Story Problem

Behi Rabbani, MD
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  • Science

True stories that make math and science clear. Story Problem is for curious adults, parents helping with schoolwork, and anyone ready to understand the subjects they may have missed the first time around. No notes. No prerequisites. Just listen.

Episodes

  1. 3d ago

    The Right Dose: The Math Between Medicine and Poison

    Send us Fan Mail Some numbers decide whether a medicine heals you or kills you. This is the story of one of them. In the 1780s, an English doctor named William Withering learned that a common wildflower — the purple foxglove — could pull a dying patient back from heart failure. There was just one problem: the same flower, in a slightly larger amount, could stop a heart entirely. Cure and poison were the very same plant. The only difference between them was a number. This episode is about the math Withering needed to tell those two numbers apart — ratios and proportions — and about why it's the same math you already use every time you scale a recipe, mix a drink or read a map.  By the end, you'll come away with three tools you can actually use: Ratios — what they really are, and why a ratio is a relationship that survives a change in sizeEquivalent ratios and proportions — the machine for scaling anything up or down without breaking itThe unit rate — "find the one first," that makes proportion problems easy to do in your headYou'll also pick up a quiet superpower for reading the world: listen for the word "per." Miles per hour, dollars per pound, milligrams per kilogram — every time you hear "per," someone has handed you a ratio, and this episode shows you what to do with it. And if the phrase "constant of proportionality" ever turns up on a worksheet at your kitchen table, you'll be the one at the table who can say: oh, that's just the "per." We already know this one. Story Problem teaches real math and real science through true stories — for parents helping kids with schoolwork, and for anyone who was ever made to feel they weren't a "math person." You were. You are.    ⏱️ Chapters 00:00 — Welcome 00:53 — A woman who cannot breathe 01:39  — The secret in the hedgerow 02:16 — The problem of "how much" 06:35 — What a ratio actually is 08:25 — Find the one first 11:20 — What Withering actually did 13:44 — The flower is still working 14:37 — The dose makes the poison ✏️ Try it yourself Three quick problems on this episode's skill are waiting at storyproblem.org — they take about two minutes and they're the fastest way to make it stick. 🎧 New episodes: real math and science, hidden inside true stories. 🔔 Follow the show wherever you're listening so you don't miss the next one. 🌐 storyproblem.org Hosted by Dr. Behi Rabbani.

  2. Jul 18

    The Fraction Inside Your Heart

    Send us Fan Mail More than 400 years ago, physician William Harvey faced a problem: the accepted explanation of blood flow simply did not add up. By estimating how much blood the heart moved with every beat—and multiplying it by the number of beats in a minute—he showed that the body could not possibly be making and consuming that much new blood. The blood had to be circulating. In this first episode of Story Problem, we use Harvey’s discovery to explore one of the most important ideas in mathematics: fractions and percentages. You’ll learn what doctors mean by ejection fraction, the percentage of blood the heart pumps out with each contraction. Two hearts can pump out exactly the same amount of blood and still have very different ejection fractions because they began with different amounts. Along the way, we break every percentage problem into three pieces: Part = Percent × Whole You’ll practice finding: The part when you know the percent and the wholeThe percent when you know the part and the wholeThe whole when you know the part and the percentYou’ll also see how stroke volume and heart rate combine to produce cardiac output—and how a simple multiplication helped overturn more than a thousand years of medical thinking. Just listen, follow the story, and try the problems in your head. Story Problem — Science and Math Made Clear...Through Stories.

  • 2 Episodes

About

True stories that make math and science clear. Story Problem is for curious adults, parents helping with schoolwork, and anyone ready to understand the subjects they may have missed the first time around. No notes. No prerequisites. Just listen.

Information

  • Creator
    Behi Rabbani, MD
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    2
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Story Problem
  • Show Website
    Story Problem