On 12 May 2015, Professor Judith Green, Professor of Sociology of Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, gave her inaugural lecture in the John Snow lecture theatre. From tree shrews to A&E departments, accidents and free bus travel, she took the audience on an entertaining and informative tour of her research career. Prof Green talked about how sociological stories help make sense of the real world and the real problems faced in public health. Naming and classifying things into boxes is important because it enables us to deal with them, but to really understand what is going on we also need to look at how things are connected and interactions between people. By unpicking and making sense of stories about social causes and social solutions, Prof Green’s work has provided tangible benefits to problems affecting people’s health and wellbeing.