Quienes somos

 Sapolsky, a soft-voiced man with a face framed by long ringlets and a bushy beard, now mostly gray, doesn’t obviously radiate star power. He has the gentle mien of a guy you might expect to see sporting Tevas and a tote bag at the farmers market. But he is an uncommonly magnetic speaker, a master at drawing an audience in with Socratic questions, unexpected connections, and sardonic quips, all dotted with data and cinched with seamless segues. On Stanford’s official YouTube channel, home to some 4,000 videos, low-fi recordings of Sapolsky lectures account for half of the 10 most viewed videos, including one, “Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology,” that has been watched nearly 17 million times since 2011 despite a camera that can’t decide whether to zoom in or out. Only Steve Jobs’s 2005 Commencement address has more views. “I watched this video when I was in high school and it was the reason why I decided to take AP biology,” a recent comment reads. “Today I’m almost done with medical school. Dr. Sapolsky, I owe you more than you know!”