Ever wonder if those crazy medical mysteries on House are based on real-life cases? We'll answer that question for you in the magazine in a couple of weeks, but we can tell you a little bit about how those storylines are created. Our intern Lisa Gartner spoke with David Shore, the show's creator/writer/executive producer, who told her that the show's writers start with both the disease and the character and work from there. "We need a disease that can hide itself and conceal itself. We need a character with a lie or a character trait," he said. "We have a lot of help with that. We have three outside doctors that are consultants on the show who review our scripts. Our writers do the good old-fashioned research of phoning up doctors who are specialists...But the real story we’re telling is about human beings."

(photo by Greg Gayne/FOX)