What videos should everybody watch?

Stanford University now has a Youtube channel, with free access to HD video of full courses on everything from dynamical systems to quantum entanglement. More conferences and workshops are videotaping their talks. What are videos online that you think everyone should know about?

I'll seed this with a few answers to presentations that are mostly expository, but what I'm hoping might happen is that this community wiki could turn into a resource to share excellent presentations of new research, as well as a place to learn (or reinforce) background in an unfamiliar area.

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Timothy Gowers has a set of videos on Computational Complexity and Quantum Computation online.

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I watched the first lecture in this series and find his explanation of Turing machines very awkward. Furthermore, he seems to suggest that circuits are somehow equal in power to TMs, which is not the case (unless there is more to them than he tells). He himself says he does not want to talk about "strange computation models" but rather about "familiar combinatorics" so I'd say these are rather maths, not TCS lectures. – Raphael Oct 20 '10 at 9:27
combinatorics is also part of TCS. – Kaveh Apr 23 '12 at 3:16

Richard Feynman's Messenger Lectures restored, with annotations, by Microsoft's Tuva Project. Full disclosure: I've only watched two so far; they were awesome. (Not really TCS, but I had to start with these.)

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The Vega Science Trust (vega.org.uk) also has some excellent Feynman talks on video, as well as talks from a bunch of other scientists. – Joe Fitzsimons Oct 19 '10 at 15:39
I get told that my browser won't support the format (Silverlight). Sigh. – Jim Hefferon Jun 21 '12 at 21:20

Don Knuth's musings are great, always describing some amazing thing unknown to me before.

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I feel like Knuth himself would disapprove of having them locked up in a proprietary format, and it sure is inconvenient for me. – Max Oct 22 '11 at 20:12
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Dan Spielman's Nevanlinna Prize lecture at Hyderabad 2010. I got this link from a blog post by Timothy Gowers; the post contains several more video and text links to the 2010 ICM.

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Stephen Boyd has his entire Stanford class on Convex Optimization online.

Some interesting comments and asides, covers same material as in his book.

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There's a really interesting talk, given by Yuri Gurevich, on the Church-Turing thesis here.

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The video section of IAS is also a great source of online courses. One of my favorite is:
Ketan Mulmuley. On P vs NP, Geometric Complexity Theory, and the Riemann Hypothesis.

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FOCS (IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science)

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For people interested in quantum computation, the talks of QIP 2010 are available here: http://www.qip2010.ethz.ch/programme

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This might seem pretty preliminary to most people here, but I have greatly benefited from these since I am essentially self-taught. http://aduni.org/courses/theory/index.php?view=cw

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A completely hilarious video (and also very educational) is Serre's now-famous video on how to write mathematics badly.

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«We are sorry but sevenload doesn't offer its service in your country». Sad… – Artem Pelenitsyn Jun 1 '11 at 17:36
@Artem: Maybe this link works for those outside the US? It works for me. – Robin Kothari Jul 28 '11 at 20:00
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I do not know if this is a video lecture that everyone should watch, but I have decided on watching these to learn some Algebraic Topology. Seems pretty good to me so far.

Algebraic Topology Lectures

EDIT (Added Later). Another nice set of video lectures

Here is another wonderful set of lectures by Erik Demaine. The course is called Planar Graph Algorithms and Beyond and is being taught by Erik Demaine, Shay Mozes, Christian Sommer and Siamak Tazari. They are also using some sections of Phil Kliens draft on Planar Graphs. I feel certain that it will make a great book after having seen the first two lectures.

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Quantiki has a nice video abstract site, where people are free to post a short video (3-6 minutes) describing their recent papers/preprints. As it is part of Quantiki, it largely focuses on quantum information/computation.

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STOC (ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing)

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They're behind a paywall unfortunately... – Anthony Leverrier Aug 12 '11 at 21:04
This is probably an old news, but the videos are now available for free (but you have to register (again, for free)) t.co/LtTmi32 – Danu Oct 23 '11 at 21:39

I suggest the Channel 9 lectures: http://channel9.msdn.com/Tags/c9+lectures

I like specially the lectures from Erik Meijer on functional programming.

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Ralf Lämmel's lectures are also nice. He also put videos for his course on Programming Paradigms and Formal Semantics online. – Mikhail Glushenkov Feb 11 '11 at 9:49

Erik Winfree describes DNA self-assembly and molecular programming at a plenary talk at ASPLOS 2008. Probably the best rigorous introduction to the theory of self-assembly currently online.

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I enjoyed Scott Aaronson's lecture at Caltech titled "Quantum Computing and the Limits of the Efficiently Computable." This lecture, which was in honor of Feynman, rehashes what's common knowledge to users of this site but in a very clear and funny way.

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CCC (IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity)

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Erik Demaine has the video lectures up from his Fall 2010 course on geometric folding algorithms that follows the textbook he coauthored with Joseph O'Rourke:

http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.849/fall10/lectures/

The lectures are great as you'd expect. But what really stands out to me is the production values: Each lecture's web page has embedded slides and lecture notes that play along in synchrony with the video. It uses high-definition HTML5 video with all the synchronization of slides and lecture notes done in JavaScript. Hopefully this will set a new standard of excellence.

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Just found the following two websites. They were recommended by some folks, but I have not evaluated them yet:

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MIT's Youtube channel might be useful as well.

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I'm late to answer,but find Cristian Calude's lecture on Incompleteness excellent.

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General CS videos, found some good ones on here: http://lecturefox.com/computerscience/

Not restricted to Computing but good nonetheless: http://mitworld.mit.edu/

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Videos from Banff events: this one is from the ongoing workshop on approximations.

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These are a lectures series about Quantum Computation by professor David Deutsch

http://www.quiprocone.org/Protected/DD_lectures.htm

Another great series on Quantum Computation by Michael Nielsen aimed at the average Joe who wants to learn about Quantum Computation

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General audience talk by Michael Sipser about $\mathsf{P}$ vs. $\mathsf{NP}$:

Michael Sipser, "Beyond Computation: The P vs NP Problem", CMI Public Lecture, 2006.

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Presents alternative algorithms for arithmetic computations. (It's a joke.)

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Oh, come on, people. Why the hate? – JɛﬀE Nov 16 '11 at 14:02

The archive of recorded seminars of the Perimeter Institute is both useful and entertaining.

The Qubit Lab is a Youtube channel that explains advanced topics on quantum information and computation at children level, but it's also very enjoyable if you are an adult.

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protected by Kaveh♦May 10 at 6:53

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