introduction

Christof Paar's university lecture introducing Galois fields and finite-field arithmetic as used in AES. It covers the mathematics behind the AES S-box.

The first lecture of MIT's 6.001 (SICP) with Abelson and Sussman, giving an overview of the course and an introduction to Lisp. It argues that computer science is about managing complexity and abstraction, not computers.

The first lecture of Andy Pavlo's CMU 15-445 Intro to Database Systems (Fall 2019), covering course introduction and the relational model.

The first lecture of David MacKay's Cambridge course on information theory, pattern recognition and neural networks. It introduces the core ideas of his book Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms.

The opening lecture of MIT's Blockchain and Money course taught by Gary Gensler, covering the course plan, the history of failed digital currencies, cryptography and what a blockchain is.

The opening lecture of Robert Sapolsky's Stanford course on Human Behavioral Biology, explaining the course premise and how to avoid categorical thinking. It starts a roughly 25-lecture series on how biology, genes, hormones and environment shape behavior.

The first episode of John Vervaeke's lecture series on the modern meaning crisis, tracing its history through philosophy, cognitive science, religion and psychology. It introduces the series and its themes.

Sean Carroll introduces his video series on the biggest ideas in physics, such as symmetry, space and matter, as informal discussions with follow-up Q&A videos. This is the short opening video of the series.

The opening lecture of MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems (Spring 2020), introducing the course and core challenges of distributed systems. It begins a playlist that goes on to cover Raft and other consensus papers in Go.

The first lecture in Martin Kleppmann's 8-lecture distributed systems series from the University of Cambridge undergraduate course. It introduces the subject, and accompanying lecture notes are available.

Bill Hammack of engineerguy introduces his series on Michael Faraday's lectures on The Chemical History of a Candle. He describes the free companion book and the commentary and caption features that help modern viewers.

Jordan Peterson's first lecture in his Biblical Series examines the idea of God as sovereignty and power abstracted from any individual ruler, and as the pattern inherent in human dominance hierarchies.

The opening lecture of Jordan Peterson's 2017 University of Toronto personality course. He defines personality from historical, constructivist, psychoanalytic, behavioral and neuropsychological angles.

The first lecture of Michael Sipser's MIT 18.404J Theory of Computation course, covering course mechanics, finite automata, regular languages and regular expressions. It proves closure of regular languages under union and begins concatenation.

The first lecture of Stanford's CS231n course on convolutional neural networks for visual recognition. It surveys the history and key challenges of computer vision, from the Cambrian explosion and Hubel and Wiesel to ImageNet.

A Bell Labs film in which Dr. J.N. Shive uses a mechanical wave machine to demonstrate reflection, standing waves, resonance and impedance matching. He includes some equations but relies mostly on real-world examples a layperson can follow.

Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky lectures on depression as a real biological disease. He covers its biological and psychological causes, how it differs from ordinary sadness, and ideas such as learned helplessness. He ties these together into one account.

A SIGGRAPH 2019 course on geometric algebra. Charles Gunn gives an intro, then Steven De Keninck gives a programmer-focused course with live examples in ganja.js.

The first clip from Russell Barkley's 30 Essential Ideas about ADHD series, introducing ADHD as a chronic developmental disability. It is part of a lecture series on the disorder by a leading ADHD researcher.

John Ousterhout's slides-and-voiceover lecture on Paxos, made for the Raft user study comparing how students learn Raft and Paxos. It is a full introduction to the Paxos consensus algorithm.

Steve Blank's Computer History Museum lecture argues that Silicon Valley's roots lie in WWII radar and electronic warfare work, Stanford's Fred Terman and Cold War military funding rather than the semiconductor alone.

Gabriel Lebec's Fullstack Academy talk introduces lambda calculus syntax, the history of mathematical logic, and the essence of functional programming using JavaScript. It also covers combinators, currying and Church encodings.

Geologist Nick Zentner of Central Washington University gives an hour-long public lecture on the great earthquakes of the Pacific Northwest, including the Cascadia subduction zone and the evidence for past megaquakes. It is part of his Downtown Geology Lecture Series, recorded in Ellensburg in 2016.

Physicist Al Bartlett's well-known lecture on the arithmetic of exponential growth, applied to population, energy consumption and resource depletion. He argues that steady percentage growth cannot be sustained on a finite planet and that most public discussion ignores this.

Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind gives a public lecture on the holographic principle, the indestructibility of information and the nature of black holes. It asks whether the world could be a hologram.

The first lecture in an 18-part series on digital photography from Marc Levoy's Stanford CS 178 course, recorded at Google in 2016. The series covers how digital cameras work and computational photography, with slides and assignments available on the course site.

Michael Sugrue's lecture on Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and the Stoic ideal, covering the text and its philosophy. It is one of his humanities lectures known for their clarity.

John Ousterhout lectures on the Raft consensus algorithm, made for the Raft user study comparing how students learn Raft and Paxos. It covers leader election and log repair.

Erik Demaine's MIT 6.006 lecture introducing dynamic programming through Fibonacci numbers and shortest paths. It covers memoization, subproblems and optimal substructure.

Historian Timothy Snyder explains the politics of inevitability and the politics of eternity, two ways of thinking about time that frame his books On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom.

A segment from Carl Sagan's original Cosmos explaining the fourth spatial dimension through analogy with a two-dimensional world and shadow projection.

Leonard Susskind opens Stanford Continuing Studies' Theoretical Minimum series with an introduction to quantum mechanics, a course for people who want real physics rather than popularization. It assumes some calculus and linear algebra.

Clayton Christensen explains the jobs-to-be-done idea in five minutes, using the fast-food milkshake example. The point is that understanding the job a product is hired to do makes it easier to improve.

Erik Demaine's MIT 6.851 Advanced Data Structures lecture introducing succinct data structures, covering rank, select and tries. It is part of the Spring 2012 course.

John Gustafson presents posits, a proposed drop-in replacement for IEEE 754 floats that is simpler in hardware and more flexible in precision. The seminar includes a live demo and machine learning results.

A Jordan Peterson university lecture on the Big Five trait openness to experience, covering creativity and intelligence. It explains how IQ is measured, how well it predicts life success, and the Pareto distribution of creative output.

Neuroscientist Karl Friston gives a 15-minute talk on the free energy principle, covering Markov blankets, Bayesian model evidence and global brain theories.

Tyler Bosmeny, CEO of Clever, gives a Y Combinator Startup School talk on how early-stage companies should approach sales and build an enterprise sales team.

Lecture 1B of MIT's 6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1986) with Gerald Sussman, covering procedures, processes and the substitution model. It includes the line about the power of naming things.

Andrej Bauer's IAS talk introduces constructive mathematics and what it feels like to do mathematics without excluded middle. It is framed as a tour for classical mathematicians.