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When Christine Legare gives talks to groups of psychology researchers, she likes to take a quick poll of the room. How many of them, she asks, consider themselves to be “Western ethnopsychologists?” The question does not go over well. “They’re like, ‘What?’” Legare, a developmental psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, said. “It doesn’t resonate at all.” That confusion is precisely Legare’s point. For decades, the overwhelming majority of psychology research has examined people who live in the United States and other affluent Western countries. By focusing on such a narrow population, Legare and other critics argue, psychology researchers have — mostly unwittingly — presented a skewed view of the human mind. (Schulson, 1/20)

Rosemary Johnson wheels a metal cart into the Family Food Market, a corner store in the rowhouse-filled Gowans neighborhood whose three aisles mix groceries with a cornucopia of plastic-wrapped sugar and salt. She passes the Cheez doodles and two-liter soda bottles, eyes focused on a refrigerator emblazoned with a bright yellow sign that reads “FreshCrate.” She reaches in, below the winter strawberries and Roma tomatoes, and pulls out two bags of green Bartlett pears. (Trickey, 1/23)

Health problems that bedevil the urban poor such as diabetes and obesity have well-known causes but elusive cures. Public health professionals have known for a while that these disabilities are exacerbated by an abundance of inexpensive but fatty, high-calorie food in poorer communities. The challenge for city officials has been finding effective ways to create healthier food ecosystems in those communities in ways that harness the power of the free market to help people make choices that improve their quality of life. Here are five lessons that cities have learned. (Duryea, 1/23)

The snow was coming down sideways as I encountered a growling pride of pickup trucks jockeying for position in what was once a parking lot, searching for a place to stop searching. Some drivers had given up on circling and sat idling in anticipation of a coming vacancy. Others got creative, dropping into low gear to mount glacial embankments where yellow lines were once visible. The one thing nobody did was speed off entirely. They had come too far, defying the elements, and now the destination was in sight: the Mid-Michigan Gun & Knife Show. (Alberta, 1/24)

In his mid-60s, my father unfolded a United States road atlas, laid a ruler across it, and drew a straight line from Cape Flattery, Wash., to Key West, Fla. “It’s downhill all the way!” he boomed. Then he drove that line, from the northwest corner of the continental United States to its southeastern endpoint — alone. “I made a rule for myself,” my father told me later. “No going beyond 50 miles either side of that line.” At the halfway point in Kansas he found a chunk of cottonwood and buried it where he could find it again. (Hemp, 1/23)

Kathleen Wilson swept crumbs off the floor of the soft yellow-painted lobby and returned toys to the playroom at the end of the day. Children had been snacking and playing here at the office for Mary’s Shelter, which provides housing to pregnant women with nowhere else to go. Earlier in the day, Wilson gave away toys to siblings and sent a mother home with a Crock-Pot and gift cards to a big-box store. (Leonard, 1/24)

It’s April 2018, and my wife of 20 years, Lynette, and I are on our way to my parents’ house. This is our first cross-­country drive since my transition. We drive Interstate 90 from Boston through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, then finally to my childhood home, Elkhart, Ind. One highway, 880 miles. Though I’m 51, I’m outfitted as if I’m in my mid-20s, the decade of my life I most mourn missing as a man: I’m bearded, wearing overpriced sweats, exclusive sneakers that you have to compete to buy before they sell out and, as always, a Chicago Cubs baseball hat. My integration into the straight white America of middle-­aged, middle-­class couples who road trip across the United States is seamless. (Carl, 1/21)