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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.
- 17 HN recommenders 16 months 2020–2025HN treats it as the canonical, near-universally recommended lecture on giving talks and presentations.
- 15 HN recommenders 15 months 2012–2026One of the most consistently recommended lecture series on HN, praised as fascinating, funny and eye-opening about human behavior across many scales.
- 15 HN recommenders 14 months 2019–2026U UChicago Social Sciences · lectureHN users repeatedly say it changed how they think about writing, calling it a masterclass useful far beyond academia.
- 16 HN recommenders 13 months 2017–2023M MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center · lectureRecommended again and again as the best accessible overview of fusion physics, useful for judging fusion announcements and understanding why high-temperature superconducting magnets matter.
- 14 HN recommenders 12 months 2009–2026HN returns to it repeatedly as the best single introduction to understanding clinical depression.
- 11 HN recommenders 12 months 2013–2025One 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.
- 11 HN recommenders 12 months 2011–2020It is HN's default recommendation for learning linear algebra, praised for Strang's teaching and for building real understanding useful in machine learning.
- 12 HN recommenders 12 months 2008–2023C Carnegie Mellon University · lecturePerennially recommended as an inspirational talk for people facing setbacks or choosing a direction, and a source of oft-quoted lines like the brick wall.
- 10 HN recommenders 10 months 2019–2026HN people recommend the SICP lectures as a deeper, livelier route into the book and a formative course even for seasoned programmers.
- 11 HN recommenders 9 months 2012–2024Seen as a classic and often the moment programming 'clicks'; commenters praise Abelson's opening that computer science is not about computers.
- 13 HN recommenders 10 months 2010–2025W wonderingmind42 · lectureA perennial HN recommendation for building intuition about exponential growth, cited whenever endless growth, energy or population come up.
- 11 HN recommenders 11 months 2008–2020Recommended as the rigorous, math-heavy original course, deeper than the Coursera version, for learning machine learning.
- 9 HN recommenders 9 months 2009–2023U UMBCtube · lectureRepeatedly recommended in education threads as the definitive talk on why lectures fail and what works better.
- 10 HN recommenders 10 months 2008–2022HN cites it often in debates on inequality, cost disease and stagnant middle-class income, praising its data-driven approach.
- 9 HN recommenders 9 months 2017–2026G Google DeepMind · courseFrequently recommended as an excellent, clear introductory RL course from the lead of AlphaGo, pairing well with Sutton and Barto.
- 9 HN recommenders 8 months 2020–2023M Missing Semester · lectureHN frequently calls it the best single video on git because it teaches the underlying data structures.
- 9 HN recommenders 8 months 2017–2024HN commenters repeatedly recommend Barkley's lectures as the best introduction to understanding ADHD.
- 11 HN recommenders 9 months 2016–2026B Bartosz Milewski · lectureHN commenters repeatedly name it as the friendliest entry point to category theory for working programmers.
- 7 HN recommenders 8 months 2012–2025HN regulars treat it as an essential, fun Hofstadter talk for any discussion of concepts, analogy and metaphor.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2017–2022Several HN commenters credit the lecture series with helping them through depression or personal collapse and recommend it as long-form learning.
- 8 HN recommenders 7 months 2013–2026Frequently 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.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2013–2022HN people recommend it as a masterclass in explaining physics clearly without condescension, accessible without formal training.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2020–2023C CMU Database Group · lectureFrequently recommended as the best free university course on database internals, praised for depth and Pavlo's presentation.
- 6 HN recommenders 7 months 2019–2022J John Vervaeke’s Lectern · lectureHN recommends the series as a thorough, non-dogmatic look at meaning, spirituality and escaping nihilism.
- 10 HN recommenders 6 months 2020–2023Y Yale University · lectureDuring the 2022 Ukraine war threads, HN commenters recommended it as a non-Western perspective on Russia-West relations and Putin's motives.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2019–2024E Eva CollinsAlonso · lectureFrequently recommended as a delightful, influential way to think about story structure.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2013–2024D Diego Ongaro · lectureRecommended as a clear, lucid way to learn Paxos and Multi-Paxos, ideally alongside the companion Raft video.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2016–2021S Science Communication Lab · lectureRecommended as a clear, authoritative lecture series on plausible origin-of-life theories.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2020–2025C Central Washington University · lectureHN 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 Invasion6 HN recommenders 5 months 2022–2025Y YaleCourses · lectureStrongly recommended as an accessible, well-taught history of Ukraine and a counter to propaganda narratives.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2014–2024I Insights into Mathematics · courseRecommended as an easy-to-follow math history course that gives perspective on the subject.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2019–2023Recommended as a sober, physics-based account of how energy underlies the economy.
- 4 HN recommenders 6 months 2019–2026C CIRMMT · lectureHN recommends it as a crash course on audio reproduction science, especially the finding that listeners reliably prefer more accurate speakers in blind tests.
- 1 HN recommenders 5 months 2017–2023HN 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.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2021–2025M Martin Kleppmann · lectureHN regularly recommends the series as a free, accessible, theory-oriented course on distributed computing that complements his book Designing Data-Intensive Applications.
- 5 HN recommenders 6 months 2020–2025M MIT 6.824: Distributed Systems · lectureRecommended as the standard free course for learning distributed systems from real papers.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2016–2023C caltech · courseRecommended repeatedly in 'where do I start with ML' threads as a clear, math-aware introduction.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2009–2021C Carnegie Mellon University · lectureHN commenters recommend it as a practical, memorable guide to prioritization, and some rewatch it every year.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2017–2025M Michel van Biezen · courseHN repeatedly recommends this series as a clear, step-by-step way to really understand Kalman filtering.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2020–2023S Steve Brunton · lectureHN recommends the series as an approachable but rigorous way to learn control theory, with good production quality.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2016–2022F Fermilab · lectureHN recommends it as the clearest long-form explanation of the everything-is-fields view for non-physicists.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2019–2021H Hiroob · lectureTreated as the classic lecture on why people misjudge exponential growth, and pulled out in threads on compound growth, epidemics, crypto and resource limits.
- 7 HN recommenders 4 months 2023–2026S Sebastien Bubeck · lectureHN recommends it as a thought-provoking talk from a researcher with early GPT-4 access, especially for the unicorn degrading under safety tuning.
- 4 HN recommenders 5 months 2018–2023C cagin · lectureHN recommends it for a deep theory of why music sounds the way it does.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2022–2025M Michael Sugrue · lectureHN recommends it as a classic, clear introduction to Aurelius, with some saying it helped through hard times.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2017–2025HN recommends Herb Gross as an unusually clear teacher whose explanations make calculus click for people who struggled elsewhere.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2020–2026Repeatedly recommended in best-talks threads as a fun, mind-blowing demonstration of unexpected computation.
- 3 HN recommenders 4 months 2020–2024H Hamming on Hamming: Learning to Learn · lectureHN people recommend it as the capstone of Hamming's course and as career advice about working on important problems.
- 5 HN recommenders 4 months 2018–2024H HarveyMuddCollegeEDU · lectureHN people recommend Su's lectures for building real analysis intuition, citing his phenomenal teaching style.
- 5 HN recommenders 5 months 2019–2026M Marc Levoy · lectureHN recommends it as a free, serious introduction to digital and computational photography from a professor who helped build the early Pixel cameras.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2018–2024B Belfer Center · lectureHN recommends it as an entertaining, clear explanation of nuclear weapons basics from a policy expert.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2016–2020HN 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.
- 5 HN recommenders 4 months 2020–2023Recommended as a free, first-principles finance course for software engineers wanting to learn business and finance.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2025D Diego Ongaro · lectureHN commenters recommend it as a clearer introduction to Raft than the paper and as part of a well-designed understandability study.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2015–2023S Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics · lectureCommenters recommend it as a clear, characteristically engaging Susskind lecture for people trying to grasp the entanglement and gravity connection.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2014–2024Y YC Root Access · lectureHN commenters recommend the series as timeless startup advice from strong speakers, and cite specific points from Altman and Moskovitz.
- 9 HN recommenders 4 months 2022–2025T The University of Chicago · lectureDuring 2022 HN threads, commenters shared it as the realist counter-perspective to understand the Russian position, though others dispute his record.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2022U UNC Learning Center · lectureHN recommends it as a rigorous clinical look at ADHD, including the view that it has no benefits and that external prompts help.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2016–2021Recommended as a clear introduction to dynamic programming from a well-regarded instructor.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2011–2024Commenters rate the whole playlist as high-quality, clear teaching that builds foundations from memory and machine instructions up to different paradigms.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2016–2021Recommended in game-theory and cooperation threads, with the whole lecture series endorsed.
- 4 HN recommenders 3 months 2018–2024HN founders recommend it as a must-watch on recognizing real product-market fit and avoiding solutions in search of problems.
- 3 HN recommenders 4 months 2009–2014HN 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.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2018–2024HN 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.
- 4 HN recommenders 4 months 2010–2012HN commenters recommend it as a simple, direct entry point for beginners who want to learn computer science, not just programming.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2020–2021Y YaleCourses · courseHN recommends the lecture series as a foundational, wide-ranging grounding in modern global politics.
- 2 HN recommenders 3 months 2018–2024S Siebel School of Computing and Data Science · lectureCited in many threads about academic incentives, paper counts and why academia struggles to produce working software.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2015–2017HN recommends it as an approachable, numbers-driven overview of what renewable energy would take.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2020–2026S Stanford Iranian Studies Program · lectureHN recommends Sapolsky as an exceptional storyteller and points to this lecture on the biology of human behavior and violence.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2018Recommended on Ask HN threads as a high-quality free probability course for relearning math or building an ML foundation.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2018S Stanford University School of Engineering · lectureRecommended as one of the best free courses for learning modern deep learning for NLP.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2015–2024HN recommends it, and the whole course, for understanding the brain and language acquisition.
- 2 HN recommenders 3 months 2020–2022HN recommends it as the best talk on concatenative languages and their mathematical properties.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2021HN recommends the series as an entertaining, serious route into physics for self-learners comfortable with basic math.
- 4 HN recommenders 3 months 2016–2021G Gabriel Robins · lectureHN commenters recommend it as an emotionally powerful life-advice talk and revisit it as a reminder of mortality.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2019–2023Recommended as part of a long lecture series on psychology, complementing biology lectures, and named when HN asks for the best lecture series.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2024M MLSS Iceland 2014 · lectureHN people return to it as a clear primer on MCMC and HMC and on why high dimensions behave counterintuitively.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2011–2018HN recommends it as a fast, accessible way to start learning Python.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2022–2024Recommended as the source for counterintuitive high-dimensional geometry and described as an eye opener.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2020I Introduction to Cryptography by Christof Paar · lectureRecommended as a moderately formal, clear introduction to finite fields, useful beyond AES.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2018–2022HN recommends it as a clear, high-quality introduction to succinct data structures from a leading authority.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2016–2024S Science Communication Lab · lectureHN commenters point to it to show how strange and mechanical cellular machinery is, and to explain how kinesin walks along microtubules.
- 4 HN recommenders 3 months 2021–2025HN recommends Sipser's free lectures as the companion to the standard theory of computation textbook and a path to understanding how computers fundamentally work.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2018–2024J Jakob Foerster · lectureRecommended as an enjoyable, clear introduction to information theory that pairs well with MacKay's free textbook.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2021–2025Recommended as the detailed technical account of exactly what happened at Chernobyl.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2018HN users recommend it as a good discrete math course for programmers, praising Leighton's relatable stories that motivate new concepts.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2023P Pascal Poupart · lectureHN recommends it to newcomers as a clear explanation of attention, including the query/key/value intuition.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2021Recommended as a companion to reading the dense book.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2021–2022Recommended as a fascinating insider account of how the F-22's software makes it easier to fly than a Cessna.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2014–2017Recommended as a more approachable introduction to category theory than the more formal lecture series people often start with.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2025HN recommends Susskind as a very good explainer who uses real math at an accessible level, and links this lecture series for self-learners.
- 3 HN recommenders 2 months 2016–2024K kip399 · lectureHN repeatedly quotes its thesis that humanity's greatest shortcoming is failing to understand the exponential function.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2016–2019T Thriving In Science · lectureHN uses it as the expert primer on burnout that dispels common misconceptions.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2022–2025U UCLA · lectureHN 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.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2022–2023HN considers the course one of the best hands-on ways into deep learning, praising the code-first teaching style.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2017–2025Recommended as a solid introduction to personality and IQ research, and cited as the source for factor-analysis claims about personality and intelligence.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2023–2026J Jeffrey Kaplan · lectureHN recommends it as the best short exposition of Singer's argument for a duty to give.
- 3 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2023Pointed to during self-driving news threads as an insider view of Waymo's progress, deep learning's role and its limits.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2011–2022HN recommends Boyd's lectures as a fantastic, often funny follow-up to linear algebra and as a step in machine learning study paths.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2024C caltech · courseHN 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.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.