thad roberts was taken down -- i always give it away. you know he got arrested. right. right. >> don't cross that line. >> right. >> you obviously have come off of enormous success with not only the books, but also the fact they then are converted to movies, which helps in terms of that notoriety. >> they always change the titles. "sex on the moon" is the first one they have to keep. >> you locked in on that one. >> and certainly, you had said you were working on this at the time that the social network was being filmed. there was some kind of overlap. at this point, i've always thought that in the way that actors and actresses are only as good as the roles they choose. writers are only as good as the stories that they pick. what was it that -- i mean all of that that you just explained notwithstanding, of all of the stories that you could have told, what was it that attracted you to this particular topic? >> you know what, for me, the stories come to me. i don't look for them. ever since "bringing down the house." i get 20 or 30 e-mails. every college kid that does som

thad roberts was taken down. i always give it away. but, you know, he got arrested. [laughter] >> don't cross that line. you have come off of enormous success with not only the book but also the fact that their convert to movies which helps in terms of that now provide. >> they always change the title of my movies and it's annoying. "sex on the moon" i think is the first month they have to keep. [laughter] >> they are locked in on that one. certainly usage were working on this at the time "the social network" was being filmed so there was some kind of overload. by that point, i've always thought that anyway the actors and actresses are only as good as the roles that they choose, writers are only as good as the stories that they it. so what was it, of all of the story that you could have told him what was it that attracted you to this particular one? >> for me the stories come to me. i don't look for them anymore. ever since "bringing down the house" i get 200 2003 -- i get r 30 e-mails a week. i was want to write about nasa. i think it's amazing but when you think of

. >> thad roberts came from a very hard background country fundamentalist mormon family. he was kicked out of his house when he was 18 for that meeting to premarital sex, and then he decided he wanted to be an astronaut and he changed his life and kind of became a james bond and majored in geology and physics and astronomy at the university of utah and learned how to fly airplanes and scuba dive and spoke what i said five languages, and then he got into nassau's the five johnson space center, it's a co-op program so it's for college kids, but it's a theater to the astronaut training programs and he was achieving his dream. he is a big star and became the social leader with of the interns and then he fell in love with a young intern, and we've all done something stupid out of love. but thad roberts did is stole a safe of moon rocks from his professor's office, and as i said, spread them on a bed, had sex with his girlfriend and tried to sell them over the internet to a belgium gm dealer whose name was axle. you couldn't have invented this guy. he's never been out in his li

. >> thad roberts is the most complicated person i've ever written about.er: this author has penned books about the m.i.t. whiz kids who almost brought down the house in las vegas. and about facebook founder mark zuckerberg. thad roberts was an even more irresistible subject. >> i've always been writing about the genius kids who live in the gray area between right and wrong. here is this kid who basically does 100-yard sprint through that gray area right into the black area and i don't know why. i think that kind of blew mooe away. >> reporter: that race to the dark side started when roberts saw some moon rocks in the laboratory safe of nasa scientist everett gibson. moon rocks he would eventually steal. >> man, that is hard. just don't stub your toe. >> reporter: nasa has 842 pounds of moon rocks. apollo's total lunar haul, a small percent including the samples that were in dr. gibson's safe have been exposed to the earth's atmosphere. still they would be invaluable to any collector. >> when he gets to nasa and sees all these moon rocks in a safe that aren