Guests

Alex Jones  is an American talk radio host, actor and filmmaker. His syndicated news/talk show The Alex Jones Show, based in Austin, Texas, airs via the Genesis Communication Network over 60 AM, FM, and shortwave radio stations across the United States and on the Internet. His websites include Infowars.com and PrisonPlanet.com.

 

Mainstream sources have described Jones as a conservative and as a right-wing conspiracy theorist.  Jones sees himself as a libertarian, and rejects being described as a right-winger. He has also called himself a paleo-conservative. In a promotional biography he is described as an "aggressive constitutionalist".  Alex Jones has been the center of many controversies. Jones has accused the US government of being involved in the Oklahoma City bombing and September 11 attacks.

 

Alexander F. Fox is a native Miamian who started his own firm in 2001. Alex handles a broad range of criminal matters for individuals, partnerships, corporations and financial institutions, including health care fraud, grand jury investigations, white collar defense, witness representations, corporate internal investigations and post conviction litigation and appeals. 

 

Prior to private practice, he served as an Assistant State Attorney in the Office of the State Attorney in Miami, Florida. As prosecutor, he prosecuted a wide variety of criminal cases. He was lead counsel on numerous jury trials where the defendants were accused of assault and battery, burglary, sexual battery, drug trafficking, fraud, extortion and homicide.

Alexander McCobin recognized the formal principles of his beliefs after reading Atlas Shrugged, a birthday present from his father in 9th grade. Throughout high school, Alexander participated in Lincoln-Douglas debate, which allowed him to study philosophy and particularly those who advocated the philosophical principles of liberty. During college at the University of Pennsylvania, Alexander began the University of Pennsylvania Libertarian Association to promote discussion and education of libertarian ideas on campus and expand his horizons regarding the power of the message of liberty. In the summer of 2007, he was an intern at the Reason Foundation, working on privatization efforts around the U.S. At the same time, he also ran a nonprofit organization to promote youth debate education to underserved students in the greater Philadelphia and mid-Atlantic region. In May, 2008, Alexander graduated from Penn with a B.A. in philosophy and economics and an A.M. in philosophy. He spent the following year working as a Koch Associate at the Cato Institute focused on marketing and development. He is currently a third year graduate student at Georgetown University pursuing his Ph.D. in philosophy with areas of interest in political philosophy and business ethics.

 

Favorite Figures in Liberty: Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, & F.A. Hayek

 

On Students For Liberty: “After my first two years of college, I nearly gave up on my libertarian principles because I thought I was alone. It wasn’t until, by luck, I discovered others who believed in the same principles as myself that my passion to advocate for liberty was reignited. Students For Liberty exists to prevent other students who believe in liberty from feeling alone and empower them to pursue liberty whenever possible. Seeing SFL grow from a flicker of an idea into an incredible organization has only reaffirmed my passion for liberty and my belief that by bringing students together in a common effort for liberty, we can change the world.”

 

Barry Ritholtz blogs at the popular The Big Picture, offering up his macro perspectives on the capital markets, the economy, technology and digital media. He is also CEO and director of equity research of Fusion IQ, a quantitative research firm.

 

Ritholtz holds a bachelor's degree in political science (with a concentration in philosophy) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and a J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he studied corporate law and economics.

Murphy grew up in Glen Ridge, N.J., and graduated from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University in 1968. In his senior year he broke all the Ivy League single-year pass-receving records. He then became a starting wide receiver for the Boston Patriots of the American Football League. He went on to work for various Wall Street brokerage firms and specialized in commodity futures. He began as a Merrill Lynch trainee and went on to Shearson Hayden Stone and Drexel Burnham. From there he became affiliated with introducing brokers and eventually started his own brokerage on 5th Avenue in New York. He now operates an Internet site for financial commentary, lemetropolecafe.com

 

 

Billy Corben was born in Florida and graduated with honors from the University of Miami where he majored in political science, screenwriting, and theater. As a young actor, Corben worked with Ron Howard, Roger Corman, Steve Martin, Hilary Swank, Cloris Leachman, Judd Hirsch, Corey Feldman, Alan Thicke, Joe Pantoliano and Christopher Meloni. He retired from acting at age 15 and began work on the other side of the camera. His feature documentary directorial debut, Raw Deal: A Question of Consent, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001, making him one of the youngest directors in Sundance history. Examining the alleged rape of an exotic dancer at a fraternity house at the University of Florida, the film utilized extensive clips from videotape footage of the alleged assault. Considered by critics to be “one of the most controversial films of the modern day” and “one of the most compelling pieces of non-fiction ever produced,” (Film Threat Magazine), Raw Deal has been seen all over the world.

 

Following that success, Corben and producing partner Alfred Spellman founded rakontur, a Miami Beach-based content creation company, and took on another Florida true-crime story, this one closer to home. The New York Times called Cocaine Cowboys, “a hyperventilating account of the blood-drenched Miami drug culture in the 1970s and 1980s.” The film tells the story of how the drug trade built Corben's native city of Miami through firsthand accounts of some of the most successful smugglers of the era and the deadliest hitman of the cocaine wars.

 

After a limited theatrical release in 2006, Cocaine Cowboys became a worldwide success on DVD and the highest-rated documentary ever on the Showtime cable network. The sequel, Cocaine Cowboys 2: Hustling with the Godmother, was released in 2008.

 

The U, a Peabody Award-winning feature documentary about the championship history of the University of Miami football program, produced by rakontur for ESPN's 30 for 30 series, became the highest-rated documentary in the network's 30 year history, when it debuted on December 12th, 2009, following the Heisman Trophy presentation.

 

In 10 years, rakontur has become one of the influential non-fiction production companies in the world. In 2007 and again in 2010, rakontur was selected for the RealScreen Global 100, “an annual list of the most exciting and influential production companies working in non-fiction film and television." Also in 2007, Corben and Spellman were listed among of "The 50 Most Influential People in Miami."

 

"They've created a whole new audience: an alternative, youth-leaning, nonfiction-seeking core," Tom Quinn, senior vice-president of Magnolia Pictures, told BusinessWeek in a 2008 profile on rakontur.

 

Since its humble beginnings, rakontur has evolved into a bona fide movie studio, with four non-fiction features scheduled for release in 2011:

 

In March, Square Grouper, examining the free-wheeling pot smuggling era of South Florida in the 1970s, premieres at the South By Southwest Film Festival; in April, Limelight, about the rise and fall of Peter Gatien, New York City's biggest nightclub owner; this Summer rakontur debuts, Cocaine Cowboys Remix, a wholesale re-edit of the original cult classic; and in the Fall, Dawg Fight, a brutal exposé on underground backyard MMA fighting in one of Miami's toughest neighborhoods, will debut.

 

2012 will see the release of another new installment of their hit documentary series, Cocaine Cowboys: Los Muchachos, about the sensational Miami-based federal trials of Sal Magluta and Willy Falcone, the most successful Cuban drug traffickers in history, and new feature documentary projects for ESPN and Bloomberg Television.

 

rakontur's development slate includes a Cocaine Cowboys dramatic series for HBO with executive producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay and the animated comedy series Miami Cowboys with executive producer Pharrell Williams.

 

Corben oversees the soundtracks for all of rakontur's productions, assembling the ideal artists for each project and working hands-on throughout the music production process. For Cocaine Cowboys, legendary Grammy-winner Jan Hammer (Miami Vice) composed and performed the original score; hip-hop icon Luther Campbell performed the opening titles song for The U; Miami music fixture DJ Le Spam wrote his first ever film score for Square Grouper; on Limelight, Corben consulted with Grammy-winning electronic music pioneer Moby, while the original score was written by Fast of the Fun Lovin' Criminals, a band that was actually formed among Limelight nightclub employees in the 1990s and signed by an A&R man from EMI who discovered them performing at the club. In addition, Corben has contributed his own original songs to the soundtracks of Raw Deal: A Question of Consent, The U and Square Grouper.

 

Corben also serves as film critic on the Paul and Young Ron Show, South Florida's highest-rated English-language radio morning show, doing live segments every Friday. Corben and rakontur are regular supporters of Miami-based Hope For Vision, a not-for-profit organization that donates virtually 100% of the money it raises to fund scientific research to develop cures for blindness, the Borscht Film Festival, a group that supports and showcases Miami's independent filmmakers, and The 200 Club, an organization that gives financial support to the families of law enforcement officers and fire fighters who have lost their lives in the line of duty.

 

Senator Dorgan served as a U.S. Senator from North Dakota from 1991-2011. During that time he served for 16 years in the Senate leadership, first as Assistant Democratic Floor Leader and then as Chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee.

He was Chairman of various Senate committees and subcommittees on the issues of Energy, Aviation, Appropriations, Water Policy and Indian Affairs.

Senator Dorgan is the author of three books. A New York Times best-selling book on trade, titled: Take This Job and Ship It. A book about America’s near financial collapse, titled: Reckless: How Debt, Deregulation and Dark Money Nearly Bankrupted America and How We Can Fix It. And his most recent book, published in March 2012, is a novel he co-authored with David Hagberg titled: Blowout, the first of a two-book series called eco-thrillers on the subject of energy. He’s under contract to co-author the second book due out in 2013.