Today on an another encore edition of the Rarified Heir Podcast, we bring you part two of our conversation with Patricia Weidenfeld, daughter of comedian Pat Cooper. As you heard on the first episode, Weidenfeld's life as a child of a show business comic was pretty terrific until it wasn't. Learning rather abruptly at age eight that her father had a family prior to hers after being accosted outside a Broadway theater, Patricia tells us more on part two of our conversation than she has ever told anyone publicly, at any time before. It turns out that the Broadway incident was the first in a series of jarring revelations and family secrets that her parents kept from her over the years. How she learned about them is another story entirely.

Patti was amazingly open, honest and truthful in this conversation for the podcast about some deeply personal stories that she had never spoken about prior. Her complex relationship with the father she thought she knew and the father she learned he was at the end of her life are nothing short of revelatory as well as heartbreaking. But through it all, Patti expressed to us via her complex and jumbled feelings a genuine sense of love, affection and pride as well as confusion, hurt and pain through the years as she looked back on it all. This episode took quite a while to lock in as Patti had to take some time contemplating things before telling us her remarkable story in such a public manner. The fact that she does so with such authentic emotions and feelings is a testament to who she is as a human being. This is the Rarified Heir Podcast and this one isn't easy. Everyone has a story.

Today on an another encore edition of the Rarified heir Podcast, we bring you part one of our conversation with Patricia Weidenfeld, daughter of 'The Outrage Comic', Pat Cooper. Known for his explosive (but funny) temper on stage and his somewhat rogue temperament in the business, Cooper's humor revolved around his Italian heritage and calling out things that bothered him, his album cover parody, his seemingly endless Vegas showroom shows, a well-known Seinfeld episode and in later life, his time on The Howard Stern Show.

We spoke to Patti about growing up with a father she loved dearly and a mother who seemed to smooth everything over when things went a little awry. We talk about Pat's years growing up in Coney Island, how he got his start in comedy, his early years making his bones on The Ed Sullivan Show, an appearance on the Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show that froze his career in limbo after he called out an show business injustice and more. We also get into their move to Las Vegas in the 1970s, numerous dates in Atlantic City, guest hosting shows like The Merv Griffin Show and other gigs that took him on the road. Life in the Cooper household seemed perfectly as it should be. Until it wasn't.

Some things she heard from her parents didn't add up. It seemingly boiled over during a visit to New York City outside a Broadway Theater when her family was confronted by a person claiming to be Pat's son, hijacking their family outing. Who was that person and why hadn't Patti ever heard of or seen him before? And why here and why now? Take a listen to part one of our interview with Patricia Weidenfeld to hear what turns out to be the first out-of-nowhere moment that in many ways turned her idyllic life upside down. This is the Rarified Heir Podcast and everyone has a story. Take a listen.

Today on another episode of the Rarified Heir Podcast, we are talking to Nabil Ayers, son of musician Roy Ayers, a jazz/funk/soul giant most famous for his song "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" and is likely one of the most sampled artists of all time. A vibraphonist, singer and composer, Ayers songs have been sampled by everyone from Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige and Snoop Dogg as well as had collaborations with Alicia Keyes, The Roots and Tyler, The Creator among others.

As you will soon hear, Nabil's story is unlike anything we have heard before on the podcast. Imagine growing up knowing who your father was but only meeting him occasionally. By design. Sometimes it was a planned meeting that lasted just long enough to ask, "Do you want some Tempura?" and others were times that were literally a chance meeting on the street at a music store. As you will soon hear, we discuss this and much more around his book, 2022's My Life in the Sunshine that explains all this and much more.

Nabil himself was open, engaging, honest and ready to discuss everything. What it was like growing up with a Jewish/Baha'i Faith mother who really only wanted a child at the age of 20, his relationship with his uncle Alan, a jazz musician himself who really was the masculine figure Nabil looked up to the most and how he finally had lunch with his dad well into his 30s when things seemed to not be making as much sense as they did earlier in his life.

Currently a record executive, he's the President of the Beggars Group of labels, a group of well respected, independent US and UK labels, Nabil has also played in bands, owned his own record store, has his own podcast on both family and identity, called Identified, has written articles for The Guardian, the New York Times and others, has his own Substack page and much more. Accomplished, talented and versatile, Nabil opened up to us about pretty much everything we asked about. His story is about as unique take on celebrity and growing up the child of a celebrity as we could imagine. This is the Rarified Heir Podcast and everyone has a story. But none of them are like the one you are going to hear, right now.

Today on the Rarified Heir Podcast we are talking to Anne Serling, daughter of the great writer and as we learn, practical joker and pop culture figure Rod Serling. Of course we talk to Anne about beloved anthology shows her father created like The Twilight Zone as well as The Night Gallery but we also talk to Anne about her father's humanity, his years growing up in upstate New York, his religious beliefs and traditions, his career in radio, the films he wrote and much more.

But we also hear from Anne about why she wrote a book about her father, As I Knew Him: My Dad Rod Serling but also what it was like being the daughter of entertainment industry legend,…at home. We learned that Rod was a lover of animals and their home was filled with dogs, parakeets and even some very unconventional animals. We learn her father splurged only on two things which we will get to, his favorite restaurants in Los Angeles, the music her father sang to and even some of the inside jokes they shared together.

This episode is literally years in the making and we couldn't have been more thankful to Anne for taking the time to sit down with us to talk about someone we all know and love as a creator of two massively influential television shows but also about the humanity, humor and kindness of her father as only she would know. This is the Rarified Heir Podcast and everyone has a story. Or is it?

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Rarified Heir Podcast. Today, we are doing something different but not totally unprecedented. Last year in 2024, we presented a bonus episode, recorded live at the Texas Theater in Dallas, Texas with Ernie Kovacs award winner, Gerald Casale from Devo at VideoFest. This year, we'd like to present this year's VideoFest's Ernie Kovacs Award recipient, comedian Fred Armisen. This is just one of the ways we keep the legacy of both Ernie and Edie Adams going and frankly, it's really a major impetus for this podcast itself. How better to keep someone's legacy alive than via the children of those who knew them best, their children?

Recorded on November 23, in the very same theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, exactly 62 years prior, this episode exists only because of one person and we wanted to thank Dev Shapiro of Selig News for his recording. You see, we recorded this directly from the sound board for ideal sound quality but when we got the digital files, they were corrupted and unusable. Thankfully, it was Dev to the rescue and while Dev was not recording directly from the sound board, I think we can all forgive the minor audio issues because well, he saved our bacon by just being there. Preservation is key and we thank Dev for making that happen. And thank you to yours truly for some of the audio fidelity we goosed up for this episode too.

Big thanks to VideoFest's Founder Bart Weiss, the VideoFest team including Kelly Kitchens (who is also a Patreon supporter), Reid Robinson, Elijah Cruz Barron, Janeth Farnsworth, Jessica Spawn, Andy Streitfeld and Mark Wickersham as well as Barak Epstein of the Texas Theatre and Erin Barros of Concord Hospitality. More big thanks to Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams archivist Ben Model for the tip to bring up the Ernie in Kovacsland book on stage prior to the interview as well.

And now, here's Fred Armisen. Take a listen. Everyone has a story.

Today on the Rarified Heir Podcast we are talking to guest Tamar Springer about her composer/songwriter father Philip Springer. Now, unless you are in music publishing or a collector of film soundtracks or possibly a musical academic, the name Philip Springer might not seem like a name you would know. A ha, but if I told you he was the composer & co-writer of the hit Eartha Kitt, Christmas song "Santa Baby" then would you know? Or perhaps you'd know some of his other work which has been sung by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald, from Dusty Springfield to Elvis Presley. In all, Philip Springer has composed more than 500 songs and he's still writing songs today at age 99.

Our conversation with Tamar centers around a documentary she made about her father that is Academy Award eligible and has screened at film festivals around the country. Her film about her father, More Than Santa Baby is Tamar's film about her father's career that spans performing classical music, writing some of the earliest electronic music, scoring film and television shows, writing for songwriters at the famed Brill Building and much much more.

What's more, there is a familiar connection between Tamar and host Josh Mills family that even he didn't realize when they started the conversation. It's more than incredible, it's downright cosmic. This is the Rarified Heir Podcast and everyone has a has a story. But not like this. Not like the one guest Tamar Springer tells on this episode. She really lived up to her name!

Today on another encore episode of the Rarified Heir Podcast, we are talking to Ed Eckstein, son of smooth as silk singer & bandleader Billy Eckstein. Our chat with Ed was funny, educational, occasionally jaw dropping and always engaging. Now, before we even started our chat with Ed, upon his agreeing to be a part of the podcast, we got a list of topics from Ed that he thought we might want to discuss. Effectively, he sent us a cheat sheet that they didn't get to on his appearance on the Questlove Supreme podcast prior to our chat. Who were we to say no? There were like 60 totally engaging topics Ed had written out and we get to some of them here.

Jazz fans and pop fans will know Billy Eckstein for his deep baritone voice that singers of the era loved and the ladies swooned for. Sinatra was a fan and a friend. As was Ella and a host of others. Dapper, good looking, classy, entrepreneurial and courageous, we discuss with Ed all of those qualities his father had that made him a star. It also made him a target as you will hear, surrounding an article in Life Magazine that exposed America's racists past that frankly, doesn't seem too far removed from where we are today.

We also talk to Ed about his own career as a journalist and music executive who recounts his obsessive love of rock music, his time working for the one and only Q, Quincy Jones and some of the most insane and jaw dropping interviews he conducted with the likes of Issac Hayes. We also get into his years as his father's helper before he went on stage at Jewish and Italian resorts in the 1960s and as Nabil Ayers said in a 2020 New York Times piece, what it "was like to be the first black person to be let in — to be allowed by the predominantly white music industry to helm one of its largest entities,"when he was the president of Mercury Records.

This is the Rarified Heir Podcast and everyone has a story.

Today on another encore episode of the Rarified Heir Podcast we are talking to Katherine Kramer, daughter of producer/director Stanley Kramer. Our chat with Katherine or Kat was both edifying and easy as we had familial connections and we learned a few things in the process. Such as? Well how about what famous actress was she named after, where in the Western United States did her family move to once they left Hollywood and what films made her father a bankable director while he was still producing.

We also spoke about some of his films, many of them 'message' films such as Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, Judgement at Nuremberg, The Defiant Ones and a small, off-beat comedy called It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World which co-starred Edie Adams, our host's Josh Mills's mother. In all, Stanley Kramer's films garnered 80 Academy Awards and starred everyone from Spencer Tracy to Sidney Pointier, Marlon Brando and so many, many more.

Kat talked to us about her work as well – in terms of both her charity events and her film festivals, her one woman show about Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, her creepy house growing up, The Kennedy Assassination and much more. This is the Rarified Heir Podcast and everyone has a story. Kat Kramer's is coming right up!