UPDATED: What's it like to create a music album with Glenn Beck?

Miss Part 1 of Believe AgainWatch it ON DEMAND and then tune in for Part 2 Wednesday at 8pm ET!

On Tuesday, TheBlaze debuted the first installment of a two-part musical special called Believe Again.  A few months ago, Glenn asked several musical artists of different faiths to come together to record a full Christmas album over the course of four days.

Mark Mabry, a member of Glenn’s American Dream Labs team in Dallas, headed up the project and sat down with GlennBeck.com for a quick interview during the editing process.

GlennBeck.com: So, what was it like when Glenn first downloaded the idea for Believe Again?

Mark: Glenn, (composer) Clyde Bawden, and I sat together in, I think it was May, Glenn’s office. We were eating cookies and talking about doing a few Christmas songs, when the album idea was born. Glenn mentioned Andy Williams and a lot of other ideas. The concept kind of snowballed, Clyde went to work on some fantastic arrangements, including Go Tell it on the Mountain, Oh Come all Ye Faithful, and some others. He also made a fantastic version of What Child is This that we’re saving.

Anyway, we ate all of the cookies, then found a sharpie and wrote our plan - which, by the way, totally got turned on it’s head when we found out that none of the songs were in the public domain – on the back of a paper plate! 

Glennbeck.com: So what was your role in the production of the album?

Mark: Officially, I was the producer of the TV show and co-producer of the album. Glenn, Jason, Clyde, and I were all equally nuts enough to think you could jam 9 strangers into a room and make an album from scratch in 4 days. So whatever you call that job, I was 25% of that.

LJ Herman was also a big part of coordinating the idea around the offices, and then he helped get the album into the music world. Unsung hero.

Everybody on the album arranged, composed, performed, etc. It’s tough to pin down “roles” for this kind of project.

GlennBeck.com: What are some of your favorite stories from the recording process?

Mark: There was so much good stuff, more than we could possibly include in the album. There was Jason, Clyde, and I late at night wondering if we had gone off the cliff and what Glenn would say when he saw the stuff.  It was the energy of seeing the moment of creation of these songs.  I grew more in awe of my long time collaborators Jason Barney and Clyde Bawden. It was tough to relate in the show how much I love and respect them.

 

 

GlennBeck.com: It’s well known around the office that what we affectionately call “Glenn Ideas” usually have a pretty nontraditional creative process. Can you go more into what those late night conversations were like and how the three of you worked to execute Glenn’s vision?

Mark: We took some liberties with traditional Christmas songs that we knew might ruffle a few feathers. Glenn is a creative enough guy to understand and appreciate just about every style of music that is well performed, so we weren't super worried about his acceptance. I've been with him jamming to Muse, Sinatra, and classic rock. But, we have a  conservative audience and that extends beyond political conservatism in a lot of cases into traditionalism on a lot of fronts. Putting an electric guitar on Angels We Have Heard on High is not a traditional Christmas music choice.

But here is what makes me comfortable with it - Our musicians are not a bunch of Godless rockers locking to capitalize on a commercial holiday. They are worship leaders, churchgoers, and God fearing people. The last thing they would do is offend the spirit of Christmas.

When they sang Angels We Have Heard On High it was in a spirit of praise and happiness. They felt that the louder they did it, the more right it felt. If people understood the composers of that version, Cody Carnes and David Osmond, they would understand the spirit of the song. That song should rock chapels all over the country.

GlennBeck.com: And Glenn’s been a big part of the behind-the-scenes too, right?

Mark: It’s tough to explain to people just how good Glenn’s ear is. He could pick out audio issues with precision and also had a great handle on what would hit when released. People forget that he was a music guy for decades.

GlennBeck.com: What was the biggest challenge with putting the album together?

Mark: Time was our challenge. Being so close to it that there was no time for evaluation. We had to produce on the fly, dropping all egos and trusting each other to say if something wasn’t right. That made our greatest challenge also our greatest strength. It was a speed of trust thing.

Also, we have kind of made a big deal about the artists all being from different branches of Christianity. That’s isn’t just part of marketing the special, but it was an internal issue early on because some people we reached out to declined to participate. But to these guys, our guys, it was a non-issue. They were all smart enough to recognize their theology differences, but they were also smart enough to realize that those differences should not define us.

GlennBeck.com: So how did you pick these musical artists?

Mark: Glenn, Clyde, Jason, and I chose them. Since time was compressed we only had time for phone calls and YouTube videos. Generally speaking, they were all in the first wave of people we wanted on the show. We realized that we wanted another girl on the album and it was tough to put our finger on exactly what sound. Cody recommended Dianne Michelle, whom he knew, we watched her on Youtube and fell in love.

GlennBeck.com: What are your favorite songs on the album? Why?

Mark: It’s changed a bunch of times. I love Angels We Have Heard On High and Deck the Halls for when I want to put on a red Christmas sweater and boogie.

But not too long after Oh Come all Ye Faithful was done my family was having a rough time with something and that song was playing in the kitchen. It ended up with everybody embracing in tears during that song. That’ll always be a favorite. I love where the choir hits on Go Tell it on the Mountain as well. Kim turned them into a pretty good gospel choir for that song.

GlennBeck.com: Mark, thank you for taking a few minutes to talk with us. We know you have to go get the special finished before air time. 

 

 

5 SURPRISING ways space tech is used in your daily life

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Is your vacuum cleaner from SPACE?

This week, Glenn is discussing his recent purchase of a Sputnik satellite, which has got many of us thinking about space and space technology. More specifically, we've been wondering how technology initially designed for use outside Earth's atmosphere impacted our lives down here on terra firma. The U.S. spent approximately $30 billion ($110 billion in today's money) between the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the Moon Landing in 1969. What do we have to show for it besides some moon rocks?

As it turns out, a LOT of tech originally developed for space missions has made its way into products that most people use every day. From memory foam to cordless vacuums here are 5 pieces of space tech that you use every day:

Cellphone camera

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Have you ever seen a photograph of an early camera, the big ones with the tripod and curtain, and wondered how we went from that to the tiny little cameras that fit inside your cellphone? Thank NASA for that brilliant innovation. When you are launching a spaceship or satellite out of the atmosphere, the space onboard comes at a premium. In order to make more room for other equipment, NASA wanted smaller, lighter cameras without compromising image quality, and the innovations made to accomplish this goal paved the way for the cameras in your phone.

Cordless vacuums and power tools

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When exploring the moon, NASA wanted astronauts to use a drill to collect samples from the lunar surface. The problem: the moon has a severe lack of electrical outlets to power the drills. NASA tasked Black & Decker with developing a battery-powered motor powerful enough to take chunks out of the moon. The resulting motor was later adapted to power cordless power tools and vacuums in households across America.

Infrared ear thermometer

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What do distant stars and planets have in common with your eardrum? Both have their temperature read by the same infrared technology. The thermometers that can be found in medicine cabinets and doctors' offices across the world can trace their origins back to the astronomers at NASA who came up with the idea to measure the temperature of distant objects by the infrared light they emit.

Grooved pavement

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This one may seem obvious, but sometimes you need a massively complicated problem to come up with simple solutions. During the Space Shuttle program, NASA had a big problem: hydroplaning. Hydroplaning is dangerous enough when you are going 70 miles an hour in your car, but when you're talking about a Space Shuttle landing at about 215 miles per hour, it's an entirely different animal. So what was NASA's space-age solution? Cutting grooves in the pavement to quickly divert water off the runway, a practice now common on many highways across the world.

Memory foam

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If you've ever slept on a memory foam mattress, it probably won't come as a shock to find out that the foam was created to cushion falls from orbit. Charles Yotes was an astronautical engineer who is credited with the invention of memory foam. Yotes developed the technology for the foam while working on the recovery system for the Apollo command module. The foam was originally designed to help cushion the astronauts and their equipment during their descent from space. Now, the space foam is used to create some of the most comfortable mattresses on Earth. Far out.

5 most HORRIFIC practices condoned by WPATH

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Whatever you know about the "trans movement" is only the tip of the iceberg.

In a recent Glenn TV special, Glenn delved into Michael Schellenberger's "WPATH files," a collection of leaked internal communications from within the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Glenn's research team got their hands on the WPATH files and compiled the highlights in Glenn's exclusive PDF guide which can be downloaded here. These documents reveal the appalling "standards" created and upheld by WPATH, which appear to be designed to allow radical progressive surgeons to perform bizarre, experimental, and mutilating surgeries on the dime of insurance companies rather than to protect the health and well-being of their patients. These disturbing procedures are justified in the name of "gender-affirming care" and are defended zealously as "life-saving" by the dogmatic surgeons who perform them.

The communications leaked by Schellenberger reveal one horrific procedure after another committed in the name of and defended by radical gender ideology and WPATH fanatics. Here are five of the most horrifying practices condoned by WPATH members:

1.Trans surgeries on minors as young as 14

One particular conversation was initiated by a doctor asking for advice on performing irreversible male-to-female surgery on a 14-year-old boy's genitals. WPATH doctors chimed in encouraging the surgery. One doctor, Dr. McGinn, confessed that he had performed 20 such surgeries on minors over the last 17 years!

2.Amputation of healthy, normal limbs

BIID, or Body Integrity Identity Disorder, is an “extremely rare phenomenon of persons who desire the amputation of one or more healthy limbs or who desire a paralysis.” As you might suspect, some WPATH members are in favor of enabling this destructive behavior. One WPATH commenter suggested that people suffering from BIID received "hostile" treatment from the medical community, many of whom would recommend psychiatric care over amputation. Apparently, telling people not to chop off perfectly healthy limbs is now considered "violence."

3.Trans surgeries on patients with severe mental illnesses

WPATH claims to operate off of a principle known as "informed consent," which requires doctors to inform patients of the risks associated with a procedure. It also requires patients be in a clear state of mind to comprehend those risks. However, this rule is taken very lightly among many WPATH members. When one of the so-called "gender experts" asked about the ethicality of giving hormones to a patient already diagnosed with several major mental illnesses, they were met with a tidal wave of backlash from their "enlightened" colleges.

4.Non-standard procedures, such as “nullification” and other experimental, abominable surgeries

If you have never heard of "nullification" until now, consider yourself lucky. Nullification is the removal of all genitals, intending to create a sort of genderless person, or a eunuch. But that's just the beginning. Some WPATH doctors admitted in these chatlogs that they weren't afraid to get... creative. They seemed willing to create "custom" genitals for these people that combine elements of the two natural options.

5.Experimental, untested, un-researched, use of carcinogenic drugs 

Finasteride is a drug used to treat BPH, a prostate condition, and is known to increase the risk of high-grade prostate cancer as well as breast cancer. Why is this relevant? When a WPATH doctor asked if anyone had used Finasteride "to prevent bottom growth," which refers to the healthy development of genitals during puberty. The answer from the community was, "That's a neat idea, someone should give it a go."

If your state isn’t on this list, it begs the question... why?

The 2020 election exposed a wide range of questionable practices, much of which Glenn covered in a recent TV special. A particularly sinister practice is the use of private money to fund the election. This money came from a slew of partisan private sources, including Mark Zuckerberg, entailed a host of caveats and conditions and were targeted at big city election offices— predominantly democratic areas. The intention is clear: this private money was being used to target Democrat voters and to facilitate their election process over their Republican counterparts.

The use of private funds poses a major flaw in the integrity of our election, one which many states recognized and corrected after the 2020 election. This begs the question: why haven't all states banned private funding in elections? Why do they need private funding? Why don't they care about the strings attached?

Below is the list of all 28 states that have banned private funding in elections. If you don't see your state on this list, it's time to call your state's election board and demand reform.

Alabama

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Arizona

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Arkansas

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Florida

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Georgia

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Idaho

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Indiana

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Iowa

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Kansas

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Kentucky

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Louisiana

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Mississippi

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Missouri

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Montana

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Nebraska

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North Carolina

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North Dakota

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Ohio

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Oklahoma

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Pennsylvania

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South Carolina

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South Dakota

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Tennessee

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Texas

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Utah

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Virginia

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West Virginia

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Wisconsin

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POLL: Was Malaysia Flight 370 taken by a WORMHOLE?

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It's hard to know what's real and what's fake anymore.

With the insanity that seems to grow every day, it is becoming more and more difficult to tell what's true and what's not, what to believe, and what to reject. Anything seems possible.

That's why Glenn had Ashton Forbes on his show, to explore the fringe what most people would consider impossible. Forbes brought Glenn a fascinating but far-out theory that explains the decade-old disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 along with riveting footage that supposedly corroborates his story. Like something out of a sci-fi novel, Forbes made the startling claim that Flight 370 was TELEPORTED via a U.S. military-made wormhole! As crazy as that sounds, the video footage along with Forbes' scientific research made an interesting, if not compelling case.

But what do you think? Do you believe that the U.S. Government can create wormholes? Did they use one to abduct Flight 370? Is the government hiding futuristic tech from the rest of the world? Let us know in the poll below:

Does the military have the capability to create wormholes?

Is the U.S. military somehow responsible for what happened to Malaysia Flight 370?

Is the military in possession of technology beyond what we believe to be possible?

Do you think American military tech is ahead of the other superpowers?

Do you think there would be negative consequences if secret government technology was leaked?