Kevin Sorbo- From Hercules to Mere Mortal

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This is the Truth Network. Hi, Nikita Koloff and I am excited to announce that I will be hosting my first ever Holy Land Tour. That's right, a trip to the Holy Land with the Russian Nightmare. And I'm extending a personal invitation to you. Join me December 27, 2023 to January 5, 2024 for a once in a lifetime trip.

Now, the Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of It's Time to Man Up. Kevin Sorbo, actor Kevin Sorbo, welcome to the Man Up show. Good to be here again with you. It's always good to chat and I appreciate you letting me get the word out there on some of the things I've been doing.

Yes, sir, absolutely. And always great, Kevin, to have you on the show, have you back on the show. And I'm just going to say this for our listeners out there. If you're unfamiliar with Kevin's career, we're going to talk about just some of the things he's doing presently and or go back into the archives, the podcast archives, and be sure and listen to some of the other interviews that we have done with Kevin in the past. Of course, acting, television, movies. Just give a quick synopsis, Kevin, of some of what you've been involved in in that world. And I want to eventually get to the book you wrote and how it came about, but tell our listeners about your acting world. You know, my big break, people probably know it.

It hurt you at least for seven years, a big hit. Then I did a series called Andromeda after that. Since then I started with 70 movies and I would say the bulk of those movies I've been doing, certainly in the last 10, 11 years, are more in the family-friendly range. I do a lot of faith-based ones, but I do movies with just good messages, period. I decided back in 2010, 2011, I wanted to do movies that Hollywood wasn't doing and movies that Hollywood used to do, movies that had hope and love, redemption.

The good guy wins, not the bad guy. I mean, things changed in Hollywood, I think probably in the 60s where we started glorifying the bad guys. I love Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid, but let's face it, in real life, those guys were not Paul Newman and Robert Redford. They weren't good-looking guys that could quip and be funny. These were bad guys. Hollywood has a tendency to glorify the negative now.

If you're for the positive sides of life, they want to attack you for that. You know as well as I do what's happened to America over the last decade. God forbid that you pursue the American dream. Shame on you for working hard.

Shame on you for failing and not quitting. We live in a world now where the under 30s are 18 to 30-year-olds in this last election, 67% believe in communism. I know I'm getting off track here, but it blew my mind when I read that. This is the road we're going down right now. I keep reminding people, nobody's taken boats from Key West to Cuba. There's a reason for that.

Nobody in America is rushing the border to get into Mexico. Once again, there's a reason for that. I wanted to do movies that woke people up and said, hey, guys, look, we're destroying the greatest country in the world piece by piece here right now and we're letting it happen before our eyes. I've also told people the sheep will be sheep, but I'm here to wake up the lions and get people to not be afraid of losing their job or losing their friends because they weren't your friends to begin with. Don't let you have your say. Hollywood booted me out 11 years ago for being a Christian and a conservative, and I had to laugh at them. I said, wow, you're the ones who are always aiming for freedom of speech and tolerance.

With them, tolerance is a one-way road. You know that. I know that. I've been very fortunate to stay alive in this business because I still love the business. I still love being on the chaotic sets that I've shot on. I also tell people that it's organized chaos shooting movies and television shows, but to me, I'm going to keep plugging along and doing movies with a positive message and fight the crap that's coming out of Hollywood. Organized chaos. I like that. Sounds like the wrestling matches I used to be involved in.

Organized chaos. I'm going to steal that from you. Of course, we get a lot of wrestling fans that listen to The Man Up Show, but they're not only wrestling fans. I know there will be many who will be familiar with your name and certainly some of the things you list at Hercules, the TV series. Of course, I think one of the first movies I saw was God's Not Dead. That was a big one for you, right? Yeah, that was huge. We knew we had a good movie for the full-out budget, two million budget. We all worked for really the SAG minimum and I just loved the script. It was the same writer. He was really into a movie called What If, which of the 70 plus movies I've done, it's easily in my top three. So when this one came along, I read it and I said, this is awesome. I played the, I always joke about playing the atheist college professor and I say that's redundant. I played the college professor.

They already know that he's an atheist. They were hoping to make, I think, $10 million total in theaters, which would have been huge for an independent movie. Well, it made $11 million opening weekend. Opening weekend made $11 million. So it just exploded out there and went on to make $140 million worldwide. So that really opened the door for me to people start calling up and say, hey, can we get you to come be in this movie or that movie?

And it's been busy since then. I probably shot 40 movies since then. So they're not all great, but they're all, most of them are pretty good. So I'm going to keep plugging along and doing these movies because I enjoy doing them. Well, and there's an obvious desire for those types of movies, kind of to your point. And it's interesting, the expression comes to mind is, you talk about Hollywood glorifying the bad guys or the more negative side of things, not realizing there is an audience out there that desires, that wants more positive messages, right?

More positive, whether it's movies or television shows and yeah, it seems unfortunate that they're willing to sacrifice, you might say, at their own expense, to not cater to that audience. But that's where we're thankful for guys like you, who are willing to step into the fray, so to speak, and produce these types of movies and shows and other things that you're doing. Let me ask you this, Kevin, because so you're very involved in faith-based movies.

And so have you, at what point in your life journey did your faith become important to you? And I know... Okay, that's a very good question. On the backtrack, just for a second, to talk to your wrestling crowd there, I have a movie coming out next year called Miracle in East Texas. It's a true story set in 1930, about the largest oldest fun in the history of the world.

It's a wonderful story. John Rauschenberg and myself are in it. But I'm going to name a guy that you might know. His name is Tyler Maines. And Tyler was a wrestler from the 90s as well. And he was... I met him at these Comic-Con homograph shows that we'd go to.

And as you wrestlers, I mean, you guys get lines a mile long at some of these Comic-Cons, because you've got such a hardcore base of fans. And Tyler was great. And we put him in the movie. He does such an amazing job in it. So I hope people check it out. I've done a couple other cons since then. But this movie is coming out sometime in the spring. And I hope people will check that out. And I'm going to throw a quick plug out there for sorbostudios.com. Because at sorbostudios.com, there's all kinds of information that people can go to and find out not only what I'm up to, but my wife is up to with all of her books and all of her homeschooling adventures.

Because she does a lot of speaking in that world. But to backtrack to the question you asked, I had... It's the end of season five on Hercules.

And we're back in the late 90s now. I was having problems with my left arm. I couldn't think of one on my arm. My hands were numb and cold.

My whole left arm was just like feeling weird. And I kind of blew it off. You know what it's like.

It's that jock mentality where it's like, I'm fine. And I was doing most of my own stunts because I loved it. And it was fun. It was a blast. And I had some guys that were just awesome that made me look like a stud. But I was still, you know, getting sprains and cuts and bumps and bruises all the time.

So we're ending season five. I finally come back to America. And I was doing the publicity for my first big budget movie called Cull the Conqueror. And the books, in the comic books, Cull is the father of Conan the Barbarian. And I was playing Cull. And we shot it over in Bratislava, Slovakia. And we spent about three weeks in Croatia as well.

So I come back to the States to do promotional work on it while it's releases going on. And I'm up in, I was on Letterman, Leno, doing like talk shows. And I went to Boston from New York to do some more radio and TV up there. And my arm just felt like it was on fire. They sent a doctor to my hotel room. This guy's doctor's name was Dr. Dye. Okay.

I know D-Y-E, but still your doctor changed your last name. Right. Oh my gosh. It was great.

So, but he hits it. He says, I think it's cardiovascular. So I get back to the States.

I'm back to LA. I mean, my doctor finds a lump in my shoulder and he says, um, I want to do a biopsy on this Kevin. He at the time thought it was cancer. Didn't tell me that at the moment, but, uh, I went to my chiropractor now in eight years of his chiropractor in Santa Monica. He's never cracked my neck cause I don't like my neck cracked.

Yeah. And I tell every chiropractor, I see just like one off visit if I'm in another town or something, don't crack my neck. He's never cracked my neck in eight years.

He knows me very, very well. I heard a voice and some, I said, don't let them crack your neck. And it was weird because the voice kept getting louder and louder.

And I'm like, I'm arguing with his voice in my head while this is going on. But he cracked my neck without lump was way up and near my neck, uh, with an aneurysm that was spinning off blood clots down to my arms, suffocating the blood flowing in my fingers, cut, making the fingers cold and numb all the time. Well, that cracked from left to right.

Cause it was on the left side. It forced a series of clots into my brain. I suffered four strokes and, um, they rushed me to the hospital. Um, the speech came back quickly.

Thank God. But I had one of my vision and two in my balance sentence. It took me four months to learn how to even stand up and walk and balance again. It took me three years to fully recover. And then I had, um, I still have a 10% loss of vision in each eye, the upper right quadrant of both eyes. Uh, most people wouldn't be able to tell what my limitations were, what happened to me.

Uh, I know what they are. I know since then what's, what, what I'm capable of and what, you know, what's the dizziness that I still go through. But I was able to have a recovery and I wrote a book on it called true strength, my journey from Hercules, the mere mortal and how nearly dying saved my life. So here's the answer your question, that long winded way to get to this. I eyeballs had faith in my life, but I'd never needed faith until I was hit with this roadblock in my life.

And trust me, I, I wrestled with God and you're going to lose every time. But I think I went to be safe. Most people go through where you blame God, the universe, the family, the world. Um, my wife, Sam is the top Philadelphia, New Yorker and, uh, uh, a brainiac. I thought she was a biochemical engineering major at Duke university. So she and I went to college for a completely different reason, but, um, she would, every time I got down, she would say, Kevin, it happened. What are you going to do about it? And it was tough love. Trust me. It was tough love. So I, she gave me a man for just looking at every morning and look in the mirror and said, I'm getting better. I'm getting stronger. And I would do that.

I'm getting better. I stayed out loud until I believe it for that day. And it was huge for me because, um, you know, you're from an athletic world and me, it's like that no pain, no gain.

I would push myself way past what the doctors told me to do in terms of my recovery, in terms of the exercises and the therapy. And it would wipe me out of wipe my brain out. And, but I knew that to get my brain to recircuits or wake up or do something, I had to push it and go through the crap.

I was going to feel afterwards. Um, so it was, it was huge for me and the book became, um, uh, a success. And all of a sudden people started calling me to say, Hey, we want you to come and do speaking events.

Was that really? And it just took off over the last 10, 11 years. That's what I've been doing. And it's been a godsend because I get people of all ages saying your book has saved my life. Um, you know, whatever it may be, people say, I read your book. I have to go and source myself and I pushed on because the book has, it's semi-autobiographical wealth, great stories in there. It's not just like, well, life is a downer. It's a book with a lot of love and laughter in it.

And if people want to get it, they can go to global studios.com. Um, like I said, I do a lot of speaking events and I find a bunch of them after every speaking events and I hope people will check it out because, um, it is motivational and it does, you know, I'm, I, I'm not, I'm not egotistic enough to know that I'm the only one that has a story. Everybody has a story.

Everybody has, no matter what it may be. Everybody's hit roadblocks in life. How do you react to that roadblock? And I will say, you gotta, you gotta look in the mirror and say, what are you gonna do about it?

Because you can blame everybody else. But the reality is you're gonna start with yourself and cue Michael Jackson on the mirror and take it from there. Yeah. I mean, I, yes, I mean, obstacles are inevitable, right? I mean, that's just, that's just a part of the journey. It just is. And, you know, you're gonna let, let it be a blockade or, or, you know, you're gonna overcome it.

And I love the title, True Strength from Hercules to Mere Mortal, right? You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Nikita Kollof here, and I am excited. Did you hear the huge announcement, the big announcement?

Well, maybe it's a minor announcement. Anyway, Facebook, go look up my new fan page, Nikita Kollof Fans, and like it and follow today. If you would like to support Kollof for Christ Ministries for a gift of $25, Nikita will send you his two CDs, Adoration and Declaration. For a gift of $50, Nikita will include his book, Wrestling with Success. And for a gift of $100 or more, Nikita will include a signed copy of his newly updated life story, A Tale of the Ring and Redemption. Go to www.kollof.net and donate today.

You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Yep. Wow. And what a great, I did not know any of that about you, that you had, wow, suffered for, so you overcame those physical challenges. And what a blessing you have there in that lovely bride of yours, Sam. So the show is called Man Up, and I do conferences, and we got a camp called Man Camp.

And sounds like your wife was like, hey, Kevin, are you going to man up or not? Come on, right? You know what? Obviously, you should have her on the show to talk about homeschooling and other things, because she's more political than me. She can definitely get in. She would be a very good person to do to have in the show. I would.

Well, you know what? Yeah, let's arrange that at some point. I would love to do, because I love having ladies on the show, even though it's called the Man Up show. I love having women on the show, because for one, it gives guys a different perspective, things coming from a woman's perspective, right? She's on Glenn Beck right now. She's on Glenn Beck's show. She's over in California, and she's doing a live painting with Glenn right now. Well, I will get back in touch with you and would love to have Sam on the show. And speaking of which, fill our listeners in on it. Go ahead and tell, until we have her on the show, go ahead and tell our listeners what all she's involved in.

What is she doing? We're homeschoolers. My oldest son at the end of second grade, we've been homeschooling all three of our kids since then. Two of them have now graduated.

My daughter is a junior in homeschooling, I guess you can say junior year. And she does a lot of speaking on it. She's got a political book out there called Words for Warriors, how to deal with the craziness of the left and the woke world and the cancel culture world.

And she's got a wonderful book on homeschooling called They're Your Kids, because I think people, you know, we've been using the public schools as a babysitting tool for our kids, and we just think that's the road we got to go. I've always agreed with what Ronald Reagan said, he said, the greatest words to fear are, hi, I'm from the government, we're here to help. So right. You know, everything the government runs is the failure. Think about it, everything.

And, you know, they create nothing, everything's about destruction. So we're in it to fight against what the government's doing. We'd like to get rid of this, you know, all schooling away.

One of the blessings of COVID is 2 million kids now are being homeschooled because a lot of parents woke up to the horrors of what's being fought and what they're doing is brainwashing to our kids in the public schools. And she's just, you know, nonstop, she acts, she's still with, she's in my movie Miracle in East Texas, she did a great job in that. She's in my most recent movie, Left Behind, Rise of the Antichrist, which opens January 26th.

I'll give that a quick plug, leftbehindmovie.com, leftbehindmovie.com, based off the best-selling books, please go check it out and see. We're showing a theater near you opening weekend, January 26th next year, and she's, you know, a go-getter and she's a tough one. I grew up in small town, you know, I grew up in Mound, Minnesota, Lake Natonka, in a town of 7,000 people. She's a Pittsburgh, New Yorker through and through, so she's, you know, we battle with that too. She's a Steelers fan and, you know, you and I are not Steelers fans. That is correct, the Skoll Vikings, come on, Skoll Vikings. 7-2, 7-2, come on, don't let me down, guys.

There's a cardiac bid, but they keep winning. Hey, so you mentioned, so she went to Duke University, is that what you said? She did, yep. And you, so how'd you guys, how'd you guys meet? She came down to guest star on Hercules, as every episode of Hercules, every episode of Hercules, we did a guest star, and, you know, 90% of the time, it was a, another beautiful woman. So for me, it was a great date and perfect.

I hear ya, right, yeah. When I, when Sam came down, it was like a lightning bolt to me, and I worked on her pretty quick. I'm a big flirt to begin with, so I wore her down and put her out on the date, and during that date, she found out that I like country music, that I'm a Christian and a conservative, and she looked at me and she said, the three C's, Kevin, I think I'm in love with Kevin.

I'm in love with you. But that was our first day. Wow. And that was how many years ago, Kevin? How many years ago? That was 25 years.

25 years ago. And three kids. Now, give it, tell us, tell us, tell us just real quick about your children. How old are they? My kids are, my oldest brother, I'm six.

Okay. And he's six, five. He got, he got into powerlifting, but he got up to 250 pounds. He just hit a deadlift of 610 pounds recently, and I'm like going, and I saw the video of it, and I said, Braden, my spine just turned to powder watching you lift 610 pounds. And then, oh, he's a big kid. He's a strong kid. And then my other one is six, four, Shane, and Shane is just, he's got, he's just, he's built solid like a, like a D-back, you know, he's got the, he's got the abs, he's got the B-workout time. And then Octavia, my 17 year old is the artist in the family.

She's an amazing, amazing artist. But Braden is following my footsteps. He's been in seven movies already. He and I just shot a movie up in Montana earlier this year. And he just booked another one in California, he's shooting later.

And he's got booked for another one next year. So, he's kind of following my footsteps. Shane wants to do a little of that, but he, he's more interested in engineering. He's sort of very, you know, brainy like my wife is.

So, I think that's the road he's gonna follow. But, you know, the kids, we never went through any terrible scenes with any of them. They were wonderful kids. And I think that's a shout out to, I think the upbringing I had is mixed with Sam's hand, certainly in the, in the kids, but also, you know, they, they weren't in this public school. They were just, they, they were, they were raised in this very outgoing, they're very positive, they're very disciplined. It's just, they're great kids.

I'm very proud of them. Because, you know, sometimes, you know, you mentioned the homeschooling and, and some words that come to mind in today's world is the difference between education and indoctrination, right? And, of course, when you're schooling your own children, you have the opportunity to educate them with, you know, whatever education you choose or decide to, to be able to enlighten them too. And so, I think what, because I did a little bit of homeschooling, actually, you know, you may or may not know, but I graduated from Moorhead, Moorhead State with a, with a teaching degree. Now, I never went into formal teaching. I had a teaching degree in physical education, then a minor in coaching and health, but always had a desire to teach. And I feel like I've been teaching the majority of my life, even though it's never been in formal education.

And so I did, some of my children, there was some seasons there where I did some homeschooling with them and really enjoyed it. And so for, for, you know, your wife to, to take on that, that task or that role is, is amazing. And, you know, the, the knock sometimes is, well, they're not going to be, you know, they're not, they're not going to socially, you know, they're not going to adapt, you know, socially, right?

Or, but, but you can overcome that knock too, right? Oh, that, that, but that, that's a fallacy. That is nothing truthful. My kids are so outgoing and so, and adults are blown away by my kids, the way they talk, the way they approach people.

And that's not just now, it was 10 years ago as well. You look at, you look at school kids that a public school kids, they can't even look at you because all they want to do is look at their iPhone to begin with anyway. But they're, they're, they don't, they've lost conversation skills completely. Homeschool kids, complete different opposite.

I think, I think there's always been a, a mystique about that from back in the seventies or eighties and stuff, but I think there's, there's so far from the truth, but that's what they're going to say. You know, it's interesting when people say they can't homeschool. Um, I could never do that.

I don't like to do it. So you're saying that the public school system that you went through from kindergarten through 12th grade, that they didn't teach you, they did not make you prepared enough to teach a first grader. What does that, what does that say about the education system?

So it's pretty funny, Axel. Right, that you and I, yeah, right, exactly. So, well, let's, let's, uh, we're almost out of time. I want to make sure, so, so if people, uh, if people, so you're still out there, I mean, you're available on the speaking circuit then currently? Oh, definitely. They can go to, they can go to sorbostudios.com and get ahold of me there. Okay.

Sorbostudios.com. And, and of course there's many other resources. You said, again, the book, true strength from Hercules to mere mortal and, uh, motivational, I'm sure inspirational as well. And, and so many movie projects that, that you've got. I know we didn't really talk about on this show. We have on other shows, you've got your own production studio and, and of course it's become a family business.

The acting has become a family business. That's, that's really cool to hear as well. Hey, I got to give a shout out though for people that want, have never been to Israel or if you've been there and want to go back. My wife and I are hosting our second trip.

We did it back in 2019. We take only 60 people. We have three amazing guides there. It's May 17th through the 29th and go to sorbostrips.com.

That's sorbostrips.com. Check it out, guys. It's an amazing, amazing trip. I was just there earlier this year. I shot a documentary, um, through archeological digs. We trace the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle.

It's going to come out next spring. And I have another documentary called Against the Tide that I did with John Lennox. John Lennox is a very famous apologist. He's debated all the great atheists who were like Dawkins and Hitchens and Singer.

He's amazing. And you can get Against the Tide online or you can go to sorbostrips.com, but Against the Tide, uh, Proving God in a World of Science. It's a fantastic, uh, look at, uh, uh, just really, um, how do I call it?

I call it, uh, apologetics for dummies like me. That's what, that's what the movie is. So I hope people check it out because it's highly educational and highly entertaining. Well, you've got, there's a lot of relatability between you and I, certainly with not just our college, our college backgrounds, but, uh, and everything else that we've been involved in. And even, even, uh, just listening to your schedule, even just what you've just shared the last couple of minutes, I'm like, people look at me, Kevin, and they're like, like, there's, how do you fit all that in in 24 hours, you know, or in seven days?

By God's grace, that's how I fit it all in. So a lot going on. Kevin Sorbo, actor Kevin Sorbo, his lovely bride, lovely wife, Sam, uh, go to sorbostudios.com and check out, uh, all of the different, uh, things that, that Kevin's got going on.

I'm gonna pick up a copy of his book, True Strength. Well, thanks for tuning in. Uh, thank you, Kevin. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Man Up with Nikita Koloff. Until next time, God bless you. This podcast is made possible by the grace of God and your faithful prayers, support, and generous gifts.

May God bless you for your continual contributions. Go to koloff.net and donate today. Hi, Nikita Koloff.

Be sure to check out The Man Up Show, now available on television, broadcast, and podcast. Go to morningstartv.com or the Truth Radio Network. Check out your local listings or better yet, download the Truth Network app today. Nikita Koloff here.

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