Dear Reader: Well, that was a faceplant. A tech glitch this morning meant today’s PROVOKED newsletter bounced from some inboxes, sent scary security warnings to others, and broke links for the rest. Not our finest hour.

If you already received and read today’s issue, thank you for putting up with the chaos—feel free to ignore this and carry on. If you never saw it or weren’t sure it was safe to open, this is the clean version we meant to send you the first time.

THIS WEEK: DOG DNA · PROTEIN · TRAINING AI · BEING BAD ·EXCLUSION

THURSDAY • JUNE 11• 2026

Hello,

This week I’m babysitting my grand-dog, Poppy. I don’t get much sleep when she stays over but I adore her. She’s a white Frenchie with a dark spot on the top of her head that looks like a poppy seed—hence the name. When she visits, she and my blue Frenchie Pippin take over the house and my bed. Pippin is the quiet one, a bit deaf, queen of the side-eye, with strong opinions about treats.

My husband says he’s a better person with a dog around. He’s not wrong. They’re expensive and they’re a lot, and a Frenchie in particular is a walking vet bill with a snore you can hear in the next room. They’re family, with all the inconvenience that word carries.

So when Embark came to us about partnering, I’ll be honest: I paused. A dog DNA company—is that PROVOKED? Then I thought about how completely Pippin is woven into our days, and how many of you have told me the same about your pets, especially in the years when the house got quiet and the pet became the reason you got up with purpose. That’s not a pet story. That’s a story about who we take care of, and why, and what it does to us. So I sent it to our writers, and several of them lit up. Margie Zable Fisher got the assignment, and she took off with it.

It’s our feature this week.

P.S. A real thank you for clicking on our sponsors. They keep PROVOKED running.

Sponsored Post

​What My Dog’s DNA Test Was Really For​

BY MARGIE ZABLE FISHER

After decades of coordinating, anticipating, and keeping everything running, the quiet that follows an empty nest isn’t relief. It’s disorienting, so we rescue a dog to fill it. We assume the problems that come with him are ours to solve, because that’s the role we know. What a DNA test revealed had nothing to do with the dog, and everything to do with what we do when there’s nothing left to manage.

WELLNESS

​The Protein Industrial Complex​

BY LAURA FRASER

Protein is in Pop-Tarts now, popcorn, and potato chips. Steak is back on top of the food pyramid, and the U.S. supplement market just hit $10 billion a year. So how much do women over 55 need—and what’s all this very expensive marketing actually costing us? READ MORE​

LIFE

​The Case for Being Bad at Something ​

BY DR. GAYLE MACBRIDE

We arrange our lives around what we’re already good at. A psychologist on why being a beginner again might be exactly what you need. READ MORE​

CULTURE

​I Trained the AI That’s Coming for My Job. Then I Became It.​

BY LYNN BRAZ

We’ve spent years asking what AI will do to our jobs. A writer who worked inside one of those platforms—teaching it, editing for it, and eventually ghosting it—came away with a different question entirely. And it wasn’t about the machines. READ MORE​

READER SPOTLIGHT

Want to be featured next? Comment on your favorite piece—we read them all.

TAKE NOTE

Timely and worth your attention.

📚 Dolly All the Time, the new GMA Book Club pick from Annabel Monaghan, follows a single mom working four jobs who lands in a fake-dating situationship with the town’s workaholic golden boy. The part we love most isn’t in the book: Monaghan didn’t write her first novel until 50, and she’s refreshingly honest about how terrifying starting that late really felt in a recent interview. She’s written one every year since. Love that for us.

☀️ Meet bemotrizinol, the first new sunscreen ingredient U.S. regulators have approved in over 25 years—strong UVA/UVB protection without the chalky white cast of mineral formulas. Europe’s had it since 1999; we waited a quarter century for the paperwork. For midlife skin that’s already done its time in the sun, this is overdue.

🎬 Who remembers Cape Fear with Nick Nolte? Javier Bardem is Max Cady in Apple TV’s new 10-episode limited series, executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, the duo behind the 1991 film with Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, and Jessica Lange. This time it centers on married attorneys Anna (Amy Adams) and Tom Bowden (Patrick Wilson) after the killer they put behind bars is released and comes for them. The difference: Adams isn’t just the wife in peril—she carries equal psychological weight, reckoning with the decision that created the catastrophe.

DEAR READER

​Your Future Self Will Be Too Short to Reach the Towels​

BY MAURA CARLIN

The tub was almost 3 feet high. The towel rack was out of reach. The mirror reflected nothing. Her mother hadn’t changed. The world had simply stopped accounting for her. A daughter reflects on what Paris revealed about design, aging, and the subtle ways the world decides who gets to move through it freely and who it simply stops seeing. READ MORE​

OUR SHORT LIST

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🧪 One of the most dreaded screenings finally has an alternative worth knowing about.

🤍 The summer white jean hunt is over—high-rise, no roll-over, the perfect length whether you’re short or tall. I have these and love them.

👩‍🦳 Women experience retirement differently than men, and psychologists say the reasons aren’t what you’d guess.​

🧴 Everyone has a hair-washing routine. Science has opinions about whether yours is actually working.

🐕 Think your dog or cat is a genius? A few simple tests might settle it.​

MORE

We’ve Got Thoughts on TV

​Landman’s Women: A Real Oilman’s Wife Responds ​

BY SUSAN DABBAR

​Now, That’s Beautiful: Anti-Glam Heroines Take Over TV ​

BY NINA MALKIN

​Why the Women of Mad Men Still Matter: Power Moves and Pencil Skirts​

BY HANNAH BROWN