Decades ago she was aiming for med school until she read the college catalogs. “Some of them were polite and said, ‘Not accepting negro students at this time,’” she recalls. “I guess come back in twenty years.” I’d have plunged into rage and despair; she became a first-rate science writer. A conversation at Columbia University’s narrative medicine rounds about race, medicine, and the uses of anger. Plus music from Sam Reider.

• •  PERSON: Marcia Angell
  •  PLACE: Aschassenburg
  •  THING: a microscope
  •  RANDY’S PERSON: Daniel Mendoza