Ask HN: What's the best lecture series you've seen? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's the best lecture series you've seen?

777 pointscauliflower99271 comments

It could be tech related or otherwise. What made it so special?

Andrej Karpathy's "Neural Networks: From Zero to Hero". https://karpathy.ai/zero-to-hero.html

Just watch the first lecture and you won't be able to not watch the rest. It starts with making your own autograd engine in 100 lines of python, similar to PyTorch and then builds up to a GPT network. He's one of the best in the field, founder of OpenAI, then Director of AI at Tesla. Nothing like the scam tutorials that just copy-paste random code from the internet.

Totally agree!

These are basically - mind blowing.

Logged in just to upvote this, such an excellent resource!

The "Let's build GPT: from scratch, in code, spelled out." demystifies so much of machine learning and chatbots. It's so cool to see how simple python code can be leveraged into something so amazing.

I've watched some of his videos in the past, extremely humbling experience. Thank you for sharing this, it deserves a top spot on this thread.

The best lecture series I have seen till date ( and I have seen lectures by top professors across great institutions in multiple countries) is Classical Physics by V. Balakrishnan from IIT Madras, India [1]. Only people who have thought about concepts deeply over a lifetime can deliver such truly delightful lectures. If you have an hour to spare, just listen to the first lecture [2] and it will profoundly impact your outlook on science (and physics in particular)

[1] https://archive.nptel.ac.in/courses/122/106/122106027/

[2] https://youtu.be/Q6Gw08pwhws

Full series of videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5E4E56893588CBA8

After clicking through a few random lectures, this seems fantastic. I wish I'd found this during my physics B.Sc.

For those not in the know NPTEL has a boatload of high quality STEM content. Often they will be the only place you can find the more advanced courses on certain less popular STEM courses.

I agree.

His entire family has had storied research careers and highly regarded in their fields. Radha Balakrishnan, his wife, is a retired theoretical physicist, their son Hari Balakrishnan is a professor of CSAIL at MIT and daughter Hamsa Balakrishnan is a professor of aeronautics at MIT.

imagine being born in that family and sucking at research.

Not sure best ever, but I really enjoyed “The Other Side of History” (available from Great Courses Plus now Wonderium). I found the deep dive into daily life through history helped me better understand the common threads that all humans experience.

Course Description:

Imagine you're a Greek soldier marching into battle in the front row of a phalanx. Or an Egyptian woman putting on makeup before attending an evening party with your husband. Or a Celtic monk scurrying away with the Book of Kells during a Viking invasion. Welcome to the other side of history, the 99% of ordinary people whose names don't make it into the history books—but whose lives are no less fascinating than the great leaders whose names we all know. Here you'll encounter such diverse individuals as:

a Mesopotamian hunter-gatherer making a living in one of the world's earliest permanent settlements;

an Egyptian craftsman decorating the pharaoh's tomb in the Valley of the Kings; a Minoan fleeing the island of Santorini during a volcanic eruption;

a Greek citizen relaxing at a drinking party with the likes of Socrates;

a Roman slave captured in war and sent to work in the mines; and

a medieval pilgrim on the road to Canterbury.

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-other-side-of-hi...

Thanks for this recommendation. It sounds like something I'd be interested in and I just found the audiobook for free as part of my Audible membership.

In the Great Courses vein, I really loved "great ideas of philosophy". Another favorite is "a history of freedom".

The lecturer in that seemed both so knowledgable and passionate about their subject that he was just riffing, it was incredibly good.

A lot of the courses are more like somebody reading out a textbook.

The Great Courses are a real gem. It's a shame they continue to shorten and clickbaitify their lecture series.

Gilbert Strang's lectures on Linear Algebra [1]. Prof Strang is an amazing lecturer with a unassuming style. He's the expert on Linear Algebra and makes the topic so much approachable.

Ken Joy's lectures on Computer Graphics [2]. Prof Joy is another amazing lecturer, making the Computer Graphics topics seeming easy.

Stanford CS221 Learn AI (2019) by Percy Liang and Dorsa Sadigh. Both professors are great lecturers. Andrew Ng's ML class was great, but it was more academically tuned. CS221 is more on the practical side and is more updated as ML is progressing fast.

Micromouse 2021-2022 by UCLA [4]. It's a short series taught by graduate students and probably it's incomplete, but the content and teaching are amazing. I wish I had this kind of class when I was in school. The teaching and materials are very approachable and easy to understand. It shows how basic electronic components and basic circuitry work. It shows how to put them together and how to write simple programs to control the components. The end result is a robotic mouse that can traverse mazes with seemingly intelligence.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL49CF3715CB9EF31D

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01YSK5gIEYQ&list=PL_w_qWAQZt...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8Eh7RqggsU&list=PLoROMvodv4...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAWsHzw_h0iiz1EQEvQ9n...

Edit: added [4]

Can you articulate on the first one? In the last semester I tutored for a Linear algebra course which used his book and it was a nightmare. Ideas seems to be presented in reverse order and a lot of students ended up having trouble understanding basic concepts.

I haven't used his book, just watched the Youtude videos. His teaching went slowly with simple examples. He explained them really well.

There're a lot of materials, much more than one would care. He covered many topics. I just jumped to the ones I needed to learn at the time. I had Linear Algebra background so most were just a refresher for me. As a student attending the class the first time, it might be overwhelming to learn all those material in a semester.

So strange. It was the best book I’ve read about the topic. It’s been a while, but I don’t recall anything not presented in the right order. Going from linear equations to a geometric interpretation of the rows, then to linear combination of the columns. Then Gauss-Seidel to LRU.

I liked his approach of “ideas first, rigor later”. I think after reading this book, you can easily grab a book with more formalism, if you feel lacking rigor.

I’m interested to understand where you felt the order was wrong?

A bit everywhere. One thing that really bothered me is that you have to wait until chapter 3 to introduce the notion of vector spaces. I know that it is not an easy concept to grasp, but once you manage to understand it a lot of previous things become trivial.

When I was first introduced to the idea of solving linear equations, we already had the idea of space vectors and basis, so solving a system of equations was just an application of finding the coefficients of the linear combination.

> I liked his approach of “ideas first, rigor later”. I think after reading this book, you can easily grab a book with more formalism if you feel lacking rigor.

This sentence made me think. Maybe there was a disconnect between my experience (Physics background, bottom-up approach) and the one taught in the course (Data science for Linguistic, top-down). Each time I tried to use the notion and examples I had in mind with the students I found myself hitting a wall because they had not covered the topics yet.

That sounds about right. I read the book and watched the lectures after I graduated. And it was just fun.

The thing is that the ideas stuck and I was very grateful for that.

But we can be lucky that there are so many approaches out there to pick from.

You probably already know about them, but just in case: have you watched 3b1b's videos about Linear Algebra? Those did open my mind and improved my understanding of linear algebra.

Oh yes, 3b1b is my favorite. All of them, but especially Fourier series.

I tried Strang in uni and it was about the worst linear algebra book I tried. Kostrikin on the other hand was perfect — he struck the right balance between geometric intuition and formal rigour.

I think for someone more interested in the formal side of things, Strang is definitely a little weird. I bounced right off it, and to this day don't really know what the rows are supposed to be about. Axler was perfect for me. But for developing an intuition for the nitty gritty operations, I think Strang is probably pretty good.

Absolutely love the first one. His explanation of SVD had a big impact on me and my dad is now teaching it in his math class haha

Human Behavioral Biology, a Stanford course taught by Robert Sapolsky. It's a thorough look on some of our behaviors through the lens of hormones, neural/nervous system, and how evolution shaped us. Also, Pr Sapolsky is a great speaker with a complete deadpan humor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C...

This would be my choice too. He's a good storyteller.

Although like all good storytellers, don't believe everything he says. I looked up a couple of his more bizarre anecdotes, and they usually turn out not to be true. The one example I can remember is women living close together sync'ing up their menstrual period. That turned out to be probably a case of the researchers underestimating the intricacies of the statistics necessary to show that cyclic phenomenon of not quite the same length adjust towards each other.

I have this thing when lecturers are engaging that I have even more trouble believing them going forward if they make an error.

I came to that point about the cycle synchronization in his lecture series and I had to stop. Not entirely because of the error, but because the phenomenon he cited was controversial well before he gave those lectures. That tells me he was not one to a) update his beliefs b) predisposed to falsifying his beliefs/seeking out contrary evidence or c) acknowledge disagreement about a phenomenon

Any one or combination of those qualities makes me skeptical when one is teaching a "science". So rather than spend the rest of the series second guessing everything he said, I stopped watching. It's a shame, he's really a great lecturer.

This is one of the great disconnects between computer scientists and biologists. Computers are man-made, and fundamentally knowable - answers will be definitively, provably, right or wrong.

Biology is different. Sure, at a molecule level, you can make definite conclusions. "This drug binds to that receptor."

But the kind of biology that is immediately useful to humans - where it touches on psychology or sociology - is too complex to get 100% right. So how do you do 'science' in these fields?

The answer is that you make up some cohesive theory based on existing research and do studies in that direction. You try to prove yourself right.

And it works! Theories that come out of this sort of research can turn out to be 100% true. Or 90% true - where they are wrong under some conditions, but still very useful. Or they can be complete bunk - not predictive, and a waste of time.

When anyone presents a cohesive theory of a complex system, they are probably not 100% right. Doesn't make them entirely wrong, though, and certainly not useless.

That’s a common misconception, especially among people who have only shallow acquaintances with really complex computer systems, amplified by deeper exposure to biological systems. Any sufficiently complex system, be it biological or man made, exhibits characteristics of difficult predictability, even to the point of unpredictable.

I have trouble trusting information from sources that aren't self-critical or aware of the conversation associated with the research they're citing.

And probably hypocritically, I also want to kick back, turn off the critical side of my brain and enjoy the lectures and get some learning for free while not questioning every claim. Edutainment so to speak. But that requires a lot of trust, and if that trust seems threatened, I can't in good conscience continue my lazy learning.

That Sapolsky class is one of my favs as well.

Anything I have watched from Open Yale has been fantastic too. I feel like they have done a great job of curation and not just creating a list of random new class recordings.

https://oyc.yale.edu/courses

+1 very easy to follow too.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/

Extremely clear and satisfying lectures that covers all of basic physics. Much of it is accessible to anyone with some spare time and first year university!

I came to post this. It is also likely one of the best-known lecture series, and for good reason.

Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine. [0] gives you invaluable understanding about much more than just Ukraine.

MIT 16.885J Aircraft Systems Engineering, Fall 2005 [1] - the aircraft they focus on is the Space Shuttle. Amazingly demystifying. Some of the actual early designers talk there.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiYhQtGpRhc&list=PL35721A60B...

I second to this [0]. This was basically European history course from times of Vikings till present day.

I usually don't like history lessons, but it's a rare gem, it really helps to understand Eastern Europe.

I was going to post MIT 16.885J Aircraft Systems Engineering, Fall 2005, really amazing, would be nice to have something like that for modern day systems

The Aircraft Systems Engineering lectures are great, I'm listening to them now.

It should be noted that the lecturer, Aaron Cohen, contradicts everything that has made SpaceX successful. From reusability, to innovation, to cost-cutting measures, to sticking with traditional contractors. But that is only testament to the challenges that faced SpaceX, it detracts nothing from Professor Cohen's brilliance. It's too bad that he never got to see how both cargo and manned spaceflight had progressed only a decade after his 2010 passing.

Not even a second of thought: Sussman's & Abelson's SICP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J_xL4IGhJA&list=PLE18841CAB...

especially the section on streams (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkGKLILLy0I&list=PLE18841CAB...)

It changed my outook on programming by pi degrees and I feel it is more needed then ever.

“It’s not a science and it has nothing to do with computers.” Talk about starting CS101 with a bang!

That's like a more fun-sounding version of Dijkstra's "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

Sorry, can't resist: you probably mean pi radians (and by convention you don't even need the word radians). Pi degrees would imply your outlook barely changed at all.

> Pi degrees would imply your outlook barely changed at all.

And what if the OP knew nothing of maths before the course? A mistake it was, but I think you’re overindexing on (potentially) a brain fart.

Yeah but pi degrees of my outlook into the universe gets to be very very large over large distances...

Yeah this one is so much fun. I feel like I really grew as a programmer from this course. Scheme is the perfect teaching language because each concept being taught can be demonstrated in its pure form so you really “get it”. I had been a professional developer for 10 years or so when I went through this course, and it profoundly changed how I thought about code.

Awesome, thanks for sharing

in my opinion as far as learning programming is involved Brian Harvey's SICP lectures are superior

Surely you mean pi radians and not pi degrees.

Practical deep learning for coders (2022 edition)

By Jeremy, who is the founding researcher at fast.ai.

Three things I love about this series 1. Jeremy seems like a power user of Jupyter notebook and uses them beautifully to run the lectures. The book on fastai is also written in Jupyter notebooks. 2. The lectures are super hands on - Jeremy actually fires up a jupyter notebook and runs code which often surprises him 3. I love how he describes he deep dives into a specific Kaggle competition. Describes in great detail his own attempts at getting up the leaderboard. It's almost like watching a poker player reveal her decision process before they make a move.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SF_h3xF3cE&list=PLfYUBJiXbd...

Also the first few lectures of part 2: https://www.fast.ai/posts/part2-2022-preview.html

Intro to Database Systems by Andy Pavlo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeYBdghaIjc&list=PLSE8ODhjZX...

MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems by Robert Morris - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQP8WApzIQQ&list=PLrw6a1wE39...

> MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems by Robert Morris

Just looking at the playlist, I'm surprised at how many lectures are focused around actual distributed databases versus purely on theory or algorithms

>Andy Pavlo

His opening lectures always have a surprise in them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeYBdghaIjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m72mt4VN9ik

I love the Robert Morris’ lectures. Best ever in DS.

Fun fact: Robert Morris is one of the founders of YCombinator and also the creator of the Morris worm!

I remember hearing the Morris worm in news at the time, as an aspired virus and worm hacker. It has been so long ago.

Pavlo has multiple series depending on your level of understanding. His advanced lectures are particularly satisfying as well as his interview series.

Highly recommend both of these. In particular the Distributed Systems one has an amazing format (read a paper each week, the lecture goes into detail about the nuances). Also implementing raft was challenging and frustrating but incredibly fun.

Geoff Hinton's legendary Coursera course on neural nets. It came out around the same time as AlexNet winning the ImageNet competition which sparked the current deep learning revolution.

At the time it was cutting edge to the point where he introduced a previously undescribed optimization method (RMSProp) that was subsequently used in papers, citing the lecture slides as their reference! But still accessible to anyone with basic college math. Of course it doesn't have any of the new stuff like transformers or diffusion models, but I still consider it as giving a good foundation for understanding backprop and neural nets.

Unlike every other AI course at the time it didn't try to teach you about all the other types of machine learning. Neural nets only. After taking it I was able to apply neural nets at work with pretty great results. Also, it gave me one of my favorite quotes: "To deal with hyper-planes in a 14-dimensional space, visualize a 3-D space and say 'fourteen' to yourself very loudly. Everyone does it."

Somewhere on Hinton's webpage, there's a series of mp4 lectures. They introduce general neural networks, and then lead into restricted boltzman machines, which he worked on. Probably one of the best introductions to RBMs.

My favourite ones are already linked: Sapolsky, Feynman, SICP. So here are some lesser known ones to signal boost:

Introduction to Cryptography by Christof Paar, I wanted to understand Bitcoin's secp256k elliptic curve on finite fields: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6N5qY2nvvJE8X75VkXglSrVh...

The Maths of General Relativity by ScienceClic, I wanted to understand clearly Einstein's field equations (what the hell is a Ricci tensor) without having to read a book: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu7cY2CPiRjVY-VaUZ69bXHZr...

Leonard Susskind Stanford Physics Lectures:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6i60qoDQhQGaGbbg-4aS...

Seminar on Macroeconomics, Randall Wray:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnw-449iRxO-BbfN55FdO...

Modern Money and Public Purpose:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zEbo8PIPSc&list=PLoGqI16J4b...

Walter Lewin’s MIT lectures on Physics. Quite sad to see that they’ve been removed from MIT OpenCourseWare [1].

[1]: https://news.mit.edu/2014/lewin-courses-removed-1208

sad? I'd say tragic :(. I have never looked at rainbows the same since that lecture, I could stare at them for hours.

Yes - The rainbow lecture is so great!

All of you have looked at rainbows, but very few of you have ever seen one!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXZ9K_1rJww

MIT threw out the baby with the bathwater. No courseware anymore for anyone because of an online sexual harassment event.

As others have noted, drug against Parkinson, could result in hypersexuality. https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/mit-cuts-ties-wit...

They are on YouTube and I would have contributed this but couldn't judge the value.

MIT physics 801 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyQSN7X0ro203puVhQsmC...

MIT physics 802 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyQSN7X0ro2314mKyUiOI...

MIT physics 803 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyQSN7X0ro22WeXM2QCKJ...

The video series made by 3Blue1Brown are fantastic. He crafts visual math videos using an animation engine he has developed to provide great explanations for understanding concepts more deeply. Beyond the technical, his presentation style and insight makes them very motivational to follow.

Series on linear algebra: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2x...

Animation engine: https://github.com/3b1b/manim

MIT 6.001, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

It really made...the interpretation of computer programs...click with me.

And there's a meta-circular evaluator designed to fit on the number of blackboards they had available. So that's cool.

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-001-structure-and-interpretati...

CS193p - Developing Apps for iOS, by Paul Hegarty.

It's a course taught at Stanford University, some of which they've released publicly for free. Here's the latest incarnation, which covers SwiftUI: https://cs193p.sites.stanford.edu

One of the earlier courses, back when it was all MVC + UIKit focussed, was how I learnt iOS dev and got a solid grasp of all the concepts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ipad-and-iphone-applic...

Absolutely fantastic lectures, I feel very lucky they were available. Thank you Paul if you're reading!

Building a prototype with Dan Gelbart [0]. An engineer and inventor, he has an 18 episode playlist of every aspect of using a machine shop to build prototypes. It teaches machining. Shop use, thinking though physical creation where order of operations is paramount. Really just a great learning experience even if you never plan on doing machining.

[0]https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_tws4AXg7asrBv1MMAq4AO68...

Bill Shillito - Introduction to Higher Mathematics | Just the clarity of presentation and pacing.

MIT Calculus Revisited - An almost perfect no nonsense presentation (I like black boards too)

Francis Su - Real Analysis - Very engaging lecture style and great board work.

Feynman Messenger Lectures - Well its Feynman, and the content is interesting if you are still somewhat new to it.

Also StatQuest and Luis Serano for intuition/conceptualization in Stats & ML.

I have a network of channels on YouTube trying to aggregate lecture courses/series. Here are just two: https://youtube.com/@a-guess-at-the-riddle

https://youtube.com/@tuva-or-bust

+1 for Francis Su

In the category of finance, Bob Shiller’s enthusiasm for financial history and his amusement with the limitless quirks and excesses of markets.

Financial markets with Bob Shiller (Yale 2008):

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8F7E2591EE283A2E

Financial markets with Bob Shiller (Yale 2011):

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8FB14A2200B87185

Smart-as-a-whip, scathing rationality of John Geanakoplos in his financial theory course.

Financial Theory with John Geanakoplos (Yale 2011):

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEDC55106E0BA18FC

Not exactly a lecture series, but Andrei Alexandrescu has had some fantastic keynote presentations at CppCon. I don't even program in C++ any more, but I've watched these more than once, they're entertaining, approachable, and inspiring:

Speed Is Found In The Minds of People https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJJTYQYB1JQ

std::allocator Is to Allocation what std::vector Is to Vexation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIb3L4vKZ7U

An actual lecture series I've enjoyed watching is "The WE-Heraeus International Winter School on Gravity and Light", which covers General Relativity using modern mathematical approaches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G4SqIboeig&list=PLFeEvEPtX_...

Again, I haven't done physics in 20 years, but I've found it surprisingly easy to follow because it is so clearly presented.

It’s a podcast (or started as one) but is much like a lecture series - The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. It is both as brief as possible yet as thorough as needs be, and is truly gap-less. Peter Adamson does a fantastic job explaining the historical context and progression of philosophy along with the interplay between philosophy, science, politics, religion, and society. I find the episodes consistently both informative and amusing.

https://historyofphilosophy.net/

Norman Wildberger's "Wild Linear Algebra" series

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIljB45xT85BhzJ-oWNug...

His geometry-centric approach to linear algebra was exactly what I needed to finally grok the subject. Topics like matrix multiplication and discriminants went from "why are they defined like this? it makes no sense?" to "of course that's how you multiply matrices because it's the only logical answer".

It's only later that I discovered Wildberger has some ~strange~ very interesting ideas regarding imaginary numbers, but these ideas don't detract one bit from his presentation of linear algebra. Highly recommended viewing for anyone who is keen on neural networks and machine learning but struggles with understanding the underlying mathematics.

It's not just imaginary numbers, the ultrafinitist rabbit hole runs deep. But there's nothing inherently wrong with it, it's just a different set of axioms than everyone else uses. With those constraints you can still do meaningful things by other means (checkout his rational trigonometry stuff), at the expense of more cumbersomeness.

His series that introduces mathematics from first principles was slightly mind-blowing to me. I don't know if it's good or not, but I kept watching!

His YouTube channel also has a bunch of other playlists. Most relevant for this topic would be the History of Mathematics course he taught at UNSW ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL55C7C83781CF4316 )

It covers many different fields in a shallow, introductory way (which keeps it quite approachable to non-experts). It's following a textbook, but he of course gives his own idiosyncratic takes on things.

Regarding imaginary numbers, I found this YouTube series really helpful to understand basics of imaginary numbers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T647CGsuOVU

Washington Street Studios' pottery playlist. Taught me a ton about ceramics. Sadly the lecturer Phil Berneburg has since passed away, but it's more or less the equivalent of the theoretical side of an undergraduate degree in ceramics.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS6Mrdpt53RyauAg8bGN-...

Sad news about passing of Phil Barneburg. I could watch his lectures non stop for hours.

Thank you for this recommendation. It is exactly what I was looking for.

Anything by Bryan Cantrill, which arguably isn't a "lecture" in the intended sense of the word (i.e. professor, college, university, etc), but it is one wild ride of a lecture nonetheless.

An hour with Bryan will teach you more about computer history and system design than most anything else.

I particularly like the monktoberfest series, and the Joyent years.

Yes! Anything from Cantrill is fantastic.

Sw Sarvapriyananda's discourse on The Gita has been life changing for me. His approach is quite traditional but he also references many contemporary works. I started it because I wanted to learn more about consciousness. I'm halfway through it and I'm already a committed Nondualist!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2imXor63HtS4ewIKryBL...

OCaml Programming: Correct + Efficient + Beautiful

by Michael Ryan Clarkson

Textbook: https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html

Lectures: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLre5AT9JnKShBOPeuiD9b...

I'm currently doing an MIT OCW course called 'The Film Experience'. I've not seen someone talk about and analyze a work of art like this in a long time. Supreme lectures and the course material (assigned reading, videos) is wonderful as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFOsw1Vccac&list=PLUl4u3cNGP...

edit: Added link

Alan Watts for philosophy / religion / zen.

It's almost a trite recommendation because his tidbits are sampled all the time in electronic or meditation music, but they're sampled all the time because he's known for opening western minds up to eastern mysticism in a very down-to-earth approachable, comparative, compassionate, and often humorous way. Who knew that philosophy can make you laugh.

His lectures just show you a different way of looking at the world, and it's a breath of fresh air for the soul.

The Evolution series by Primer on Youtube is a game changer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDvzbBRiNlA&list=PLKortajF2d...

It starts with very basic, and cute blobs. And builds simulations around how they evolve. But as they explain the simulations, they explain how mutations might arise. It is explain how mutations can become advantageous to the point of driving predecessors extinct, or nearly extinct. And they show you how to derive math formulas for the outcome of the simulations in a very intuitive way. Also, it's entertaining as hell. I've watched the whole series at least 4 times by now. It's short, it's punchy, it's brilliant. I'd very highly recommend it.

Ben Eater building an 8-bit computer. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2...

This series teaches you so much about how a computer works from the ground up. Although I had already learned that you can build a CPU with only NAND-gates, this is what really made it click. It's also densely packed with facts and techniques (debugging, using an oscilloscope, ...). It's quite refreshing compared to other youtube content where every little fact needs a ten minute video.

I’m building that one now. I did the 6502 project first which was a long weekend project. That also gets you familiar with making ROMs without needing to build the programmer yourself. (Then again building the programmer is also educational, and you could use that skill to program the ROM for the 6502 without buying the programmer and using their suspicious looking but totally fine software that goes with it.)

I’m on the output module of the 8-bit computer, adding a register so you can store the number being output. Next is adding the bus to connect all the modules. (I end up listening to something else while making a bunch of wires, and that will take a lot of wires. I’m trying to make it look nice like Ben does.)

It got me to set up a dedicated electronics workstation and I went ahead and got myself a soldering station (more for future projects but it was useful for making a USB power cable and adding resistors to LEDs to save space) and oscilloscope (useful for seeing the glitches I’m currently having; plus it’s fun).

I’m getting into PCB design (KiCad). Started designing one for the 6502 project but I’m pausing that while I work on the 8 bit cpu project. There are definitely issues with the 8 bit project being on breadboards and/or how it’s currently hooked up such as the fact that some parts have some glitches due to poor power distribution and floating input pins that I’ll be working on. There are some good tips on /r/beneater subreddit.

I also just picked up the book he based the lectures on, to round things out. Of course, learning from Ben Eater and doing it in real life is the point where theory meets practice and you start making things in the real world.

https://www.youtube.com/@weirdboyjim James Sharman is probably worth a look for taking a home brew CPU to the next level, like his pipelined CPU which is also moved to PCBs. He also works on other things such as audio, video, etc.

There are also a ton of other system builders on YouTube making home brew Z80 and other CPU projects. Ben talks about SPI interface but I also found out how to use SPI to read/write from SD cards (John’s Basement: https://youtube.com/@JohnsBasement )

This channel is adding a cassette interface to Ben Eater’s 6502 project. I want to do that and is what actually made me decide to get an oscilloscope. https://youtube.com/@GregStrike

Couldn't agree more. His series on networking is also fantastic. Hugely leveled-up my understanding of how computers talk to each other. It's almost Euclidean how he builds it up, with each segment applying the principles from the previous one.

He's a fantastically gifted teacher and has a very deep understanding of the material, which is just a killer combination.

Brad Osgood's The Fourier Transform and its Applications https://see.stanford.edu/Course/EE261

Osgood is such an engaging lecturer and his explanations are crystal clear.

Eigenchris' youtube series on tensors is great https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJHszsWbB6hrkmmq57lX8...

He also has video series on Tensor calculus, General Relativity and a few other topics. Its an incredible labor of love.

Second this one, I remember being enthralled in undergrad just going through these lectures. I should give it another watch through since there was a lot I didn't understand the first go around

+1 on the eigenchris stuff. They start a little rough as he’s still learning how to present online, but improve quickly, and he has that knack for explaining things clearly that some people seem to be born with.

I have always been fascinated by how better to communicate ideas. I swear 90% of the brilliant Ideas I have seen go to waste because the idea wasn't convincingly presented. It drives me insane when I know exec teams will ignore things because a presenter missed the mark a bit.

"How to Speak" - MIT OpenCourseWare - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

https://www.howacarworks.com/video-course/watch/bonus-disman...

It was special because the german creator of the course broke down a car into small components and then rebuilt it.

It kinda felt like reading a neatly designed codebase.

"Human Behavioral Biology" lecture serise by Robert Sapolsky at Stanford.

As a engineer with huge interest in learning how something works, understanding human brain and behavior, was a logical next step for me. The lectures are more about learning ways of analyzing the mind rather than learning any specific facts.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D

Stanfords "Programming Paradigms" for learning how code gets compiled to bits and bytes.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps8jOj7diA0

Not the most sexy topic but it goes to a low level and gives you a clear picture of how memory is laid out, how functions translate to instructions from C, C++, then goes on to use Scheme and Python to show further paradigms.

The presentation is clear and it simplifies in just the right places to give you the foundations.

Robert Sapolsky's Human Behavioural Biology [0] It's like a (good) netflix series you can binge watch!

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL150326949...

Software Foundations in Coq

by Michael Ryan Clarkson

Textbook: https://clarksmr.github.io/sf-lectures/textbook/lf/deps.html

Lectures: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLre5AT9JnKShFK9l9HYzk...

I quite enjoyed John Searle's Philosophy of the Mind course. [1] Searle obviously has strong opinions on the subject, but he does a good job of going through the history from Descartes onward about the big problems in the philosophy of mind and how various philosophers have grappled with them, and he's enjoyable to listen to. The lectures midway through on functionalism and computational theories of the mind would probably be especially interesting to the HN audience. Towards the end he explains his own ideas about consciousness (though I found them to be less compelling than the earlier lectures in the course).

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi7Va_4ekko&list=PL039MUyjHR...

I took this course as an undergrad. It was in fact required for anyone studying CogSci.

Can you imagine being a religion major and being forced to take a class from an atheist scientist? It was like that. Searle believes that General AI is impossible from a philosophical prospective, and the final exam requires you to defend or argue against that position. But if you argue against it you get no better than a B.

I got a B.

Kevin Ahern's Biochemistry courses BB 350/2017 [1], BB 451/2018 [2], Problem Solving Videos [3]. Having a mechanistic/romanticism-infused worldview based mainly on Descartes' mind/body dichotomy trying to tie together Plato's idealism with Aristotle's empiricism is no longer possible after witnessing how polypeptide chains develop affinity for oxygen, in the least the worldview will be closer to La Mettrie's L'homme Machine [4] rather than Descartes' res duality.

[1] https://youtu.be/JSntf0iKMfM?list=PLlnFrNM93wqz37TUabcXFSNX2...

[2] https://youtu.be/SAIFs_Mx8D8?list=PLlnFrNM93wqyay92Mi49rXZKs...

[3] https://youtu.be/e9khXFSU6r4?list=PLlnFrNM93wqzeZvsE_GKes91C...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_a_Machine · https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52090/52090-h/52090-h.htm

Effective Communication by Professor Dalton Kehoe, available on the Great Courses.

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/effective-communicat...

Most people think they are good communicators because they talk all the time, but talking is not communicating. The truth is that good communication is the hardest thing you will ever do.

This course literally changed how I think, write, and speak. It was so good that I listened to it twice. I even had to restart on the second attempt because my wife got hooked on it as well so we would listen to it on long road trips and discuss.

Some key lessons (taken from the website):

* How early cultural learning and deeply learned patterns of reaction in our unconscious mind affect how you see, think, and feel about other people and enhance or undermine your ability to communicate effectively

* How your sense of self develops in everyday talk during your childhood and the ways in which your subconscious is built to sustain and defend your self-esteem, shaping how you think and speak to others for the rest of your life

* The specific styles of talking you use in most situations, including different types of control talk -- the unproductive and needlessly aggressive mode that almost always dooms a conversation to a fatal downward spiral -- and the more desirable alternative of dialogue talk

Oh no... My read/watch list is gonna go through the room with this one.

The one I've personally been enjoying very much is "Category Theory for programmers" by Bartosz Milewski: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbgaMIhjbmEnaH_LTkxLI...

I'm enjoying the Milewski series too. For a couple months I've been plowing through some books on Category Theory. It isn't easy for me. A disproportionate number of aha moments have happened while re-re-watching one of his presentations.

Finance Theory I (Introduction to Finance) by Andrew Lo: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP63B2lDhyKOs...

Especially great that they are recorded around the 2008 financial events, so some initial duration is spent on discussing those events.

Algoritms I and II by Sedgewick, was offered on Coursera by Princeton University.

Extremely good and interesting class on data structures and algorithms, with great auto-graded assignments as well.

the autograding is super well designed indeed. shooting for > 95% on the hw was great fun!

Moral philosophy lectures by Johann Frick for UC Berkeley. Accessible, easy to follow, well produced: https://www.youtube.com/@johannfrick4318/videos

Not lectures, but exceptionally well structured and thoughtful conversations between Bryan Magee and leading philosophers from the 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P2R57Axcf8&list=PLhP9EhPApK...

A long time ago I found a free UC Berkeley class, I think it was Psych 117: Drugs and Human Behavior that was absolutely phenomenal, but I can’t seem to find it anymore.

By David Presti. That was a fabulous course.

Seriously! It came up in conversation recently and I ended up buying a copy of Pharmako/Poeia out of nostalgia. I wish I’d archived those recordings.

I've found this https://archive.org/details/ucb-2006-presti

More recently, the course was called "Drugs and the Brain". It was intended as a survey course so maybe slightly different topics than the one linked here.

Cool!

The Science Network's "Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0" [1] and "Candles in the Dark" [2]

I wish there was a new one...

[1] http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlighte...

[2] http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-candles-...

Humanities: anything by Michael Sugrue

https://youtu.be/Auuk1y4DRgk

He also has a podcast “The Idea Store”:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idea-store/id15759...

He can speak off-the-cuff on any philosophical school of thought or historical period. The clarity of the lectures is amazing.

What a stone-cold badass.

Some good ones from Stephen Boyd - helped me really grok the subjects. Signals and Systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gPuUVYImiQ&list=PLpGHT1n4-m... Linear Dynamical Systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf1264iFr-w&list=PL06960BA52...

This series on Finance Theory by Andrew Lo unfolded just during the 2007-08 crisis - so that's an added bonus as the lectures refer to ongoing events sometimes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdHlfiOAJyE&list=PLUl4u3cNGP...

https://oyc.yale.edu/death/phil-176

This course on Open Yale called "Death".

Shelly Kagan talks about whether the soul exists, what death means for the individual, why/whether death is bad, and finally the issue of suicide.

Talks on the Mill CPU architecture:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFls3Q5bBInj_FfNLrV7g...

See also:

https://millcomputing.com/docs/

Ivan Godard is a pretty good speaker, and his discussion of how the Mill CPU works is very insightful if you are at all interested in modern CPUs work.

I don't know that we'll ever see Mill CPUs in wide use (I've been focusing on RISC-V), but there are so many interesting ideas presented in this video series. Ideas that will leave you asking: "Why do we do things the way we do now?" over and over again. One of the most interesting ideas is how the Mill CPU architecture takes into account the 2D nature of silicon lithography.

Tim Roughgarden, Algorithmic game theory. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEGCF-WLh2RJBqmxvZ0_i...

The lectures are a perfect complement to his book "Twenty lectures on algorithmic game theory".

Ajahn Brahm's videos on the Buddhist Society of Western Australia (BSWA) Youtube channel. From what I remember of them (I watched them mostly around 2010 time frame): his talks aren't religious, rarely touch on spirituality, and are more very logically laid out conversations and anecdotes about being happier by embracing things like unconditional love and kindness. A few months of listening to his videos really made a massive difference in how I view the world, and a big difference in my own happiness because I am better at accepting people for all their flaws and difficulties and poor actions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jniaUr_7438 is the one I share most often - Dealing with difficult people

Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy by Brandon Sanderson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6HOdHEeosc

A series on the Peloponnesian War from the Great Courses. Heard but not seen. I had been listening to some series on Greek history that seemed to culminate with this "civil" war. There are fascinating lessons about how democracies can fail. The lecturer (Ken Harl) is amazing and gets excited to the point he's almost shouting (not in a bad way) by the end of lectures. Some highlights include the Athenian democracy voting itself out of existence, multiple betrayals, and a cameo from Socrates. I got a copy from my local library at the time ~ 2014. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/peloponnesian-war

Perry G Mehrling, Economics of Money and Banking. https://www.coursera.org/learn/money-banking

He helped me understand what money really is. He explains pretty complex things that most people have a hard time understanding, in a very simple way. I got the recommandation from another similar thread here on Hacker News.

+1 to this. I came across this course in a past thread in HN and worked my way through the lectures around end-2020. Took me 3 months but I really enjoyed this series.

MIT's Herbert Gross Calculus - done with a chalkboard and a camera. classic.

https://www.openculture.com/2011/01/vintage_mit_calculus_les...

I've found the supplementary notes and worked exercises (sometimes introducing material) are a key part.

Herb describes the textbook as the heart/building block of the course. Unfortunately, with the textbook out of print (4ed), and later editions being reorganized, the readings chapter/section don't match up, and don't seem to cover the same content (going by the exercises), It's hard to get full coverage.

Yet, the resources at MIT and Herb himself (commenting on the youtube channel), said that any calculus text will do. I'd just like to sure of not having any gaps (or, worse, misconceptions) - that's my purpose in revisiting calculus.

Dan Boneh's "Cryptography I". https://www.coursera.org/learn/crypto Was one of the best basic lecture I have seen on the crypto topic. I have enjoyed several lectures in my studies but some things I just understood after the good and interesting explanations in this course. Really amazing. Still waiting for the the Crypto 2 course.

If you understand german I recommend you math lessons by Christian Spannagel https://www.youtube.com/@pharithmetik. Makes some less interesting topics enjoyable.

I've been waiting for the Crypto 2 course for over ten years. He keeps scheduling it and then postponing it.

Yes seems that we will not see it in the near future... By fun I sometimes go through the project of the cs255 course: https://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/cs255/

Joseph Campbell, Transformations of Myth through Time. idky this[1] says there where 13 lectures. There are 14. Try tpb.

[1] https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/joseph-campbell/t...

I enjoyed Rick Roderick's series on philosophy. They start here:

http://rickroderick.org/100-guide-philosophy-and-human-value...

There are probably more thorough ones out there, but I found his added perspective helpful - he's constantly asking, is this useful today? Today is 30 years ago now, but still. :)

Before listening to the series, I thought I wasn't interested in Nietzsche, but afterwards it feels like he has a point that modern culture still hasn't addressed, au contraire. Especially if you look at the dropping birth rates.

MIT 9.13 The Human Brain, Spring 2019: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP60IKRN_pFpt...

Particularly about human vision and how visual information gets processed, priority and timing, etc. Some cool experiments (upside down face recognition).

On that topic, see also Medical Neuroscience by Leonard White - old but good

  https://online.duke.edu/course/medical-neuroscience/
  https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience

He does a good job explaining the crux of a much deeper science; his intent is mainly to provide background knowledge for aspiring doctors, but his own research is full-on neuroscience. It's a good example of topological sorting, building topics up from no-knowledge. And of course any knowledge of neuro-anatomy is humbling :)

Lawrence Cahoone’s Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLez3PPtnpncSKf4E-6NAE...

Very nicely explains different evolutions of philosophical thought that helps you appreciate human knowledge and the current cultural and philosophical status quo, because the course helps you find the common thread that runs through great thinker’s debates.

His course on the Modern Political Tradition has the same effect on political thought and its the evolution. Both are on Audible as well.

I liked listening to the Hardcore History podcast by Dan Carlin http://www.dancarlin.com

Not sure it counts as a lecture but damn that's a great podcast

I still occasionally think about the series on Rome, and also the Rise of the Khans series. (Also, apparently, it's pronounced Jenghis - who knew?!). The series on World War I is also phenomenally interesting and really paints the picture of just how brutal and senseless that war was. The section on Verdun is particularly harrowing.

Another one that I think everyone should hear is "Logical Insanity", where Dan talks through the civilian bombing campaigns of WWII. He makes a case that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fit into this wider pattern of bombings in a really interesting way - those two events obviously loom large in our thinking about history, but in the context of WWII they were almost... mundane. Just two more bombings of civilians in a war that was full of the same. (Dan makes the case in a much more fleshed out way, so please don't take my half-assed description as an indicator of the quality of the episode).

These have all fallen behind the paywall at this point but they are well worth the money and time.

Distributed Systems lecture series by Martin Kleppmann

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeKd45zvjcDFUEv_ohr_HdUFe...

Physics for future presidents by Richard Muller of UC belt Berkley.

I watched this after my Physics degree and took a bunch away from it. It's brilliant in the way it brought theory down to Earth.

I graduated with my CS degree back in 2016, but admittedly really disliked the curriculum at my university and have lacked some crucial knowledge.

One of the series I've picked at and skimmed at times for reference and relearning some concepts is MIT OpenCourseware's 6.006 (and other courses) taught primarily by Erik Demaine. He's much better than any instructor I had at San Jose state university and I've learned things better. Even when I watch his lectures and feel like I'm still missing some points, it's very easy to go back and review examples of his.

true brilliancy expressed in teaching and research BTW. Did he not coauthor quite a revolutionary proof recently? Cannot put my hand on it or remember what it was.

Paper [0], Quanta Article [1]

[0] - https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10774 [1] - https://www.quantamagazine.org/father-son-team-solves-geomet...

Not sure about best but MIT 9.13 The Human Brain, Spring 2019 by Nancy Kanwisher Congress to mind. It's a broad introduction to "core perceptual and cognitive abilities of the human mind and asks how they are implemented in the brain. Key themes include the representations, development, and degree of functional specificity of these components of mind and brain."

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP60IKRN_pFpt...

Bob Sapolsky's Stanford Biology lecture series is... amazing.

A rare combination of both extremely important and extremely interesting.

If you watch just 3 or 4 minutes, you'll struggle to stop watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA

Richard Hamming's Learning to Learn: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30

Lots of great answers here. Outside of the usual HN domain, I’ll add James Sheehan’s Stanford course on the history of the international system in the 20th Century:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-of-the-interna...

I come back to it over and over because it’s fractally interesting, from discussions of nation-state grand strategy to how FDR made strategic use of a martini.

Does Huberman lab podcast count? https://hubermanlab.com/

Leonard Bernstein, "The Unanswered Question"

https://leonardbernstein.com/about/educator/norton-lectures

Also, see his talks for young people:

https://leonardbernstein.com/lectures/television-scripts/you...

Timothy Snyder, Yale, The Making Of Modern Ukraine, for obvious reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...

IF you'd like to fall in love with history all over again, then Connections is your jam.

https://archive.org/details/ConnectionsByJamesBurke

I absolutely loved Bob Brier's "The History of Ancient Egypt". It really kindled a love of the subject ever since I saw the lectures. Audible is probably the best legal way to get access to them now, but here's an amazon link https://www.amazon.com/History-Ancient-Egypt-Bob-Brier/dp/15...

The Unanswered Question by Leonard Bernstein (very famous conductor) was super fun in my opinion.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKiz0UZowP2V0mwtNv1lc1_...

Marc Levoy's Lectures on Digital Photography:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7HrM-fk_Rc&list=PL7ddpXYvFX...

>This is one of 18 videos representing lectures on digital photography, from a version of my Stanford course CS 178 that was recorded at Google in Spring 2016.

The Theoretical Minimum, a physics course (multiple, actually) by Leonard Susskind @ Stanford.

https://theoreticalminimum.com/

Can vouch for the quantum mechanics one. Perfectly understandable while introducing heavy math machinery.

The great thing about Susskind's lectures is, imho, that he allows himself to get slightly confused by his own explanations, of course, to fully recapture himself and the audience a few moments later.

David MacKay’s “Information Theory, Pattern Recognition, and Neural Networks”

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruBu5BI5n4aFpG32iMbdWoRV...

I find it more approachable than the book, and taken as a whole I think he makes a compelling argument for a Bayesian world-view.

Many bests in this thread, but here’s a few nobody else has posted:

Stanford course on NLU was pretty good for basic overview https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ_Jrc_nRJY (2019, so a bit dated now.)

Was recently enjoying Paul Cantor on Shakespeare and politics: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCiopo73uhXPiA3yJV_rg72Q

Not a series per se but I always enjoy hearing John Mearsheimer present his ideas: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TsonzzAW3Mk

A nice debate with terry eagleton and roger scruton, who has many really excellent lectures on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qOdMBDOj4ec

There are many great suggestions---some that I might argue are better than what I have to add (Lewin, Sapolsky, Sedgewick, Boyd)---but I have some to add that I enjoyed because they were extremely well-taught:

* Donald Sadoway's Solid-State Chemistry lectures: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL36EC6A6180271B0F

* Anything by Patrick Winston, e.g. "AI": https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP63gFHB6xb-k...

* robert ghrist's calculus lectures, which were somehow clearer/more engaging than others I had found: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKc2XOQp0dMwj9zAXD5Ll...

I absolutely with anything by Patrick Winston! I put on his lectures whenever I need to feel inspired about my job. He's so engaging and has a great way of explaining things that leave students feeling motivated and curious. Additionally, his book "Make it Clear" has been a Godsend to my academic and my personal writing.

Sean Carroll's Biggest Ideas in the Universe series [0] is a pretty cool introduction to Physics, somewhere in between math-heavy university level lectures and popular science expositions without any math.

Someone already mentioned Ben Eater's Building an 8-bit computer. Nans2Tetris [1] is a similar course but completely in software, where you start from logic gates and end up with a fully functioning OS. Checkout the cool projects students built on top. [2]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrxfgDEc2NxZJcWcrxH3j...

[1] https://www.nand2tetris.org

[2] https://www.nand2tetris.org/copy-of-talks

Jim Kurose's video lecture series on "Computer Networking, A top down approach". It follows the format of the book (same name). The video lectures are on youtube[1] and can be accessed from his web page[2] as well

The professor does an excellent job at explaining every detail, and the lectures end up being even fun. I've enjoyed this a lot.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@JimKurose/videos [2] https://gaia.cs.umass.edu/kurose_ross/lectures.php

Lectures[0], after which you will read more than one book on category theory

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbgaMIhjbmEnaH_LTkxLI...

The Harvard Justice series (Michael Sandel) is one of the best ones I've seen. Very intriguing!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30C13C91CFFEFEA6

I'm currently hooked up the "Pharmakologie Athlet" [1]. It's a full fledged, german language university lecture on pharmacology by Prof. Dr. rer. nat Stefan Frank. During COVID times, he decided to put his complete curriculum on Youtube.

Althou I have no medical background, I somehow manage to keep the pace with all the old biochemistry knowledge I picked up in grammar school 25 years ago. But it's a tough ride :)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFLlboeliKwkpEUJQF45d3A

If only I knew German! I'm looking for good lectures to self-teach myself pharmacology.

Introduction to Reinforcement Learning with David Silver

https://www.deepmind.com/learning-resources/introduction-to-...

This classic 10 part course, taught by Reinforcement Learning (RL) pioneer David Silver, a popular resource for anyone wanting to understand the fundamentals of RL.

I've only watched about five of the videos on it, but Keenan Crane's intro to computer graphics series is pretty great (he's a CS professor at Carnegie Mellon):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9_jI1bdZmz2emSh0UQ5i...

He makes excellent use of visuals and well-crafted examples to get core concepts across without getting bogged down in details that aren't well-suited to a lecture format.

CS364A: Algorithmic Game Theory taught by Tim Roundgarden.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TM_QFmQU_VA

Probably McElreath's Statistical Rethinking, or Stanfords famous Neural Net course on youtube

Maya to Aztec: Ancient Mesoamerica Revealed Edwin Barnhart, Ph.D. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25406264-maya-to-aztec?f...

Most of us know very little about early American civilizations. Prof Barnhart's lecture series did wonders for expanding my knowledge.

How is it that no one has yet suggested Randy Pausch’s famous “Last Lecture”? (Carnegie Mellon University) It is not a series, but it’s the culmination of a life’s work by an incredible person lost too early.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

The last life lessons you wish to pass to your children...

Steve Brunton's youtube channel hasn't been mentioned yet, it's my favorite math lectures. Very approachable and the guy has perfected writing mirrored. No proofs though, rather he's giving a well explained overview.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm5mt-A4w61lknZ9lCsZtBw

More finance related:

1. Finance by Andrew Lo from MIT

2. Adaptive Markets by Andrew Lo from MIT

3. Valuation by Aswath Damodaran NYU

Prof. Leonard Susskind's Lectures on General Relativity - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRZgW1YjCKk&list=PL9YY-u_YWq.... Maybe out of many, this because of a nostalgic attachment of mine.

Exploring the Lord of the Rings by Corey Olsen

It is a very deep dive into the text of the book. A weekly episode that usually gets through less than a page of the book. It has recently passed Episode 250.

Episode so far are all on Youtube or downloadable as podcasts.

https://mythgard.org/lotro/exlotr/

I loved The Great Courses' Cosmology Course. But it is from 2008. Anybody got something newer/better on this topic? Or even a book?

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/cosmology-the-histor...

Clean Code series by Bob Martin (Uncle Bob) Changed the way I read/write code and my perspective about programming in general.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EmboKQH8lM&list=PLmmYSbUCWJ...

Ben Lambert Undergraduate Econometrics

https://www.youtube.com/@SpartacanUsuals/playlists

And Werner Krauth's

https://www.coursera.org/learn/statistical-mechanics

Robert Sopolsky's Behavioral Biology at Stanford

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D

Absolutely brilliant and engaging explanations of some difficult to understand topics. Especially lesson 22 on Emergence and Complexity has been an eye opener.

Introduction to Cryptography by Christof Paar: https://www.youtube.com/@introductiontocryptography4223. This is a great introductory cryptography course which is perfect to complement the great textbook from the same author.

Introduction to nuclear engineering and ionizing radiation (Michael Short): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP61FVzAxBP09...

A topic that's usually only discussed in an emotionally charged climate.

The Historical Jesus by Bart Ehrman, on Great Courses. Bart Ehrman has written a number of books on the historical Jesus, and the birth of Christianity, but I found the course to be better than the books.

You might not like it if you are a believer in Jesus, although Bart Ehrman tries not to challenge any belief. The flip side is that you might not like it if you are a non-believer, since he spends a certain amount of time trying to massage the message so that not to offend believers. Still, I think you'd enjoy the course more as a non-believer.

It's a history course. It shows how historians can extract valuable information given little (and often time contradictory, and sometimes forged) historical data. You can take these lessons then and try to apply them everywhere. It's going to change the way you perceive history.

Death With Shelly Kagan (Philosophy 176, Yale)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2J7wSuFRl8&list=PLEA18FAF1A...

I don't know why, I've listened it through more than once and enjoyed it a lot.

"Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy" by Alex Filippenko.

If you have any interest in astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics or just want to understand the world we live in in a greater context, then watch ist. It is worth your time, and blows every astronomy TV show out of the water.

Link to YT playlist:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLez3PPtnpncSF2QwpCB9C3FBF...

Stephen Ressler's lectures on technology, engineering and architecture in the ancient world:

https://stephenjressler.com/the-great-courses/

Very Spartan in presentation, yet very substantial.

Georgia Tech's CS6750 Human-Computer Interaction by Prof. Joyner

The lectures are free and the course can also be taken as part of OMSCS.

Fantastic course really. It teaches something new and the theory behind it all is really interesting.

Other top-rated OMSCS courses such as CS6200 GIOS are really good as well.

CS6200 is awesome (currently in it myself this term). The projects alone have been an excellent exercise, mainly because I come from a web development background. The papers we are reading are very interesting. Prof. Gavrilovska does a great job explaining concepts that I found confusing in my undergrad OS course.

Steven Pinker's PSY, Introduction to Psychological Science is very interesting and entertaining:

https://stevenpinker.com/psy-1-introduction-psychological-sc...

Thanks to bring this topic to the top. Now it's gold mine for me!

I loved the CS253 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1y1iaEtjSYiiSGVlL1cH... made by Feross Aboukhadijeh

Pema Chodron did a 4 lecture series on Buddhism. I found what I learned to be extremely beneficial in shaping my life and how I raise kids.

https://youtu.be/s5b8s09-msg

Introduction to Ancient Greek History with Donald Kagan

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL023BCE5134243987

Very engaging lecture. Some parts are surprisingly relevant to this day.

The Reith Lectures are a good yearly lecture series.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9

Also John McWhorter lectures are usually very interesting and fun to listen to.

Introduction to Mathematical Thinking by Keith Devlin

https://www.coursera.org/learn/mathematical-thinking?

This brought me what math is about:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBYhVcO4WgI - How to Start a Startup 2014 by YC & Stanford

Amazing set of speakers and pretty timeless advice for starting a startup

i always liked the "Great Ideas of Philosophy" series by Daniel Robinson, for the Teaching Company (now the Great Courses). it's available to purchase from the great courses website or from Wondrium's very good subscription lectures streaming service. Lecture sets from these two companies are generally of the highest standard.

If you would like to sample it before patronising either of those two businesses, it seems to have been uploaded on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNINJcoBa_A&list=PLOxODW9vlV...

Northrop Frye's "The Bible and English Literature" https://heritage.utoronto.ca/frye/full-lectures

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYQV14il9XALl_lTZbgbBdrFW...

Not a visual series (its a podcast), but still one of the best - Dan Carlin`s Blueprint To Armageddon (about WWI): https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blu...

engineerguy’s reproduction of Michael Faraday’s 1848 Chemical History of a Candle [0]:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0INsTTU1k2UCpOfRuMDR-wlv...

This was a set of lectures given by Faraday for the Royal Institution’s “Christmas lectures for young people”.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chemical_History_of_a_Cand...

The Royal Institution's channel has a bunch of good stuff on astrophysics, cosmology, physics, math and more:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheRoyalInstitution

If you want to learn how to develop for iOS, I think Stanford's CS193P is very well taught.

https://cs193p.sites.stanford.edu

cs106b : Programming Abstractions (C++) - Marty Stepp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIroM06V2MA&list=PL-h0BZdG_K... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua-31ucGAZ0&list=PLoCMsyE1cv...

Robert Sapolsky's Introduction to human behavior course at Stanford is on YouTube and fascinating. He's one of the best lecturers I've ever listened to

Frederick Schuller's Lectures on Geometrical Anatomy of Theoretical Physics, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPH7f_7ZlzxTi6kS4vCmv.... A meticulously organized series covering the math concepts needed to understand the ideas of modern physics. Not for the faint of heart, but well worth the effort.

NYU's lectures on Deep Learning by Yann LeCun and Alfredo Canziani is the single best freely available lecture on non-beginner Deep Learning. I highly recommend it [0].

[0]: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL80I41oVxglKcAHllsU0txr3O...

Yale open courses are pretty good: https://oyc.yale.edu/physics https://oyc.yale.edu/introduction-psychology/psyc-110

The intro-psych lectures are part of my morning walking routine.

One of the best for me was Marshall Kirk McKusick's "FreeBSD Kernel Internals: Data Structures and Algorithms "

The Feynman Auckland lectures on quantum electrodynamics.

https://youtu.be/LPDP_8X5Hug

Other people have linked some Feynman lectures, but they are only in written form. These ones you can actually watch (though u may need to blast the volume to max at times)

This isn't so much a lecture series but minute physics intro to special relativity [0] was super helpful for me being horrible with maths

[0]https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoaVOjvkzQtyjhV55wZcdicAz...

The mechanical universe is pretty good for learning physics. One day I'll actually watch all of it. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8_xPU5epJddRABXqJ5h5...

Understanding the Universe, an Introduction to Astronomy[0] -- a video lecture series by Alex Filippenko

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLez3PPtnpncSF2QwpCB9C...

I like MasterClass lectures, it is not free but it has good courses by famous people like Neil Gaiman, David Lynch, Hans Zimmer, and many others. https://www.masterclass.com/

Vera F. Birkenbihl – all her lectures!

(She also held lectures in the US in the 70s, but I couldn't find any recordings in English.)

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_F._Birkenbihl

I want to watch every single video here but I find it distressing that I don't have time and I am not smart enough. Perhaps if I give up Netflix and procrastinating on the internet I might be able to fit it in.

many great suggestions but i can't believe no one has mentioned the original SICP lectures yet :)! (and a thing i always enjoy in it is the transformation to the expressions of the students as more magic is revealed)

The Physics of Human and Superhuman Vision by Philip C Nelson:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL51EEEEE9904D4BE9

Exponential Growth Arithmetic, Population and Energy, Dr. Albert A. Bartlett[0]

[0] https://youtu.be/kZA9Hnp3aV4

Jordan Peterson’s personality and its transformations. A lecture he taught at the University of Toronto, highly recommended for a densely packed lectures on wisdom.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQBlN8DUor7SKWCw...

I would recommend Peter Norvig's "Design of Computer Programs" course in Udacity. Gave me an insight on elegant thinking and programming with python.

dan friedman and will byrd about a relational lisp eval in minikanren

bidirectional programming is something I like a lot, never thought an evaluator could be encoded like that

Physics with Professer Matt Anderson

https://youtube.com/@yoprofmatt

Clean Code (Uncle Bob) Robert martin

He is mostly hysterical in his most avatars. But comes back to centre

Harvard CS50.

Related: CS50 Game Development.

Not hugely insightful or something, but if anyone wants to get into game dev, it’s a great start.

Through this course I can into contact with Lua & LÖVE and still enjoy both a lot (only in hobby projects).

Applied Perception (visualization) at coursera of University of New York.

SICP by far

Jerry Cain's Programming Paradigms CS107 (Stanford University)

I am not a big fan of his work anymore but the original Personality Lectures (2017) of Jordan Peterson are really great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYYJlNbV1OM&t=1s

Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition.

Philosophy of Science by Jeffrey Kasser

Jordon b Peterson's Maps of Meaning. Gave me a new toolkit to perceive the world around me.

Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBazR59SZXk&list=PL0A7FFF28B... Made The Capital came alive for my and much more relevant to the world around me.

Literally anything where someone points a camera at Noam Chomski and a question is asked.

Maps of meaning

I'm a bit disappointed as I didn't see some of my favorites here :D One of them has already been mentioned, but I'll add it anyway.

- Harvard Stat 110: awesome and somewhat challenging lecture series on probability. It goes into all the probability basics, but also goes into problem solving skill very often, so the problem sets tended to be hard as I recall it. But the nice thing is that a lot of it you can find the solutions which are very well written -- and for the exams as well. Also, the lecturer Joe Blitzstein won best professor at Harvard if I'm not mistaken. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2SOU6wwxB0uwwH80KTQ6...

- Statistical Rethinking by Richard Malkreath: man this one will make you relearn statistics. And with a heavy bayesian flavor, which if you hadn't had the chance to learn, will bend your mind as well. You will learn to build models that can describe a lot of situations in the real world, and estimate the parameters from data. Cool stuff if you ask me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYUykHScxj8&list=PLDcUM9US4X...

- Frank Harrel's Bioistatistics for biomedical reasearch: Frank Harrel is the go to guy to understand how to use data in clinical trials and diagnostics research. His book Regression Modeling strategies is a gem that every data scientist should read. This lecture series is aimed at biomedical researches, ie. people without a strong background in theoretical statistics. In the lectures he talks about the best practices and pitfalls you'll come accross when doing and reading research, and also explain some R code to do a better job. Harrel also wrote some very important R packages i.e. Hmisc and rms. https://www.youtube.com/@bbrcourse6203/videos

- calling bullshit in the era of big data: this is a last year course so it is very laid back in the discussions. I didn't go through the whole thing. But what I watched I remember it was really nice and thought provoking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2OtU5vlR0k&list=PLPnZfvKID1...

- statistical learning by Hastie and Tibshirani: these are the guys that wrote the two main books on statistical learning. If one wants to get into DS, this is the place to start. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvySJGj-88U&list=PLoROMvodv4...

- Discrete Differential Geometry by Keenan Crane: ok, I didn't see the whole thing, because it was above my understanding. But the graphics and images are so eye catching I almost wanted to just sit there watching. I'm pretty sure this and his computer graphics lectures are aso engaging as hell and hidden gems of the internet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mas-PUA3OvA&list=PL9_jI1bdZm...

Any lecture series by Jordan Peterson

Acland’s Anatomy. It was filmed in reverse of what is shown, for obvious reasons.

I enjoyed Yuval Harari's course A Brief History of Humankind when it was available on Coursera (it can still be found on youtube, although at low video quality — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGhTQ4iruLc&list=PLE-kxvSEhk...). This was before Harari released his book, Sapiens, largely based on this course; and before he started fantasizing about the future.

Harari gets a lot of flack (I guess having wildly popular books and fame does that), but I found both Sapiens and Homo Deus entertaining.

And, yes, I've read some of the criticisms of his work. They seem to take issue with the tiniest claims, even go so far as labeling his work as "dangerous"[0]. "Harari’s motives remain mysterious". It's hilarious.

[0] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/the-dangerous-populis...

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