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Welcome back to Insider Pix, where we uncover what entertainment and culture insiders are watching, reading, and listening to! Next up:
Ara Tucker
Ara Tucker is an author, advisor, and former C-suite executive whose work explores the hidden systems and inherited narratives that shape leadership and opportunity. With two decades of experience spanning law, finance, media, health tech, and cultural institutions, she brings a unique perspective to advisory for individuals and organizations.
Tucker is the founder of Stories Work, the creator of the audio series I'm Here Too and Nepo Baby: The Architecture of Advantage, and author of How to Raise an Art Star, How to Date a Black Girl, and Tails from the Alley.
Ara’s 5 Picks
A 5-star-worthy book you’d recommend to anyone?
That’s a hard one! One of the things I love about fiction is being immersed in a world built by an author. The good ones leave you wanting more, more and still more.
When I read Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg (2001), I think I told every friend who would listen about it, but I didn’t dare imagine I’d get any more of Flannery and Anne’s story. When Pages for Her came out in 2017, it didn’t disappoint. Set twenty years later, the characters have aged and lived accordingly. And I, too, have aged and lived. It’s fun to “compare notes” on how things turned out.
Best TV show you’ve watched recently?
Hacks, especially the Montecito episode. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say when you mix fan fiction, luxe interiors, a dance party, and the talented acting foursome of Jean Smart, Cherry Jones, Hannah Einbinder, and Leslie Bibb, the results are beyond.
Best movie you've watched recently?
I’m in Paris right now on the tail end of a wonderful multi-week hiking holiday from Collioure to Cadaqués with my wife. I’m not quite ready to “return” to real life, so maybe I’ll give one of my all-time favorite movies, Two for the Road starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney, a rewatch when I get home.
A hidden gem you wish more people knew about?
Given all the buzz around the Krasner and Pollock show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, I’d love for more people to see the painting, Experienced People Needed (2018) by Hilary Harkness.*
It’s her deeply researched revisionist take on Jackson Pollock’s 1943 debut show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery in New York City. There were no installation shots of Pollock’s show, and the photos Harkness could find of the gallery’s permanent collection were mostly close-ups, so she “built” the gallery from scratch off of floor plans and collection records. In addition to featuring Peggy Guggenheim, her daughter Pegeen, Pollock and Lee Krasner, who is putting the finishing touches on one of Pollock’s works, she also took the liberty of including artists Jacob Lawrence and Bill Traylor.
*In the spirit of full disclosure, I provide this recommendation both as Hilary’s wife and as someone who, thanks to my dad, has been on a steady art viewing diet since before I could walk.
Go-to weekly podcast? Or Album on repeat?
The Cat Marina never fails to help me fall asleep, and I think our cat enjoys it too, even if she would never admit it.
Cover Girl, an EP released on Decca Records US by the classical harpist Ashley Jackson (2026), gives harp like I promise you’ve never expected to hear it. Seriously, you’ll never hear The Cranberries the same again.**
**Ashley is my little sister and has credited me with exposing her to The Cranberries back in the 90s. If that’s the case, then The Indigo Girls may be due for a cover next!
Pix: You’ve worked across art, law, finance, media, and healthcare. What’s something you’ve learned about people that holds true in every room?
AT: In high school, I thought I was going to become either a screenwriter or a psychologist.
I became neither, but throughout my career I’ve been intensely curious about and attentive to the role of stories in corporate settings from an organizational performance and governance standpoint and on an individual level. The simple answer is that we all have a story to tell, but from there, I’ve learned that it gets more complex.
What are the stories that inform what we do, say, and believe is possible? What are the stories that others are telling on our behalf even if not always in our interest? Whose stories are legible, sustained, and amplified?
How costly is it when there are gaps between aspirations and reality?
Say what you will about the television show Billions, but I loved the centrality of Wendy Rhoades and Wags. They both gave us a mirror, window, and prism into the psychic fissures that exist in high-pressure, high-performance, and yes, high-anxiety environments.
Pix: You describe I’m Here Too as part “emotional archaeology.” What have you excavated about yourself through conversations with your guests?
AT: I started the I'm Here Too podcast because I was lonely. When I launched last August, I didn't have a marketing plan, a content strategy, or a clearly defined audience. I just knew that despite having more ways to connect with people than ever before, I was feeling increasingly disconnected. I was becoming more impatient than curious.
I was pretty sure the world didn't need another podcast. But I also knew how much of my own life has been shaped by people who've been generous enough to take the time to share what they've learned along the way. I wondered what might happen if I created more space for those kinds of conversations. So I started inviting people whose journeys I was curious about. Founders, artists, executives, writers, parents, old friends; people who were willing to have the kinds of conversations that only happen when you let them breathe, when you’re okay taking the scenic route.
A year and more than twenty conversations in, I’m realizing that I’m asking the questions that I need to work on answering for myself and that the beautiful and brutal thing about life is that we’re not done until we’re done and each day we can make a choice on how much we’re going to hedge or go all in without knowing how it will turn out. My guests are helping me be more courageous about living a life where going all in is the default, not the exception.
Pix: You’re the author behind How to Raise an Art Star, How to Date a Black Girl, and Tails from the Alley. What tends to be the starting point for your books: a character, an idea, a question, or something else?
AT: The novels usually document or depict something that’s been in progress for a long time.
How to Raise an Art Star came to life through walks with my wife through our neighborhood in Prospect Heights and our musings about weird things we saw and imagining what we might not be seeing (Vabeh, my main character, was a lot more feral in those early days).
The musings became vignettes written on my phone during my commute in/out of midtown and sent to my wife. The novel grew from there, almost as an inevitable memorialization of this world we built.
I realized that the layers in Art Star were already pretty rich and I didn’t want to shortchange the sociopathic ant, surveillance roach, striving alley rat, vain pigeon, and loyal Shiba Inu that make up the family cat Altonio’s crew. And so, Tails from the Alley is a spin-off of Art Star, featuring the animals who run Brooklyn.
How to Date a Black Girl, like Black Like Us, a documentary I made in college, grew out of questions and the unsatisfactory answers I was getting as I came of age and entered adulthood. Exploring how the intersections of race, class, and sexual orientation came together (or not!) in particular felt rich and ripe for a story that would be less memoir and more of a challenge for me. Namely, if this were fiction and I were free to entertain rather than refute, what would I do?