The 2-minute brute-force explanation of Fourier transforms in a recent Veritasium video was my "aha!" moment.
The famous 3Blue1Brown video is also very strong and maybe explains why complex numbers are used better.
Of course both videos leave stuff out in the interest of time but they should both be part of a signal processing curriculum.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0INsTTU1k2UYO9Mck-i5HNqG...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r18Gi8lSkfM
In particular, the visualization of the addition of sine waves of different frequencies in three dimensions is pretty spectacular. It's similar to Mathologer's "Epicycles, complex Fourier series and Homer Simpson's orbit":