Rick Green: 0:09
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It's WallBuilders and we're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Thanks so much for joining us today. Be sure to visit WallBuilders.com for more information and lots of great tools for your family, as well as WallBuildersLive.com if you want to go back into the archives of programs. You might have missed over the last couple of weeks, but today we're going to have Sam Sorbo with us. I'm here with David and Tim Barton. Sam will be joining us here in a little bit and I'm regretting guys. I got to tell you I heard a lot of great things while I was in Illinois over the weekend about folks listening to WildBuilders. Even had a member of Congress say that that's how she listens every morning while she's doing her makeup, so she knows what to do that day. No, she didn't say it quite that way, but she did say she loves listening every day when she's doing her makeup. So anyway, I thought that was kind of cool that they're still a little bit of America in Illinois. So I'm going to go ahead. And they're still a little bit of America in Illinois. Maybe not a lot of America in Illinois still, but outside of Chicago it's pretty good. But anyway, sam will be with us a little bit and I know you guys hear the same thing around the country, but it's important for people to have good sources that lift them up and don't just run them down all the time.

David Barton: 1:12
WallBuildersLive.com really is a good source of information. We're able to bring in newsmakers and those that are in entertainment or education or military or whatever the stories are. So it's a great source of information and really conservatives need good sources. All Americans need a good source of information. Tim and I were just in Washington DC recently and we were with some members of Congress really good guys, just really solid and a bit of warriors on the right side. But as all this drama has been going on even with Speaker and who's going to be Speaker and how long is the Speaker going to be there and how many does it take to get a Speaker All the drama that's gone on now for several weeks, it was interesting that conservatives some of them were calling in. Well, a lot of them were calling in, but some of them just weren't being real nice when they called in.

Tim Barton: 1:56
Well and let me interject too there was a lot of people calling in because everybody from Glenn Beck to Sean Hannity, mark Levin, all these conservative voices on the kind of political talk show narratives they were telling people call in because this is when Jim Jordan was running for Speaker and there were old outs, and so there were people saying call your congressman, tell them to support Jim Jordan. He's the big deal. We need a conservative speaker. And so it is a very valid and a very positive thing that people want to engage, that they want their voices to be heard. But probably it makes a difference how you talk to your congressman, right? It's like saying, hey, you and your wife should communicate. Well, that's true. But if the way you communicate right is not in a loving, positive way. Well then, you know, probably you don't need to do more cursing at your spouse right, Like that's not the way you need to do this. Even though communicating with your spouse is good, how you communicate with them is even more important, and I think where you were going is. What we heard from a lot of these congressmen up in DC last week is that there were so many congressmen that got turned off from even wanting to support Jordan based on the nastiness of conservatives, and it didn't even stop with just negative phone calls.

David Barton: 3:23
Yeah, there was one congressman who now is having to have security with him in 24-7 because of all the death threats he got, some of which appear to be substantiated looked like some stuff was underway. And there was another one who actually voted for Jim Jordan and got so many calls threatening him for not supporting Jordan, which he already had, that he didn't even vote for Jim the second time. He was so turned off by the way people communicated. And so, man, we've got to talk to government. But we cannot be angry, we cannot be mean, we cannot. I mean that's just not acceptable. And so everybody stand balled. But, man, keep a good attitude when you do.

Rick Green: 3:58
Well, and like Tim was saying, it's like a spouse, right. I mean, these are and the ones that you guys were talking to. They're our friends, they're good congressmen that are with us on most things. That's the guy or gal you're going to chew out and make a death threat of, when they're, most of the time, doing everything that you wanted them to do, and maybe even, like you said, some of these guys and gals were voting for Jordan and they still got the nasty calls. So what a lack of discernment. You got to do better on that.

David Barton: 4:21
So, with all the news that we can bring, we get to also do some entertainment and I've been a fan of Kevin Sorbo and his wife Sam for a long time. I mean I got to go back, guys. This is in the late. It's got to be the late 1990s when Kevin was doing Hercules, the legendary journeys, and I was a real fan of that and watched season after season. So it's always fun to be with the Sorbos. But they're doing some really good stuff now. They were in Hollywood but they have now focused so much on Christian values and the importance of Christian values in the nation and they've taken their expertise and entertainment and pointed it that direction. And Sam particularly is really concerned that we get kids raised with the right kind of education. So she has really done some pioneer yeoman work and helping people switch over to homeschooling to get the right values and the right content for their kids. So Sorbos are doing great stuff and it's going to be fun to talk to Sam today.

Rick Green: 5:11
New movie coming out that Sorbos are putting out in Miracle in East Texas. Sam's going to be here to talk to us about it. Stay with us, folks, we'll be right back on Whirlbuilders.

Tim Barton: 5:31
This is Tim Barton from Whirlbuilders. With another moment from American history as the American War for Independence began, the president of Yale was the Reverend Naftali Daggett. When New Haven, the home of Yale, came under attack, about 100 citizens rushed out to meet the British. The Reverend Daggett galloped by them on horseback, his clerical robes flowing behind him in the wind, and he took up a solitary position atop a hill. The 2500 British soon put the townsfolk to flight, but the Reverend Daggett continued to stand alone, firing down on the advancing troops. A British officer confronted him what are you doing there, you old fool? If I let you go, will you ever fire again on the troops of his majesty? Nothing more likely, was the preacher's reply, because early pastors personally confronted danger and courageously led their communities. For more information on Pastor Daggett and other colonial patriots, go to wwwwhirlbuilderscom.

Rick Green: 6:29
Welcome back. Thanks for staying with us. Always great to have Sam Sorbo and there's so much to catch up on folks so you're going to have to listen fast. Sorbo Studioscom. Sam, hey, great to have you back. Thanks for some time of the day.

Sam Sorbo: 6:39
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited about this project.

Rick Green: 6:41
Well, I mean, you got the new movie coming out here in a couple of weeks. You've got all this homeschool opportunities to help parents. You've become very passionate about this in the last few years, making a huge difference in the equipment and folks to be able to educate their kids at home. I mean, we were blessed to do it as a family. A lot of people think they can't do it. You've been able to convince them. Yes, you can do this and help them do that. But then the movie coming out as well. So let's start with the movie the miracle in East Texas, october 29 and 30th in theaters. Tell us about the movie and what made you all decide to do it.

Sam Sorbo: 7:15
So it's a limited release in theaters nationwide. It's a fathom release. If you want tickets, go to sorbostudioscom and all the information is there. It is actually based on a true story of the East Texas oil strike, which is the most improbable story you've ever heard and you know stranger than fiction. Basically, there's two oil men who really were sort of philanderers were wooing widows into investing in their fake oil wells and they'd sort of pretend that they were drilling. They had a broken down old rig and they'd drill for a while and then they'd just declare a dry hole and move on, having sold over 500% of each well.

Rick Green: 7:54
Oh, wow.

Sam Sorbo: 7:55
And, as you know, you can't have more than 100% of anything. And then they accidentally struck oil. I'm not giving anything away, it is called Miracle in East Texas, but the other miracles that surround the story are really what makes this story so unique and so incredible. We tell it as a comedy because it really is hilarious and it's what created the Hunt Oil Company, so it's just an improbable, phenomenal story. We tell it with a theme of forgiveness because we think that our culture is just heading headlong off the rails into a culture of unforgiveness and, as you know, forgiveness is one of the tenets of our faiths, or maybe the main tenets of our faith. No-transcript, we just want to breathe some of that back into the culture. This is a family-friendly comedy. When was the last time you had an opportunity to go to the theater with your family without being offended or insulted? And so it's just a lot of fun. We're really hoping that families get out to the theaters. But even more importantly than that, I developed a curriculum to go with the movie for homeschoolers, and so if you're a family that likes to homeschool, this is the curriculum for you. It's not terribly in-depth, but because the story is real and because it deals with forgiveness and it deals with entrepreneurship and a little bit of economics. It's during the Great Depression. There's some history in there too. I developed a pretty easy homeschool curriculum to inspire conversations, discussions with your kids, and if you think that you're a family that can't homeschool, I really encourage you to download the curriculum. It's free. Go watch the movie and then follow along with the curriculum with your family and you will get a glimpse of how easy it is to home educate your children, and that's really, as you know, my passion. I was just on a plane this morning at 6 am and I talked to guys that you're off the poor guy, but he's got a five-year-old and we got to get the kids out of school. We got to save the kids.

Rick Green: 9:58
Wait a minute. You had to do a 6 am flight and you still were willing to do this interview with me. You're a champ.

Sam Sorbo: 10:05
I just got to my hotel room.

Rick Green: 10:07
I hate those early morning flights. Okay, so Miracle, in East Texas. I didn't realize this was part of the Hunt family story, so very, very cool. I can't wait to see this. Okay, miracle, and by the way, you've got this. I mean, we're just glad you're in it, sam, but some guy named Kevin that you, that some ran into him. Maybe I don't know, I don't know how well you know this guy. My husband directed it how fun was ever y'all to do this project together, though that's really where I wanted to go.

Sam Sorbo: 10:35
Yeah him, John Ratsenberger, my son's also got a small part in the movie, although Cool, Unfortunately he got cut out quite a bit. So he's in the bloopers at the end of the movie. Stay for the end of the movie because there's some hilarious bits that didn't make it into the film. You know outtakes from the movie and some other things, and so it's just a fun time at the theater. It's a fun time to get families back into the theaters to enjoy themselves for an evening. And then the homeschool curriculum. There's also a book like a book discussion group curriculum if you have a book group that you like to go out with. And then of course, some pastors' notes for pastors who are interested in preaching from pop culture a little bit. I'm really excited about this project. I'm excited for families to get a glimpse into homeschooling and see how easy it can be and just everything else. I love history, I love American history and you do too, and I will tell you this. So about a decade after this oil strike, we entered World War II and there were German submarines in the Gulf of Mexico. We sent 73 tankers from the East Texas oil field to Europe and 72 of them were torpedoed by the German U-boats in the Gulf of Mexico. So over the course of the following year that was, in the first month of our joining the Allied Forces in Europe and declaring war and declaring we were part of the war. Over the course of the next year we built a pipeline called the Big Inch that crossed from East Texas to the East Coast and Winston Churchill has said that the Allies floated to victory on a sea of East Texas oil. So the idea that God's providence created this situation where these two scoundrels really found the biggest oil strike in US history that then ended up saving our butts over in the field in Europe and defeating the Nazis, because the Nazi tanks ran out of gas before our tanks did, thanks to the East Texas oil field.

Rick Green: 12:44
You like that story. I love that story. Oh, this is going to be great. Alright, sorbo Studios dot com. Not only can you find more about the movie and you can get the and the cool thing about the tickets for these two days, you know, even if you know listen, go see the movie yourself, but you can also pay it forward. You can buy tickets for folks that can't afford tickets right now and they need it night away right now and be able to escape a little bit into entertainment and Sam, of course, the perfect storm here of entertainment with purpose, like it's going to be an entertaining evening, but then follow it up with the tools and the downloads and be able to educate your kids and be able to see the enterprise be covering all these important principles that we've lost in the culture in the first place. plus, of course, something we you know both our families love so much, and getting people to fall in love with educating their kids at home and getting that extra time with their kids as well. It's holding on to the topic, but it just seems like a lot of things came together to make this possible and it looks like a real blessing. Thank you for watching.

Sam Sorbo: 13:41
Thank you. Yeah, so am I Very excited. And, by the way, if you sign up for the email, Rick, if you got the emails, you would know that story about the Big Inch Pipeline and the Allies floating to victory on the field. I'm sending out these little snippets, these little stories from behind the scenes from the set and stuff like that. So do join the emails and over at Sorbostudioscom and get a little bit of the extra stuff that we put out there.

Rick Green: 14:06
I got busted there. I skipped, I skipped, I will be honest. I pulled it up and I skipped the put in your email. I actually thought surely I'm on Sam's email, but I'm not. I'm not on the sorbostudioscom email.

Sam Sorbo: 14:19
I'll send you the backlog. I shall correct that. I'll send you the backlog one.

Rick Green: 14:22
What's that line? Yeah, we shall have to remedy that. So I will do that. We'll have to remedy that, okay, sorbostudioscom. Sorbostudioscom Kevin and Sam and their whole family. And remind me, your son's got a big social media following as well, so like you got to promote him a little bit here. Where can folks find him?

Sam Sorbo: 14:40
Well, Braden Sorbo, he's on TikTok but he doesn't really approve of TikTok, but he started TikTok before we knew how bad it was. He's got over 2 million followers there, but he just started a podcast for his glory. So if you go over to his glory you can see some of his very rye, very irreverent humor, very political and quite irreverent and hilarious.

Rick Green: 15:04
That sounds like my kind of stuff, so I encourage people to look him up.

Sam Sorbo: 15:07
Look him up on social media Braden Sorbo on, you know, instagram or whatever and you'll get a taste of what he's got going on.

Rick Green: 15:14
Love it. Love it Well, sam. Thank you so much for your family's investment in our culture and just the focus that you guys have on giving us not only entertainment with a purpose, but really the entertainment area still not being given over to the left and letting them have it, but actually taking some of that ground back. Y'all are fantastic at that. And then also merging it with the education piece of this as well. Good stuff, good stuff, sam. Appreciate your time Even after a 6 am flight. Alright Way to go, champ.

Sam Sorbo: 15:43
We'll see you soon. Appreciate you. Thank you so much Okay.

Rick Green: 15:46
That's Sam Sorbo folks the website, Very easy to go to sorbostudioscom. Sorbostudioscom. Don't make the mistake I did and skip the email box there. Go ahead and get it filled out so you can get some of these cool history stories. Stay with us. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton: 16:08
Hey guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called the American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that's just not known or not told today and, we would say, very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project it's say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we're against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There's so many things attacking America. Well, is America worth defending? What is a true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln. We tell the story of America not as a story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It's a story you want to check out. WallBuilderscom the American Story.

Rick Green: 17:11
We're back on Wild Wilders. Thanks for staying with us, thanks to Sam Sorbo for joining us as well, and we'll have links at our website, wildwilderslivecom today so you can learn more about the movie as well. And, guys, I just love it that it's East Texas, it's Texas oil, and she even brought World War 2 and they're all playing into our victory into the whole thing.

David Barton: 17:29
Well, I got to tell you I was. I've heard some about this before, not the Hunts and, by the way Mad just pointed out, I love the fact that they did this as a comedy. I think good comedies are not necessarily out there the way they should be and I think all the good comedies I had, the old Disney movies there were so many that were good comedies Dick Van Dyke and others and there were so many good comedies even like Kevin James, what he has done, such wholesome comedies and the more modern era. So I'm glad to see a comedy coming back out. But the historical aspect of the Hunts Brothers and what happened in World War 2, I knew a little bit about it and I started digging around and I was really surprised and you guys may have heard this, but World War 2, the attacks on American shipping, American tankers, American oil etc. Just the enemies. We had the Axis powers, which would be primarily Germany, japan and Italy. I did not realize that Japan, for example, took care of trying to wipe out American ships on the West Coast and Germany kind of took over the East Coast and we had both of those guys attacking us during the war and so I was looking over on the California side there were nine submarines that just set off the coast pounding commercial shipping that was going by, and so they did that and actually there was a time when they landed some forces up in Oregon. I mean, it was amazing to see what the Japanese were doing to America.

Tim Barton: 18:50
Now you just answered the question I was going to ask to clarify. So you're talking about nine Japanese subs during World War 2 that were off of California intercepting and, I guess, torpedoing, taking down American ships and then hang on a second. There was an invasion, like the Wolverines were getting ready. Japan was coming into America in World War 2.

David Barton: 19:12
Yeah, there were some of that, and it's interesting too. You remember, guys, what was it about two months ago?

Rick Green: 19:18
Wait, wait wait. I got to pull a Tim here, so Tim's always the one that catches us. David, when we assume people know something and they don't, the Wolverines Tim, who are the Wolverines Red?

Tim Barton: 19:30
Dodd, is that the movie? Is that what you're talking about? And that is exactly what I was talking about from Red Dodd. There's an older version, there's a more recent version, but it was looking at a time when there was a foreign invasion of America that, depending on the version you're watching, technology went down and people didn't know what was going on and all of a sudden we were being invaded from some foreign nation, and so there was a group of, I guess, probably high school, some college students that formed their own little task force. They called themselves the Wolverines, but I mean dad. To me it's very interesting that there was any kind of ground movement in Oregon, because one of the more kind of famous anecdotes of a Japanese leader I don't remember who was the emperor or who it was, I think it was the emperor, but they talked about the reason that a land invasion would not work in America is because there'd be a rifle behind every blade of grass, and so my assumption would have been that Japan would have been very happy to maybe torpedo, maybe do some bombing raids, but would not do a land invasion. So I did not realize there was any kind of land invasion in Oregon. That's new information to me.

David Barton: 20:43
It was. It wasn't big and didn't last long. It got put down in a hurry. But the other part I thought was really interesting from the Japanese side was you remember what was it? Two, three months ago that Chinese spy balloon came in and took Biden forever to shoot it down. But the Japanese launched 7,000 incendiary balloons over America. They put them up. They knew the jet stream would take them across America and they were timed on the bottom to drop bombs at three days and so after three days they would drop bombs. They were incendiary bombs and other type of bombs and they literally started fires across American force. They wanted to destroy our resources etc. And so they came across into the middle upper United States, you know, like over into Montana and the Dakotas, and there was actually a family, a woman I think four of her kids were killed by one of the incendiary bombs that floated over. So they were very active. But then Sam was talking about the Gulf of Mexico and 72 out of 73 tankers were shot down there. And looking over on the other side, the Germans actually had what they called Operation Drum Beat and they put like 100 subs off the coast of America and they were just pounding and said and there's records interesting of where the subs would come up at night because they would stay down to the day. They would come up at night and they would find a profile of a ship and they would look for that profile and that's how they would attack it. So they stayed down during the day but there were these German sailors talking about loving to come up because they had never seen a ferris wheel lit up at night like they saw in Coney Island. And so even off the coast of Coney Island it's like wow, this is really great. And then there were some. There were some Germans actually arrested, german submariners arrested down at Tampa who had come ashore to watch an American movie. They had movie tickets, they were going to the theater watch to watch the movie. So I mean, it's really fascinating. And I found this interview from a World War II vet and he was in the Marine Air Corps. He's in the Pacific Theater in the latter part of World War II, but in the first part of World War II he was over in Florida and this is his quote. He said I saw more live warfare in Varro Beach, florida, the first four months of the war, than I saw in my entire duty in the Marine Air Corps, the Pacific Theater, during the latter part of the war. So there were so many attacks and so many ships being sucked and what happened was the American government got the media to cooperate and silencing everything. They did not want Americans to be scared, they did not want Americans to be terrorized, they did not want Americans to live in fear, and so all these numerous attacks that happened. They were able to get the press to cooperate and not pointing that out, but it was just. It was fascinating to see the depth of what happened. And the Germans actually called that the happy time. They were happy blowing up ships in Northern Atlantic. Then they moved over to the East Coast and that was their second happy time blowing up ships there.

Tim Barton: 23:34
Well, and this just reminds me, as we've been working on the new book, the Second American Story Building Republic God willing it comes out this year We've been thinking we'd get it done and then we keep finding more stories and there's more additions and more edits along the way. But it really reminds me of now, some of this World War II research where there comes a point you feel like I really have a pretty good grasp of the information and I feel like I know the main players and the key moments in World War II, and then you start finding out more stuff and you realize, wow, there's so much more to this story than I realize and I only say that to highlight. This is why we love history so much learning these stories and seeing how fascinating the stories are. But not to take away from. The reason we were excited to talk to Sam today is because we are seeing some of these great stories now making their way into more of a public presence, where we've seen the Daily Wire make a commitment Prager used made a commitment. We are seeing conservative organizations say that they want to become better storytellers or help start telling better stories and making movies. We actually even had a conversation with Glenn Beck, where Glenn said that he feels like his next phase of his journey is he wants to start helping making more movies, whether that means writing or producing or how, however that looks. But it's really great to see we are coming to a place where, instead of instead of conservatives sitting back and acknowledging there's a problem, recognizing the problem and seeing what Hollywood has done and then, of course, being grateful for right like the Kendrick brothers or people along the way that make some of these movies, like a facing the giant or what we have seen in the last couple years just an incredible progression of great movies Jesus, revolution, so many great movies that have come out more recently. All of that to say is I'm encouraged and excited that we are. We are, I think, on the verge of a moment when we start seeing more Christians and conservatives and engaging in some of these cultural war issues, instead of just sitting on the side and complaining and identifying a problem, when we're going to start being part of the solution. To me that's really encouraging and I had the opportunity to go see kind of the a, a screener of this, with a lot of the individuals from the movie, even with the Sorbos, and it did not work out for my schedule and very disappointed. But all that means is I'm going to the movie theater and I'm going to go watch this movie.

Rick Green: 25:57
I'm with you, man. I can't wait to see it and it's actually going to be a fun one to watch in the movie theaters. So, folks, be sure and get your, get your tickets only two nights that you can go see it. And be sure and check out those dates and the links at our website today, WallBuildersLive.com, and you can get some archives of the program there as well and make that one time our monthly contribution. Those contributions help us to reach more people through the radio program, through our pastors trainings, through our young people training that we do in the summers to our legislators trainings all the different things we're doing to help people know the history of this country, know what the principles are and restore our constitutional republic. We should appreciate you listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders.