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Lessons from the Natural World

Announcing the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues 2024-2025

Collage of illustrations with leaves, bugs, and birds
Lecture Archive Cooper Conversations

Lessons from the Natural World explores the beauty, wonder, and wisdom of our living planet and vast universe.

The E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues is a cooperative project of the Cooper Foundation, Lied Center for Performing Arts, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It was established in 1988 with the purpose of bringing a diversity of viewpoints on international and public policy issues to the university and people of Nebraska to promote understanding and encourage debate.

We're pleased to welcome the following speakers as part of our 2024-2025 schedule:

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Upcoming

Ed Yong portrait

Ed Yong

The Amazing Nature of Animal Senses

With College of Journalism and Mass Communications


Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist, 2024 Guggenheim Fellow and author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson portrait

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The Cosmic Perspective


Renowned astrophysicist, Hayden Planetarium director, NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal recipient and author of Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.

$10 discount with code FORUM10 (limit 500).

Previously This Season

Aimee Nezhukumatathil portrait

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

How to Fall Down into the Grass: Nature Journaling Workshop

With Nebraska Writers Collective and Lincoln Parks and Recreation


Poet, professor and author of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments, Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year in 2020.

Amy Tan portrait

Amy Tan

A Conversation with Amy Tan

Governor’s Lecture in the Humanities, Humanities Nebraska


Acclaimed author of The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife and others, including 2024’s illustrated nature journal The Backyard Bird Chronicles, a #1 New York Times bestseller.