The House M.D. episode in which Gregory House gives three students a diagnostic lecture is titled “Three Stories.”
The second-season episode uses a lecture framework to tell three apparently separate medical stories. House challenges medical students to diagnose patients while gradually revealing that the cases are connected to his own history and chronic leg pain.
“Three Stories” is notable for its nonlinear structure and for the way it blends teaching, mystery, and character development. The episode shows how diagnostic reasoning can be distorted by assumptions, incomplete information, and the pressure to find a single explanation quickly. It also deepens the audience's understanding of the injury that shaped House's life.
Written by David Shore and directed by Paris Barclay, the episode originally aired in 2005. It received major critical praise and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. The title is deliberately simple: the lecture consists of three stories, but their connections become clear only as House proceeds.