Home / Topics / Ideas, Learning & Language
University lectures & courses: videos Hacker News recommends
Full university lectures and course series: MIT OpenCourseWare, Stanford, Harvard lectures, introductory course lecture 1, lecture series across subjects, professor lectures. Below: every video in this topic that at least three HN users linked with real commentary, in at least three different months (108 lectures, 14 courses, 5 talks), best-scored first, with the comments on each video page.
- HN treats it as the canonical, near-universally recommended lecture on giving talks and presentations.
- One of the most consistently recommended lecture series on HN, praised as fascinating, funny and eye-opening about human behavior across many scales.
- UChicago Social Sciences lecture recommended in 14 different months by 15 HN users, 2019–2026HN users repeatedly say it changed how they think about writing, calling it a masterclass useful far beyond academia.
- MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center lecture recommended in 13 different months by 16 HN users, 2017–2023Recommended again and again as the best accessible overview of fusion physics, useful for judging fusion announcements and understanding why high-temperature superconducting magnets matter.
- HN returns to it repeatedly as the best single introduction to understanding clinical depression.
- One of the most frequently recommended online lecture series on HN, praised for giving people vocabulary to examine ethical positions and for Sandel's skilled teaching.
- It is HN's default recommendation for learning linear algebra, praised for Strang's teaching and for building real understanding useful in machine learning.
- Carnegie Mellon University lecture recommended in 12 different months by 12 HN users, 2008–2023Perennially recommended as an inspirational talk for people facing setbacks or choosing a direction, and a source of oft-quoted lines like the brick wall.
- HN people recommend the SICP lectures as a deeper, livelier route into the book and a formative course even for seasoned programmers.
- Seen as a classic and often the moment programming 'clicks'; commenters praise Abelson's opening that computer science is not about computers.
- wonderingmind42 lecture recommended in 10 different months by 13 HN users, 2010–2025A perennial HN recommendation for building intuition about exponential growth, cited whenever endless growth, energy or population come up.
- Recommended as the rigorous, math-heavy original course, deeper than the Coursera version, for learning machine learning.
- UMBCtube lecture recommended in 9 different months by 9 HN users, 2009–2023Repeatedly recommended in education threads as the definitive talk on why lectures fail and what works better.
- University of California Television (UCTV) lecture recommended in 10 different months by 10 HN users, 2008–2022HN cites it often in debates on inequality, cost disease and stagnant middle-class income, praising its data-driven approach.
- Google DeepMind course recommended in 9 different months by 9 HN users, 2017–2026Frequently recommended as an excellent, clear introductory RL course from the lead of AlphaGo, pairing well with Sutton and Barto.
- Missing Semester lecture recommended in 8 different months by 9 HN users, 2020–2023HN frequently calls it the best single video on git because it teaches the underlying data structures.
- HN commenters repeatedly recommend Barkley's lectures as the best introduction to understanding ADHD.
- Bartosz Milewski lecture recommended in 9 different months by 11 HN users, 2016–2026HN commenters repeatedly name it as the friendliest entry point to category theory for working programmers.
- HN regulars treat it as an essential, fun Hofstadter talk for any discussion of concepts, analogy and metaphor.
- Several HN commenters credit the lecture series with helping them through depression or personal collapse and recommend it as long-form learning.
- Frequently recommended as the clearest plain-language explanation of what a computer fundamentally is, with at least one commenter saying it changed how they think about programming.
- HN people recommend it as a masterclass in explaining physics clearly without condescension, accessible without formal training.
- CMU Database Group lecture recommended in 6 different months by 6 HN users, 2020–2023Frequently recommended as the best free university course on database internals, praised for depth and Pavlo's presentation.
- John Vervaeke’s Lectern lecture recommended in 7 different months by 6 HN users, 2019–2022HN recommends the series as a thorough, non-dogmatic look at meaning, spirituality and escaping nihilism.
- Yale University lecture recommended in 6 different months by 10 HN users, 2020–2023During the 2022 Ukraine war threads, HN commenters recommended it as a non-Western perspective on Russia-West relations and Putin's motives.
- Eva CollinsAlonso lecture recommended in 6 different months by 6 HN users, 2019–2024Frequently recommended as a delightful, influential way to think about story structure.
- Diego Ongaro lecture recommended in 6 different months by 6 HN users, 2013–2024Recommended as a clear, lucid way to learn Paxos and Multi-Paxos, ideally alongside the companion Raft video.
- Science Communication Lab lecture recommended in 6 different months by 6 HN users, 2016–2021Recommended as a clear, authoritative lecture series on plausible origin-of-life theories.
- Central Washington University lecture recommended in 5 different months by 5 HN users, 2020–2025HN commenters offer it as a dry but fascinating, hype-free introduction to Cascadia earthquake risk and the evidence for past events.
- Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine. Class 1: Ukrainian Questions Posed by Russian InvasionYaleCourses lecture recommended in 5 different months by 6 HN users, 2022–2025Strongly recommended as an accessible, well-taught history of Ukraine and a counter to propaganda narratives.
- Insights into Mathematics course recommended in 6 different months by 6 HN users, 2014–2024Recommended as an easy-to-follow math history course that gives perspective on the subject.
- Recommended as a sober, physics-based account of how energy underlies the economy.
- CIRMMT lecture recommended in 6 different months by 4 HN users, 2019–2026HN recommends it as a crash course on audio reproduction science, especially the finding that listeners reliably prefer more accurate speakers in blind tests.
- HN fans love it for Knuth's humor and for how he makes open math problems feel approachable, and it is often cited for details like dancing links and counting rectangle subdivisions.
- Martin Kleppmann lecture recommended in 5 different months by 5 HN users, 2021–2025HN regularly recommends the series as a free, accessible, theory-oriented course on distributed computing that complements his book Designing Data-Intensive Applications.
- MIT 6.824: Distributed Systems lecture recommended in 6 different months by 5 HN users, 2020–2025Recommended as the standard free course for learning distributed systems from real papers.
- caltech course recommended in 5 different months by 5 HN users, 2016–2023Recommended repeatedly in 'where do I start with ML' threads as a clear, math-aware introduction.
- Carnegie Mellon University lecture recommended in 5 different months by 4 HN users, 2009–2021HN commenters recommend it as a practical, memorable guide to prioritization, and some rewatch it every year.
- Michel van Biezen course recommended in 5 different months by 5 HN users, 2017–2025HN repeatedly recommends this series as a clear, step-by-step way to really understand Kalman filtering.
- Steve Brunton lecture recommended in 4 different months by 4 HN users, 2020–2023HN recommends the series as an approachable but rigorous way to learn control theory, with good production quality.
- Fermilab lecture recommended in 5 different months by 5 HN users, 2016–2022HN recommends it as the clearest long-form explanation of the everything-is-fields view for non-physicists.
- Hiroob lecture recommended in 5 different months by 5 HN users, 2019–2021Treated as the classic lecture on why people misjudge exponential growth, and pulled out in threads on compound growth, epidemics, crypto and resource limits.
- Sebastien Bubeck lecture recommended in 4 different months by 7 HN users, 2023–2026HN recommends it as a thought-provoking talk from a researcher with early GPT-4 access, especially for the unicorn degrading under safety tuning.
- cagin lecture recommended in 5 different months by 4 HN users, 2018–2023HN recommends it for a deep theory of why music sounds the way it does.
- Michael Sugrue lecture recommended in 4 different months by 4 HN users, 2022–2025HN recommends it as a classic, clear introduction to Aurelius, with some saying it helped through hard times.
- HN recommends Herb Gross as an unusually clear teacher whose explanations make calculus click for people who struggled elsewhere.
- Repeatedly recommended in best-talks threads as a fun, mind-blowing demonstration of unexpected computation.
- Hamming on Hamming: Learning to Learn lecture recommended in 4 different months by 3 HN users, 2020–2024HN people recommend it as the capstone of Hamming's course and as career advice about working on important problems.
- HarveyMuddCollegeEDU lecture recommended in 4 different months by 5 HN users, 2018–2024HN people recommend Su's lectures for building real analysis intuition, citing his phenomenal teaching style.
- Marc Levoy lecture recommended in 5 different months by 5 HN users, 2019–2026HN recommends it as a free, serious introduction to digital and computational photography from a professor who helped build the early Pixel cameras.
- Belfer Center lecture recommended in 4 different months by 4 HN users, 2018–2024HN recommends it as an entertaining, clear explanation of nuclear weapons basics from a policy expert.
- HN regularly recommends Hamming's lecture series as a fascinating, wisdom-rich course on how to approach hard technical problems and a career, often preferred to the book.
- Recommended as a free, first-principles finance course for software engineers wanting to learn business and finance.
- Diego Ongaro lecture recommended in 4 different months by 4 HN users, 2013–2025HN commenters recommend it as a clearer introduction to Raft than the paper and as part of a well-designed understandability study.
- Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics lecture recommended in 4 different months by 4 HN users, 2015–2023Commenters recommend it as a clear, characteristically engaging Susskind lecture for people trying to grasp the entanglement and gravity connection.
- YC Root Access lecture recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2014–2024HN commenters recommend the series as timeless startup advice from strong speakers, and cite specific points from Altman and Moskovitz.
- The University of Chicago lecture recommended in 4 different months by 9 HN users, 2022–2025During 2022 HN threads, commenters shared it as the realist counter-perspective to understand the Russian position, though others dispute his record.
- UNC Learning Center lecture recommended in 4 different months by 4 HN users, 2013–2022HN recommends it as a rigorous clinical look at ADHD, including the view that it has no benefits and that external prompts help.
- Recommended as a clear introduction to dynamic programming from a well-regarded instructor.
- Commenters rate the whole playlist as high-quality, clear teaching that builds foundations from memory and machine instructions up to different paradigms.
- Recommended in game-theory and cooperation threads, with the whole lecture series endorsed.
- HN founders recommend it as a must-watch on recognizing real product-market fit and avoiding solutions in search of problems.
- HN commenters recommend it as a way to understand what the VPRI group considers core, such as supporting any syntax on one JIT compiler and removing boundaries between application and interpreter.
- HN fans say it offers value even to atheists by interpreting Bible stories as psychological and evolutionary archetypes, and some credit it with helping them through depression.
- HN commenters recommend it as a simple, direct entry point for beginners who want to learn computer science, not just programming.
- YaleCourses course recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2020–2021HN recommends the lecture series as a foundational, wide-ranging grounding in modern global politics.
- Siebel School of Computing and Data Science lecture recommended in 3 different months by 2 HN users, 2018–2024Cited in many threads about academic incentives, paper counts and why academia struggles to produce working software.
- HN recommends it as an approachable, numbers-driven overview of what renewable energy would take.
- Stanford Iranian Studies Program lecture recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2020–2026HN recommends Sapolsky as an exceptional storyteller and points to this lecture on the biology of human behavior and violence.
- Recommended on Ask HN threads as a high-quality free probability course for relearning math or building an ML foundation.
- Stanford University School of Engineering lecture recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2017–2018Recommended as one of the best free courses for learning modern deep learning for NLP.
- HN recommends it, and the whole course, for understanding the brain and language acquisition.
- HN recommends it as the best talk on concatenative languages and their mathematical properties.
- HN recommends the series as an entertaining, serious route into physics for self-learners comfortable with basic math.
- Gabriel Robins lecture recommended in 3 different months by 4 HN users, 2016–2021HN commenters recommend it as an emotionally powerful life-advice talk and revisit it as a reminder of mortality.
- Recommended as part of a long lecture series on psychology, complementing biology lectures, and named when HN asks for the best lecture series.
- MLSS Iceland 2014 lecture recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2017–2024HN people return to it as a clear primer on MCMC and HMC and on why high dimensions behave counterintuitively.
- HN recommends it as a fast, accessible way to start learning Python.
- Recommended as the source for counterintuitive high-dimensional geometry and described as an eye opener.
- Introduction to Cryptography by Christof Paar lecture recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2017–2020Recommended as a moderately formal, clear introduction to finite fields, useful beyond AES.
- HN recommends it as a clear, high-quality introduction to succinct data structures from a leading authority.
- Science Communication Lab lecture recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2016–2024HN commenters point to it to show how strange and mechanical cellular machinery is, and to explain how kinesin walks along microtubules.
- HN recommends Sipser's free lectures as the companion to the standard theory of computation textbook and a path to understanding how computers fundamentally work.
- Jakob Foerster lecture recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2018–2024Recommended as an enjoyable, clear introduction to information theory that pairs well with MacKay's free textbook.
- Recommended as the detailed technical account of exactly what happened at Chernobyl.
- HN users recommend it as a good discrete math course for programmers, praising Leighton's relatable stories that motivate new concepts.
- Pascal Poupart lecture recommended in 3 different months by 3 HN users, 2023HN recommends it to newcomers as a clear explanation of attention, including the query/key/value intuition.
- Recommended as a companion to reading the dense book.
- Recommended as a fascinating insider account of how the F-22's software makes it easier to fly than a Cessna.
- Recommended as a more approachable introduction to category theory than the more formal lecture series people often start with.
- HN recommends Susskind as a very good explainer who uses real math at an accessible level, and links this lecture series for self-learners.
- kip399 lecture recommended in 2 different months by 3 HN users, 2016–2024HN repeatedly quotes its thesis that humanity's greatest shortcoming is failing to understand the exponential function.
- Thriving In Science lecture recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2016–2019HN uses it as the expert primer on burnout that dispels common misconceptions.
- UCLA lecture recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2022–2025HN recommends it as an accessible and elegant tour of how indirect reasoning builds up cosmic measurements, with one commenter calling it their favorite Tao work.
- HN considers the course one of the best hands-on ways into deep learning, praising the code-first teaching style.
- Recommended as a solid introduction to personality and IQ research, and cited as the source for factor-analysis claims about personality and intelligence.
- Jeffrey Kaplan lecture recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2023–2026HN recommends it as the best short exposition of Singer's argument for a duty to give.
- Pointed to during self-driving news threads as an insider view of Waymo's progress, deep learning's role and its limits.
- HN recommends Boyd's lectures as a fantastic, often funny follow-up to linear algebra and as a step in machine learning study paths.
- caltech course recommended in 2 different months by 2 HN users, 2018–2024HN rates the series as one of the best physics lecture courses on YouTube, with an engaging format and historical context.
Showing the 100 best-scored of 127. Use search to find the rest.
Questions
What is the most recommended university lectures & courses video on Hacker News?
How to Speak by MIT OpenCourseWare: HN treats it as the canonical, near-universally recommended lecture on giving talks and presentations.
How is this university lectures & courses list ranked?
By HackerTube's score: the number of distinct months in which an HN comment recommended the video, plus half a point for every month with a strong recommendation. One viral thread counts less than steady recommendations over years.
Where do the videos come from?
From every Hacker News comment between 2007 and 2026 that linked a YouTube video, labeled by an AI model as a recommendation, a citation, a joke or a criticism. The list is published by HackerTube under ODC-By 1.0; this edition adds indexable pages and the comment context.