investigator we mentioned gun Fights, gut Thigns.
Gut Tigns, has described it as a pot of gold
(35:13):
under a dump. You know, this reminds me that it reminds
me of that guy that I guess bitcoin hard. He
finally gave that search up after much ado trying to
buy the dump and everything. Apparently it was like a
billion dollars is worth essentially by today's value of bitcoin.
I want to talk about Malta. I know you're a
big Malta head.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Are you a multi ball?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Of course?
Speaker 1 (35:37):
So shout out to Joe by the way, he's got
a very Indiana Jones approach. This is last time I'll
say it. Wait, this is the second time I'll say it.
I'll say it one more time in this series, Indiana Jones,
it belongs in a museum.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
You know what's funny. I was one of my favorite podcasts,
blank Check with Griffin and David recently did all of
Stephen Spielberg's kind of mid to later career films. They
do filmographies, and they did all the Indiana Jones movies,
and they kind of pointed out how that whole it
belongs in a museum. Attitude kind of falls by the
(36:14):
wayside in terms of in these motivations as the series progresses,
he seems a lot less interested as time goes on
in the whole, like you know, preserving things for posterity
and the greater good of the nation and science a
little more focused on like making that money.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And with that we do have.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
To say the Spielberg Indiana jones films are actually pretty good.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah, and it's even the bad ones.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
What's the what's the one you don't care for?
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Well, the Crystal Skull, I think is pretty universally considered
to be the worst one. The most recent one about
the what's it called antikathera mechanism situation dial of Destiny.
People were a little iffy on that one, but I
think it's more beloved than the Crystal Skull. People were
just really mad about Shiaha both swinging from vines like
(37:08):
a like an orangutan.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
What's your favorite Indiana Jonesville?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
I think my favorite is the Last Crusade. I really
dig the relationship with the father son relationship in that one.
I think it's it's really nice.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
They named the dog Indiana very well done. So it's
May eighteenth, two thousand and four. Malta has a goodwill
moon rock from the Nixon administration. This moon rock is
stolen from their Museum of Natural History. Their Museum of
(37:45):
Natural History, as are pal Josh Clark can confirm, has
no security cameras. It has no real security like custodians
even I think they had one janitor at the time,
but they had a lot of budget cuts, funding shortages.
Whomever this thief may be, they left behind the plaque
(38:08):
and the Maltese flag that the Apollo astronauts had taken
to the Moon with them.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
So this is where our.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
NASA investigator Joe comes in and he says, look at
this he got He's so irritated at this point. He says,
only an amateur would just steal the rock, because if
we are trying to sell it on the black market,
you would want the full set, you'd want the plaque,
you'd want the flag. This would authenticate this thing that
(38:41):
a lot of people who have not been to the
Moon would otherwise assume is just regular rock and dirt
from Earth. And so our buddy Joe goes back and
forth with the authorities in Malta and he says, look,
just tell them, whomever it may be, just tell them,
(39:02):
no questions, ask drop off our little shard of moon rock.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Just give it back. It belongs in a museum. I'm
not going I said, you said you wouldn't say so,
I wasn't going to say, yeah, this is perfect.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
And as we record today August twenty fifth, twenty twenty five,
the missing Malta Goodwill moon rock has yet to be recovered.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Can I just say, I don't know that we didn't
really line this up, and it seems to be the
way that this is going. It seems like part one
here is going to be kind of the history of
moon rocks and the distribution of them and the sort
of international affairs of it all. And this is its
own little mini heighst or at the very least, the
an Mia situation due to the incompetence, let's just say,
(39:52):
of old Tricky Dicky. So lest you be irritated that
we don't give you the promised heist, heist and the
sex on the moon's off, that's all going to happen
in part two. And I think it's an absolutely banger
of a place to break.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
This, absolutely agreed. We also want to tell you two
things before we end some more. As you said, incompetence,
Spain while we're in Europe, let's stay in Spain. Spain
had a moon rock from Apollo eleven, and it went
missing because it was gifted to a guy you'll recognize
(40:26):
from earlier, Francisco Franco.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Not a good dude, not a good dude.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
What did Norm McDonald say. The more I learn about
this guy, the less I like him.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yeah, that does track a dict to a bit of
a dictator and a bit of a dick. It's current
whereabouts are unknown. Franco's grandson did claim, however, the family
never intended to sell it, and suggested that it was
just likely a bit of an oopsie and that it
was lost. He said, as my mother is a woman
with many things in many houses weird flex but okay
(40:57):
in a move or redecorating a room in the end
it must have gotten lost. Are bad but also sorry
not sorry?
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Is the vibe bad?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yeah? Yeah, walk Walk Walk said that in two thousand
and nine in an interview with El Mundo.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yes, and look, our guy has been searching for leads
on this. Maybe he thinks, uh, private collector in Switzerland,
where there are a lot of people who collect a
lot of weird things. He got a nickname, Joe did
in the Spanish press and they said, Joseph Gunties is
(41:36):
the van helsing of Luna traffickers.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Now that's interesting, the van helsing, because that implies to
your earlier point, where wolfism or vampirism or some other
kind of ism. I would have called him maybe more
the Sherlock Holmes of Moon Rockery.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Right with his deer hunter or deer stalker.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, yes, and his pipe and his cocaine. Dude, have
I told you this. I've been recently listening to the
entire works of Arthur Conan Doyle's Lock Holmes. It's a lot,
by the way, and it's read by Stephen Frye, who
we love from comedy and you know Britain. Sherlock Holmes
did a lot of drugs. Yes, he was like shooting
(42:20):
up morphine between his toes and snorting that cocaine. I mean,
I had no idea. And I think the thing that
I'm most tickled by every time it happens. It must
just be an anachronistic expression of the time when someone
talks about somebody exclaiming something they refer to it as
he ejaculated. Yes, and I just I'm a child. It
makes me titter every time I hear it.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
I have encountered something similar re listening to Like I've
read Blood Meritigan by Cormack McCarthy, so he would.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Say that that is exactly the kind of anachronistic biblical language.
He loves.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Hearing it in an audiobook version made me laugh aloud
to the point where the folks on the plane had
questions about me, but those questions were answered. We made
it back to the States. We're gonna end part one
of Sex on the Moon and the Great Moon Heist
(43:18):
on a happy note. So back in the nineteen nineties,
there's this guy named Alan Rosen, and he's a business
dude in Florida, and he goes to the black market
and he somehow has possession of the goodwill moon Rock
gifted to the nation of Honduras from the Apollo seventeen mission,
(43:42):
and he says, this is going to be sold for
five million dollars. And Uncle Sam did not like it
so much so that we set up a steamed operation
in a burst of creativity. Get this, he named it
Operation Lunar Eclipse. A tad on the nose, A tad
(44:06):
on the nose.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Oh yeah, I get it, I get it, you know,
But isn't that usually the case with these kind of
operations that doesn't seem like creativity is always the strong
suit of them. What name these types of stings? You know?
Speaker 1 (44:20):
I still fantasize about the idea of having a job
where you are the person who just names secret operations.
It feels so cool. It's like it's like the world
of automotive, right, Like what if your job is just
the name vehicles?
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Right?
Speaker 3 (44:40):
Like, how do you do that? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean I think a lot of it's
done by committee. So Operation Munroch did yield some results
and that the rock in question was recovered, and the
origin of how it was you know, received, or how
it got its way to Rosen was that he purchased
it from the retur hired Honduran colonel Roberto Ugorcia Ugarte,
(45:04):
who sold it to Rosen after disguising its origin. He
was a little dishonest about how he came upon this moonrock,
so Joseph Gundhines posing undercover. God, this guy is such
a cool mm hm. He led the ops with the
support from agencies including the US Postal Inspection Service never forget,
(45:24):
never forget or underestimate, Rather the US Postal Inspection Service
as well as Customs. They also had funding. You remember
remember Ross Perot. I haven't heard that name in a minute.
Forgot He had a first initial h ross Perot, well
weird little guy, weird little dude who ran for president
and was famously mocked on sn L I believe by
(45:48):
Dana Carvey, who was the ross Perot the HS for
Henry by the way, important important de So after a
five year legal battle, the Moonrock was in fact returned
to Honduras in two thousand and four and is now
at the Centro Interactivo Chiminike in Tagusigalpa. Which is one
of my favorite names of a place.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
That's what you're gonna say when you show up.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
You're gonna walk in and you're gonna say, this is
one of my favorite names of a place to Goosy Gappa.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Does it get much better? Well, it's it's just as silly,
silly as it to Goosy Galpa.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
What could be better than this? We'll tell you right now.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
It's going to be part two of our continuing series
of ridiculous heist involving lunar material. Now, the exploration of
the Solar System goes back and forth, right, but it's
a very human endeavor. It's incredibly important for anybody who
(46:50):
would like to argue that space exploration is somehow a
waste of time. Please remember that this applied science getting
folks into orbit and indeed to the moon. It provides
a lot of scientific breakthroughs that help your life today,
things like velcro or tang or pens that right upside dout.
(47:15):
And so with this we're going to call the today.
We've got to also call our pal Joe and get
up to date with him on the Moon Rock search.
We're gonna save our Indiana Jones references for episode two.
For now, we want to give a big thanks to
our research associate Jordan Runta or super producer Max Williams. Noel,
(47:39):
do we have a good nickname or a moniker for Jordan.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Well, he's Jordan's Smoking moon Rocks in the Boondocks run Talk.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
I like the rhyme for sure.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
It's not mine. It's from the rapper Shad the god
in the song moon Rocks, in the parlance of hip
hop culture, is referred to a particular strain a very
very very highly potent marijuana.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
No Ah, I've learned so much.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Also thanks to Eve's Jeff Goat, Chris vossiotis here in
spirit thanks to aj Bahama's Jacobs. We've got some guests
coming up do we want to brag a little bit
about them?
Speaker 2 (48:16):
I think we must. We do have a returning guest
appearance from Ridiculous History alum Rachel Biggs Spinach Lance talking
about some underwater explosions, which I'm quite excited about.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yes, and we are contractually required to say, with great reluctance,
shout out to Jonathan Strickland, aka the Twister.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
He would have loved this episode. My boy's always high
on moon rocks. I'm kidding, He's never touched the stuff.
He's probably allergic. He would probably kill him.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
And still he's stealing moon rocks right now.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
I know it's true. He is much more of a
despicable me type, steal the moon and all the rocks
type figure than smoking them.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
So with great thanks, we are going to continue on
our exploration of moon Heist. We hope that you will
join us very soon. Unless you are the Quist No, yeah,
we will see you next time.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Who's that regular man on the moon?
Why it's none other than our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Max Moonman Williams. Yes, a lunar tic if ever there was.
You are Noel Brown. Yeah, I've never been to the Moon.
I don't even think it's real, to be honest.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
And I am Ben Bollen. Oh thanks, who.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Very much believes in the reality of the moon. If
I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Oh gosh. You know, everybody has these childhood dreams of
what they will be when they grow up, and once
upon a time, true story, nol I aspired to be
the first werewolf on the moon.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Figure it out. Yeah, how are you planning on getting
getting like anthropy, getting the bite? How are you going
to expose yourself to this malady?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Well, that's what they would call a sunk cost, that
malign in particular. The idea was if you're always on
the moon, then you're not, you know, vulnerable to the
various downfalls of like anthropy. But you'll riddle me this,
what do we get when we cross an aspiring astronaut
(01:43):
whirlwind summer fleeting, shout out to our research associate, the
one and only Jordan, and a safe full of priceless
moon rocks.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
What do we get? We get ridiculous history, Ben, I
think you know that. And can I also just say
that I do believe that the moon exists. I just
had to make that mention because I recently met a
fellow who said he did not believe that the moon existed,
(02:15):
not that the moon landing was faked, but that the
moon itself is entirely a fraud perpetrated on the people
of Earth.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Oh yeah, by whom who knows?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
They Ah capital they capital t They.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Already got it. We got we got a wild ride
for you today, folks. Combines some elements of a heist.
You know, we love a heist, some history, some science fact.
Maybe a little science fiction will sprinkling there just for
the hell of it. But man, Jordan really found us
a dinger, as they said in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yes, yes, twenty three, scould do on you, Jordan Research Associate. God,
that guy's a legend. I love hanging out with him.
Jordan has introduced us to a guy named Thad Roberts. Now,
Thad is very good at physics, and Thad is also
(03:09):
super in love with his girlfriend and he really wants
to impress her. He borrows a jeep, he wears a
scuba suit. He gets sort of into indus shenanigans. And
this is also a story about moon rocks.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, it is that and his uh which you might
call a ragtag crew of interns. Jr. Jordan rentag our
Boy describes them as horny interns. We'll get to that
pulled off what should have been the perfect caper for
this our space age, and it does involve stealing and
attempting to fence lunar rocks, which triggered a man hunt
(03:53):
skiing operation and ended up with some serious jail times.
So strap in no pun intended for sex on the Moon.
A tale of romance, ambition, federal charges, and geology. It's
gonna rock your very ridiculous world.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Get it rock. That was George's joke. I thought that
was cool.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
There are only two ways to get rocks from the moon, okay,
and only one of those ways is legal. Either they
come to you on Earth or you go to them
via something like the Apollo program and purposely pick them up.
So with that former definition, scientists here on Earth, without
(04:37):
leaving the planet, have collected something north of two two
hundred and fifty pounds worth of lunar material that just
sort of crashed on Earth's surface at some point in
time as meteorites. And most of these things are going
to be recovered from Antarctica, Northern Africa, deserts in western Asia,
(05:00):
or what you would call the Middle.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
East remote mainly inhospitable regions. The rest were obtained that
second way, which we'll call the hard way, from the
surface of the very real Moon itself. The first and
biggest batch were recovered during like you said, Ben America's
Apollo program. And how appropriate that I am joined in
my podcast studio by none other than my very sweet
(05:24):
little space boy, Apollo, the toy poodle. So Apollo gives
you a little puppy wave. They were the astronauts that
is able to bring back a whopping twenty two hundred
samples weighing in at eight hundred and forty two pounds
over the course of six missions between the years nineteen
sixty nine and nineteen seventy two, and these Moon fragments,
(05:46):
which span the geological spectrum from various sizes and grades
of material rocks to pebbles to sand to dust, are
stored very gingerly in controlled, highly controlled situations, including nitrogen
filled cabinets at NASA's Lunar Curation Lab, which is a
thing in order to avoid contamination and oxidization from Earth's atmosphere,
(06:12):
not to mention to potentially contain some space germs that
people were real worried about for a while, but more
on that later.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Yeah, and the oxidation, as we'll see, is the primary concern.
Note again, what we're saying here, folks, Again, it's two
and fifty pounds worth of moon stuff that landed on Earth,
and it's eight hundred and forty two pounds of stuff
(06:41):
humans provably brought back from the Apollo program. The largest
moon rock ever recovered from the Apollo missions is a
twenty six pound chonky boy, so chonky that we call
it Big Mulley, named in honor of the geology team
(07:02):
leader of Apollo sixteen, Bill Muhlberger. There's another money to
his friends, no doubt, Well, Big Mulley to his friends.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
There is also the Genesis Rock, which is believed to
be one of the oldest things humans know about from
the surface of the Moon. It's somewhere between four and
five billion years old, which we acknowledge is a heck
of a margin.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, and let's not forget about the Soviets. They went
up there too. They actually sent a dog up there,
quite cruelly, poor little Laika, who didn't make it. Back.
In the early seventies, a trio of unmanned Soviet robotic
probes Douglas thankfully brought back ten point six ounces of
material over the course of three missions. Not nearly as impressive.
(07:54):
No shade on the Soviets. They were definitely, you know,
in the space race, but this is not quite the
hall that the emission brought back. More recently, in the
twenty twenties, we've got China entering the Chat with two
Unmann probes, bringing back around eight pounds of lunar material,
including the very first from the story to Dark Side
(08:14):
of the Moon, famous by the Pink Floyd album. Of note,
of course, it's the only place that was made famous
by that's not true. But the US, as we've mentioned,
and as was probably pretty clear by now, possesses the
vast majority of all this moon stuff. And for the
purposes of this episode, we're gonna mainly be staying in
the US.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yes, because we will get in trouble if we mentioned
the Soviet or Chinese lunar possessions also like a gata space,
but didn't get to the moon, because getting to the
Moon is very, very difficult, Max, if you could give
us some difficult music, something that gives us a sense
(08:57):
of epic adventure.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Perfect perhaps a little adversity, a little bit of tension there,
I love.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
It, yeah, perfectly. So getting to the Moon is already
a crazy endeavor. It is two hundred and thirty eight thousand,
nine hundred miles from the Earth to the lunar surface
and back, and both of those points, point A and
(09:30):
point z are moving the entire time, right.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
And if you hear from people in your day to
day lives who maybe are skeptical about the moon landing
being real, something that we've covered at length on stuff
that don't want you to know, a lot of the
reasoning behind that is the absolute mammoth task that is
going to and from the Moon, the logistics of it
being bonkers, and what was available and possible in the
(09:59):
nineteen sixties. It just seems sometimes on first glance that
this was a way tall order for the technology of
the time. And I do come down the side of
you know, the moon landing was real, just for the record,
but just putting that.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Out there, all right, Well, it's good to dream, Brony.
We all know the moon landings were real. There is
provable evidence you can see with a proper telescope, right,
a consumer level telescope, as Noel said, check out stuff
(10:31):
they don't want you to know. We dive in depth
to that. And what's interesting about what you're saying here, Nol,
is that if we look back in the nineteen sixties,
the boffins already had a very good grasp of what
we would call germ theory, the danger of pathogens, the
danger of bacteria, micro organisms, viruses. So the eggheads are asking,
(10:57):
the moonheads are asking, what what if we land on
the lunar surface and we run into an outbreak situation?
What if we find something small that hitches the ride
back to Earth and gets released in the ecosystem and
it's an alien invasive species.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
And this is maybe the sprinkling of science fiction that
we promised this idea of a moon plague, these alien
pathogens brought back to your point, Ben, hitching a ride
on the old Space Shuttle back to Earth, potentially causing
some sort of catastrophic, potentially even extinction level event. The
(11:40):
idea of back contamination was the same reason that the
astronauts in the first three Apollo missions were kept in
quarantine for three weeks upon their return. NASA spent quite
a bit of money on this real or imagined problem,
around seven point eight million or eighty million adjusted for inflation,
in the form of eighty six thousand square foot lunar
(12:01):
receiving laboratory at the Johnson Space Center there in Houston,
as a place to quarantine the materials and the astronauts.
This is also where the samples were processed in study,
and one somewhat ethically dubious experiment that was carried out
there involved feeding grains of lunar dust to mice, quail, quail,
(12:23):
interesting and other life forms who were then monitored for
any ill effects.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Thankfully, Yeah, everything worked out, you know, uh, people, right,
everything's great. Scientists were in fact astonished at good results,
and they said, look, if you put plants in lunar soil,
they they grow better, they thrive better than they would
(12:50):
in earth soil. However, we're still very concerned about this
idea of back contamination. So if you're a worker at
the lunar receiving laboratory at the Johnson Space Center, you
have to do the whole twelve monkeys thing. You have
to be decontaminated. You got to strip off all your
lab clothes, you got a shower, and then you can't
(13:13):
put on your clothing right after your shower. Instead, you
have to walk naked as atom through an ultraviolet lightmath
and then you get to put on your street duds
and exit. Ultimately, all of this effort was let's see
it this way, it was a an error on the
(13:34):
side of caution. It turned out there was no chemical
evidence of life in any form from these lunar samples,
so there was no insidious germ, microbe, bacteria, or virus.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
And I think we all aren't particularly mad at the
idea of airing on the side of caution. There were
a lot of unknowns in these early days, so good
on you science for looking out for the rest of
us here back on Earth. Man Jordan headlined this next
(14:11):
section with a fabulous phrase, which is protect the rocks
at all costs. The other challenge for NASA at this
time was protecting those rocks at all costs from deterioration.
These are very important artifacts, very valuable artifacts, very rare
deterioration that is due to the oxygen and Earth's atmosphere.
As we mentioned, oxidization is the enemy of the Moon rock,
(14:34):
the humble Moon rock. Exposure to air would cause these
rocks to instantly start to deteriorate through that process of oxidization,
which would both damage the rock and make it much
less scientifically viable, if not entirely useless, because it was
effectively contaminated at that point. Yeah. Yeah, because to the
moon rocks, the Earth's atmosphere is the alien bit, right,
(14:55):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, because the idea here is that the oxidization and
would break down the chemical components, right, the overall mixtape
of whatever lunar material means, It would break it down
into an earthly thing, just a collection of stuff you
can find on the planet today, So.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Wouldn't be special anymore.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Right, It's not Christmas every if it's Christmas every day.
Decided to say so. They want to keep these samples
chemically identical right control for variables chemically identical to what
they were when they were on the moon. So they
put in this quite strict, robust procedure for recovery. Let's
(15:43):
say we're all astronauts, folks, you, Max, Noel and yours truly,
we are at the moon. We are trying to get
our moon stuff. And then we get the orders from
mission control and misig Control tells us the following. They say, look,
(16:04):
you got to take your fiberglass bag out with you
on your moon walk, and then you've got to put
your stuff in there. And then you've got to take
your fiberglass bag and you've got to put it in
a vacuum sealed metal container. And if we are the
astronauts talking to Michig Control, we're going to be complaining.
(16:27):
We'll say this smells like gunpowder. This is a weird vibe.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
I'm picturing these vacuum steel containers again, just with a
sprinkling of sci fi as being those kind of cylinder
type things that almost look like a giant thermos with
the twisty top on it, and it makes it really satisfying,
you know, when you close it perhaps some dry ice
type steam comes out, you know, I love it.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, this is also the reason they are reporting this
smell or us in this scenario, shout out the quizzard.
We're reporting this smell of gunpowder in the spacecraft because
the moon dust is on our suits and it is
oxidizing when exposed to an earth like atmosphere.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Can't save all the particles. We're gonna lose that dust
to oxidization. But they did the best they could.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
And I love that you're pointing out that that awesome
pH thermos idea with a canister, because there is a
bigger canister at plate. We could say when this lunar
material makes it back here to Tea, the fancy name
for Earth. So instead of having a giant thermos, which
(17:45):
would be an awesome idea, I'm laughing. I'm picturing a
gigantic thermos somewhere in a space center, all right. So
instead of building a giant thermos, there are clean rooms
that essentially function the same way. They are some of
the strictest clean rooms in the world. They have a
(18:10):
small army of air filters, and these air filters ensure
the room contains no more than get this folks one
hundred particles larger than zero point five microns per cubic
feet of air. No offense to anybody living in the
fanciest place imaginable. This room is cleaner than your house.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Oh yeah, I mean in comparison, typical indoor air might
have as many as a million particles per cubic foot,
likely more so for this clean room. Folks entering or
required to wear contamination suits or decontamination suits rather. But
even with these added precautions, the samples are still not
(18:57):
handled directly. Researchers prepared the rocks in a vacuum sealed
cabinet through those kind of gloves you might see in
like a movie like Outbreak, you know, or You're through
the Yeah, of course, multi layered gloves. High purity nitrogen
is then pumped in to keep the samples completely free
(19:18):
of moisture. Some of the practices are a little less
high tech. They used some very uh commercially available like
kitchen gadgets actually to slice these rocks. To bisect them,
a Hobart Deli meat slicing machine a little bit modded
out outfitted with a diamond edged blade.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
This episode is brought to you by Hobart Deli meat
slicer pay extra for the diamond. Also, I think Nolan
and I just forgot we are an audio podcast because folks,
when we when we were agreeing about the gloves, we
were talking about the glass in case that has you
(20:01):
put gloves on yourself up to your forearms or wearing
your suit obviously, and then you put those gloves into
series vapatures that have their own gloves built into the container.
I just didn't want us to miss that because we
are an audio well well.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
And the visual that you missed maybe was Ben and
I both reaching our arms out and wiggling our fingers
at each other. That's the visual. There another low five
technique I guess you could call it would be just
cracking them open with the old rock hammer.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
You getting situations, you know what I mean. And this
is the issue here. NASA went through a lot of
a lot of headaches, a lot of bureaucratic hoops to
construct this facility and to establish these procedures, which, by
the way, would later inform our friends in Soviet Russia
(20:58):
and in China. NASA built the way to encounter this stuff.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Can I just say I think it's incredible that they
you know, with all this money, they did not even
need to invent a new thing because Hobart already did
it with their meat slicer. They were just like, Noah,
it just needs a different blade. Have you? Are you
aware been of the audio commentary for the DVD of
the seminal nineteen nineties apocalyptic space movie Armageddon.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I am lightly aware. I have not listened to it.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Well, I've only heard clips. But the one that always
makes the news's the internet, I guess is Ben Affleck
did his own audio commentary. And you may remember famous
scene where the space boffins kind of face off with
the drill guys, you know, the burly rough and tumbled
the drill team headed up by what's his name Bruce Willis,
(21:52):
and Bruce Willis just dresses them down, saying you don't
know a thing about drilling, and you know you did
it all wrong, this, that, and the other. When they're
presented with the space drill that the NASA guys have
come up with, and he's just like, Ben Affleck just
finds this whole scenario completely implausible and says he said
(22:13):
to the director Jerry Bruckheimer, wouldn't it be easier to
train astronauts to drill than to train drillers to be astronauts,
and Jerry Bruckheimer's response, shut the fuck up.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
Yes, I remember that clip.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Also, our Bruce Willis character here is probably gonna be
the first lunar sample curator, a real job assigned to
a gentleman named Elbert, a King, a dot king. He
gets this first batch of moon rocks. He's supposed to
(22:46):
curate these lunar samples. He is not impressed. In nineteen
eighty nine, he says, the moment was truly history, but
there was little we could observe or say. We counted
the rocks, we described the size.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And shape of each piece. Put him down.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
But they look like lumps of charcoal in the bottom
of a backyard barbecue grill. So Elbert Elbert is being
a bit of a buskill. He's super not impressed. But
this is super big for history, because since nineteen seventy nine,
the majority of what we can call American moon rocks
(23:30):
have been stored at the Lunar Sample Laboratory facility over
at the Johnson Space Center out in Houston.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I do think it's funny to make the distinction of like,
you know, American versus Russian versus Chinese moon rocks, because
they're all moon rocks, y'all, and the moon doesn't belong
to any of us.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
That's right. I was despite that.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Flag we planted, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Oh oh, come on, fellow vex loologist in the crowd.
Study years of flags. It's fun to put a flag
on things.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Everybody likes to put a flag on things, you know.
But I'm just saying I think there were. It is
widely understood that no one, there's no there's no there's
no coling DIBs on the moon, right yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Right there. You're referring specifically to the Moon Treaty from
the United Nations, or sometimes called the Moon Agreement. It
was created on December eighteenth, nineteen seventy nine. Which is
why eighty four percent or about six hundred pounds for
(24:32):
everybody keeping note here, eighty four percent or six hundred
pounds of quote unquote American moon rocks have been stored
at this place in Houston. It's supposed to be like
a doomsday vault. It can withstand one thousand years of
(24:53):
being underwater. But this is where we get to the
reason this episode is two part series. Noel, riddle me this.
Where are the remaining sixteen percent of these American moon rocks?
Speaker 2 (25:09):
I'm so glad you asked, Ben. In the nineteen seventies,
NASA adopted the don't put all your eggs in one
basket approach, which I think we all can get behind.
It's good to diversify, and secretly moved a one hundred
and fifty pound portion of this collection to another installation
for safe keeping in the dead of night. Since two
(25:30):
thousand and two, they've been stored at the White Sands
Test Facility in New Mexico, which you may be familiar
with from discussions of nuclear tests. Isn't that right, Ben,
am I remembering the correct details from history on the
White Sands Test Facility.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
You nailed it.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
You nailed it out there in New Mexico.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
So, over the years, samples of these rocks have been
sort of farmed out or contracted out to a bunch
of research teams across the planet. And these research teams
are equal eggheads and boffins themselves. They're studying everything they
can learn about these samples. Some of them have also
(26:11):
been put into museums. Hashtag Indiana Jones it belongs in
a museum you know you can find Yeah, you can
find them displayed in the American Museum of Natural History
in New York, which I know we both love. You
can find them in the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
(26:31):
And another thing that we always recommend the Griffith Observatory
out there in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Gosh, I love that place.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I love it too, And they've got a really cool
pendulum that kind of helps you visualize the rotation of
the Earth. They have a Tesla coil out there that
was featured in one of the Og Frankenstein films, and
a really really cool old school classic planetarium show that
is often given by aspiring actors. Really give it, they're
(27:03):
all and you got to love that. It's also just
a great hike up from the park at the foot
of that climb up and up to the observatory itself.
It's a really wonderful place, big fan.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
And we also have a pretty great planetarium here in
our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia. Please note, the folks
narrating the planetarium over at Fern Bank are not aspiring actors.
They are aspiring astronomers, and they're very weird people. We
(27:34):
say that with great affection. Look, if you're traveling through
one of these museums, you will see very small lunar fragments.
They're going to be in vacuum cases. They're going to
be embedded in resin. If you go to the Smithsodian
National Air and Space Museum in Washington, d C. Well,
(27:57):
you still can which is free. While you still can't,
you're going to see one of the few moon rocks
on the planet that people can touch. You can walk
up to it and you can put your finger upon
a thing from space.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Indeed, we were talking about the Apollo scientist Farouk el Baz,
who is inspired by his childhood pilgrimage to Mecca, the
holy place where he himself was able to lay hands
on a listen. I mean, I don't know. Moonrocks to
some might be considered a sacred relic, but in this case,
it was the blackstone. There at Mecca, the most important
(28:36):
site to the Islamic faith. It is believed to have
been sent down from the heavens, which I don't know.
It's kind of poetic. There's a poetic parallel there. I mean,
in a way, moon rocks are sent down from the heavens.
I'm behind this.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, And this is why for many of us, fellow
fans of space in space stuff, the idea of stealing
a moon rock might seem heinous, might seem blasphemous.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
D it's a bit of like a national treasure type heights.
You know, we're gonna steal the what is it, the
Declaration of Independence? What do they steal? That's all right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, No,
you're very right, Ben, there is something a little bit blasphemous,
especially if you subscribe, as l Boz seems to have
to this notion of moon rocks in some way being
of the heavens, of the celestial bodies, and something that
(29:35):
deserves a little more respect than our earthly rocks.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
And this is where we encounter the great crime. Shout
out to our fellow rude dudes at ridiculous crime. If
you like us, you'll love them, all right. So there's
this guy named Richard, and this guy named Richard becomes.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Oh yeah that yeah, blame blame old Tricky Dicky for
a handful of things, including perhaps the moonrock heist. At
the very least it happened on his watch.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, So moon rocks have gone missing, and a lot
of this is due to the presidential administration of Tricky Dick.
As he said, Noel or Richard Nixon. He was in office.
He was potised during all of the Apollo mission landings.
(30:29):
And given that the moon rocks are technically property of
the US government, our buddy President Nixon has the final
say over how they can or cannot be distributed. So
during his administration, our buddy Nixon puts out these orders,
(30:50):
and he orders fragments of the rocks from Apollo eleven
and Apollo seventeen, specifically to be gifted to represents of
each of the fifty states of the United States. And
then he also gifts these two hundreds of foreign dignitaries
(31:11):
around the world.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
They called the goodwilled moon rocks.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
It's like getting a piece of the Berlin Wall at
a gift shop or something fantasier than that. There's a
finite supply of both technically, but I'm also a little
skeptical as to whether those pieces they sell us fridge
magnets are in fact from the wall. So of the
two hundred and seventy, like you said, Ben, so called
goodwill moon rocks that were given away under Nixon's watch,
around one hundred and eighty remain unaccounted for. That's right.
(31:44):
Two thirds are just gone, like Kaiser SoSE in the Nights, lost, stolen, missing.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, and these are also by the way, folks, these
are very small samples. They're less than a gram, So
we're not defending the fact that they are lost. We
are telling you they are easy to lose, right totally.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I mean, I guess I don't quite understand is there
an issue here? These were given as like little keepsakes.
There was no like tracking as to what the dignitaries
did with them after the fact, right where they supposed
to check in periodically as to whether whether their moon
rock still was on their mantle or they made it
into a keychain or something.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Right, yeah, how do you track it? That's a pretty
good point, honestly, And it's interesting to look at the
Soviet version of the matter, which we may do in
a later episode, perhaps on stuff they don't want you
to do.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
I guess it was up to the origin countries of
the dignitaries as to how they would be. It was
more maybe I'm over simplifying it or you know, being hyperbolic.
It wasn't like they were meant to be the They
were meant to be a gift to those countries, and
then it was up to the dignitaries and said countries
to decide how they might be displayed, whether or not
they were worthy of that, et cetera. So we'll get
(33:08):
into a little rundown of some of the tails, at
least the interesting ones of those missing moon rocks around
the world.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, but also it was Nixon, and Nixon was not
above greasing the wheels of geopolitics, you know what I mean.
So he was sliding some stuff on the side. We
actually we know in retrospect how many estimated pieces old
(33:35):
Boy gave away, but he probably did a lot of
stuff off the books. And luckily we know folks like
Joseph Guntais, who has made it a mission to get
these lunar rocks, lunar material, we should say, these small
(33:56):
shards from the moon back to US management. And he's
not playing around. He founded something called the Moon Rock Project,
and he's an ex intelligence officer.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Absolutely he always gets his man. And we haven't gotten
to the point that maybe I've glazed over a little
bit the monetary value of these items. These are not
you know, paltry little trinkets. These things have you know,
cash money value to them, and we're going to get
to that. To date, he and his associates have tracked
(34:31):
down seventy nine of the missing rocks, and I guess
my earlier point, many of which were just found willy
nilly in like memory boxes, the pro personal possessions of
public officials who either forgot they had them, one of
the most precious substances on the planet, as Jordan points out,
or believed that they were the rightful owners, or so
(34:51):
they claimed. So Ireland, here's a case of moonrock on
display at Ireland was accidentally thrown away after a nineteen
seventy seven fire at the observatory where it was held.
The lunar sample was caught up amid the rubble and
taken to a local landfill, where it apparently remains to
this day. The investigator we mentioned gun Fights, gut Thigns.
Gut Tigns, has described it as a pot of gold
(35:13):
under a dump. You know, this reminds me that it reminds
me of that guy that I guess bitcoin hard. He
finally gave that search up after much ado trying to
buy the dump and everything. Apparently it was like a
billion dollars is worth essentially by today's value of bitcoin.
I want to talk about Malta. I know you're a
big Malta head.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Are you a multi ball?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Of course?
Speaker 1 (35:37):
So shout out to Joe by the way, he's got
a very Indiana Jones approach. This is last time I'll
say it. Wait, this is the second time I'll say it.
I'll say it one more time in this series, Indiana Jones,
it belongs in a museum.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
You know what's funny. I was one of my favorite podcasts,
blank Check with Griffin and David recently did all of
Stephen Spielberg's kind of mid to later career films. They
do filmographies, and they did all the Indiana Jones movies,
and they kind of pointed out how that whole it
belongs in a museum. Attitude kind of falls by the
(36:14):
wayside in terms of in these motivations as the series progresses,
he seems a lot less interested as time goes on
in the whole, like you know, preserving things for posterity
and the greater good of the nation and science a
little more focused on like making that money.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
And with that we do have.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
To say the Spielberg Indiana jones films are actually pretty good.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah, and it's even the bad ones.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
What's the what's the one you don't care for?
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Well, the Crystal Skull, I think is pretty universally considered
to be the worst one. The most recent one about
the what's it called antikathera mechanism situation dial of Destiny.
People were a little iffy on that one, but I
think it's more beloved than the Crystal Skull. People were
just really mad about Shiaha both swinging from vines like
(37:08):
a like an orangutan.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
What's your favorite Indiana Jonesville?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
I think my favorite is the Last Crusade. I really
dig the relationship with the father son relationship in that one.
I think it's it's really nice.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
They named the dog Indiana very well done. So it's
May eighteenth, two thousand and four. Malta has a goodwill
moon rock from the Nixon administration. This moon rock is
stolen from their Museum of Natural History. Their Museum of
(37:45):
Natural History, as are pal Josh Clark can confirm, has
no security cameras. It has no real security like custodians
even I think they had one janitor at the time,
but they had a lot of budget cuts, funding shortages.
Whomever this thief may be, they left behind the plaque
(38:08):
and the Maltese flag that the Apollo astronauts had taken
to the Moon with them.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
So this is where our.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
NASA investigator Joe comes in and he says, look at
this he got He's so irritated at this point. He says,
only an amateur would just steal the rock, because if
we are trying to sell it on the black market,
you would want the full set, you'd want the plaque,
you'd want the flag. This would authenticate this thing that
(38:41):
a lot of people who have not been to the
Moon would otherwise assume is just regular rock and dirt
from Earth. And so our buddy Joe goes back and
forth with the authorities in Malta and he says, look,
just tell them, whomever it may be, just tell them,
(39:02):
no questions, ask drop off our little shard of moon rock.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Just give it back. It belongs in a museum. I'm
not going I said, you said you wouldn't say so,
I wasn't going to say, yeah, this is perfect.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
And as we record today August twenty fifth, twenty twenty five,
the missing Malta Goodwill moon rock has yet to be recovered.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Can I just say, I don't know that we didn't
really line this up, and it seems to be the
way that this is going. It seems like part one
here is going to be kind of the history of
moon rocks and the distribution of them and the sort
of international affairs of it all. And this is its
own little mini heighst or at the very least, the
an Mia situation due to the incompetence, let's just say,
(39:52):
of old Tricky Dicky. So lest you be irritated that
we don't give you the promised heist, heist and the
sex on the moon's off, that's all going to happen
in part two. And I think it's an absolutely banger
of a place to break.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
This, absolutely agreed. We also want to tell you two
things before we end some more. As you said, incompetence,
Spain while we're in Europe, let's stay in Spain. Spain
had a moon rock from Apollo eleven, and it went
missing because it was gifted to a guy you'll recognize
(40:26):
from earlier, Francisco Franco.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Not a good dude, not a good dude.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
What did Norm McDonald say. The more I learn about
this guy, the less I like him.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yeah, that does track a dict to a bit of
a dictator and a bit of a dick. It's current
whereabouts are unknown. Franco's grandson did claim, however, the family
never intended to sell it, and suggested that it was
just likely a bit of an oopsie and that it
was lost. He said, as my mother is a woman
with many things in many houses weird flex but okay
(40:57):
in a move or redecorating a room in the end
it must have gotten lost. Are bad but also sorry
not sorry?
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Is the vibe bad?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yeah? Yeah, walk Walk Walk said that in two thousand
and nine in an interview with El Mundo.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yes, and look, our guy has been searching for leads
on this. Maybe he thinks, uh, private collector in Switzerland,
where there are a lot of people who collect a
lot of weird things. He got a nickname, Joe did
in the Spanish press and they said, Joseph Gunties is
(41:36):
the van helsing of Luna traffickers.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Now that's interesting, the van helsing, because that implies to
your earlier point, where wolfism or vampirism or some other
kind of ism. I would have called him maybe more
the Sherlock Holmes of Moon Rockery.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Right with his deer hunter or deer stalker.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Yeah, yes, and his pipe and his cocaine. Dude, have
I told you this. I've been recently listening to the
entire works of Arthur Conan Doyle's Lock Holmes. It's a lot,
by the way, and it's read by Stephen Frye, who
we love from comedy and you know Britain. Sherlock Holmes
did a lot of drugs. Yes, he was like shooting
(42:20):
up morphine between his toes and snorting that cocaine. I mean,
I had no idea. And I think the thing that
I'm most tickled by every time it happens. It must
just be an anachronistic expression of the time when someone
talks about somebody exclaiming something they refer to it as
he ejaculated. Yes, and I just I'm a child. It
makes me titter every time I hear it.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
I have encountered something similar re listening to Like I've
read Blood Meritigan by Cormack McCarthy, so he would.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Say that that is exactly the kind of anachronistic biblical language.
He loves.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Hearing it in an audiobook version made me laugh aloud
to the point where the folks on the plane had
questions about me, but those questions were answered. We made
it back to the States. We're gonna end part one
of Sex on the Moon and the Great Moon Heist
(43:18):
on a happy note. So back in the nineteen nineties,
there's this guy named Alan Rosen, and he's a business
dude in Florida, and he goes to the black market
and he somehow has possession of the goodwill moon Rock
gifted to the nation of Honduras from the Apollo seventeen mission,
(43:42):
and he says, this is going to be sold for
five million dollars. And Uncle Sam did not like it
so much so that we set up a steamed operation
in a burst of creativity. Get this, he named it
Operation Lunar Eclipse. A tad on the nose, A tad
(44:06):
on the nose.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Oh yeah, I get it, I get it, you know,
But isn't that usually the case with these kind of
operations that doesn't seem like creativity is always the strong
suit of them. What name these types of stings? You know?
Speaker 1 (44:20):
I still fantasize about the idea of having a job
where you are the person who just names secret operations.
It feels so cool. It's like it's like the world
of automotive, right, Like what if your job is just
the name vehicles?
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Right?
Speaker 3 (44:40):
Like, how do you do that? Anyway?
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean I think a lot of it's
done by committee. So Operation Munroch did yield some results
and that the rock in question was recovered, and the
origin of how it was you know, received, or how
it got its way to Rosen was that he purchased
it from the retur hired Honduran colonel Roberto Ugorcia Ugarte,
(45:04):
who sold it to Rosen after disguising its origin. He
was a little dishonest about how he came upon this moonrock,
so Joseph Gundhines posing undercover. God, this guy is such
a cool mm hm. He led the ops with the
support from agencies including the US Postal Inspection Service never forget,
(45:24):
never forget or underestimate, Rather the US Postal Inspection Service
as well as Customs. They also had funding. You remember
remember Ross Perot. I haven't heard that name in a minute.
Forgot He had a first initial h ross Perot, well
weird little guy, weird little dude who ran for president
and was famously mocked on sn L I believe by
(45:48):
Dana Carvey, who was the ross Perot the HS for
Henry by the way, important important de So after a
five year legal battle, the Moonrock was in fact returned
to Honduras in two thousand and four and is now
at the Centro Interactivo Chiminike in Tagusigalpa. Which is one
of my favorite names of a place.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
That's what you're gonna say when you show up.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
You're gonna walk in and you're gonna say, this is
one of my favorite names of a place to Goosy Gappa.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Does it get much better? Well, it's it's just as silly,
silly as it to Goosy Galpa.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
What could be better than this? We'll tell you right now.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
It's going to be part two of our continuing series
of ridiculous heist involving lunar material. Now, the exploration of
the Solar System goes back and forth, right, but it's
a very human endeavor. It's incredibly important for anybody who
(46:50):
would like to argue that space exploration is somehow a
waste of time. Please remember that this applied science getting
folks into orbit and indeed to the moon. It provides
a lot of scientific breakthroughs that help your life today,
things like velcro or tang or pens that right upside dout.
(47:15):
And so with this we're going to call the today.
We've got to also call our pal Joe and get
up to date with him on the Moon Rock search.
We're gonna save our Indiana Jones references for episode two.
For now, we want to give a big thanks to
our research associate Jordan Runta or super producer Max Williams. Noel,
(47:39):
do we have a good nickname or a moniker for Jordan.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Well, he's Jordan's Smoking moon Rocks in the Boondocks run Talk.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
I like the rhyme for sure.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
It's not mine. It's from the rapper Shad the god
in the song moon Rocks, in the parlance of hip
hop culture, is referred to a particular strain a very
very very highly potent marijuana.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
No Ah, I've learned so much.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Also thanks to Eve's Jeff Goat, Chris vossiotis here in
spirit thanks to aj Bahama's Jacobs. We've got some guests
coming up do we want to brag a little bit
about them?
Speaker 2 (48:16):
I think we must. We do have a returning guest
appearance from Ridiculous History alum Rachel Biggs Spinach Lance talking
about some underwater explosions, which I'm quite excited about.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yes, and we are contractually required to say, with great reluctance,
shout out to Jonathan Strickland, aka the Twister.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
He would have loved this episode. My boy's always high
on moon rocks. I'm kidding, He's never touched the stuff.
He's probably allergic. He would probably kill him.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
And still he's stealing moon rocks right now.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
I know it's true. He is much more of a
despicable me type, steal the moon and all the rocks
type figure than smoking them.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
So with great thanks, we are going to continue on
our exploration of moon Heist. We hope that you will
join us very soon. Unless you are the Quist No, yeah,
we will see you next time.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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