I had known about New Dimensions long before I was invited to be interviewed about my new book, Male Menopause, which was published in 1997. Michael and Justine Toms founded New Dimensions Radio in 1973 and have recorded ground-breaking conversations with visionaries including Joseph Campbell, HH the Dalai Lama, R. Buckminster Fuller, Ram Dass, Maya Angelou, Andrew Weil, Stewart Brand, Joanna Macy, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and thousands of others.
Recently, I had the good fortune to interview Justine about how New Dimensions has evolved over the last fifty-plus years and they are doing to restore recordings that are in danger of being lost. I always ask my quests to share their “origin story” about how their work began and what their initial vision was when they started out. Here is some of what Justine shared with me:
“I grew up in the Episcopal Church and loved it deeply — the gentle solemnity, the hymns, the cadence of familiar prayers. But in my early twenties, when I moved to Alabama, my path took a turn. I joined a spirited Southern Baptist congregation and threw myself into it wholeheartedly. I sang in the choir, taught Sunday school, and loved the lively exuberance that filled our services. Yet even then, beneath the joy, there was a subtle restlessness I couldn’t name.
“That restlessness stayed with me when I moved west to California. There, I found myself drawn into the community of Jehovah’s Witnesses. As before, I jumped in with both feet — studying, attending meetings, and knocking on doors to spread the ‘good news.’ I wanted to serve, to share what I thought of as the truth. But beneath that devotion, a quiet question persisted: Was there more?
“At the time, I didn’t see it as a spiritual quest. I thought of it as being faithful, obedient. Only later did I realize that what I was following wasn’t doctrine but a deep internal pull toward the broadest, most inclusive understanding of spirit possible. My soul was hungry for something vaster than any one faith could contain.
“Then I met Michael. He wasn’t a Jehovah’s Witness — far from it. But there was something in his calm, listening presence that quietly disarmed me. Still, before I could let down my guard, I needed to know where he stood on spiritual matters. So, one day I called him and said, ‘I’d like to come over and talk about spiritual things.’ He said yes.
“We talked through the night, our conversation winding through scripture, science, myth, and mystery. Dawn came, but neither of us was ready to stop. I didn’t realize it then, but that was the conception moment for New Dimensions.”
“What started as a weekly show on one local station grew into the longest-running independently produced interview program on public radio, carried by nearly 100 stations across the US, Canada, and New Zealand… and now available worldwide as podcasts, audiobooks, and videos on YouTube.
“Today, our archive holds 4,639 programs. The full collection covers an extraordinary range of human inquiry: consciousness, healing, physics, mythology, indigenous wisdom, the arts, politics, and the future of civilization.
“Dr. Roberto Trujillo, of Stanford University Libraries, has called it ‘one of the most extraordinary archival collections’ he has encountered in his career as a curator. Others have termed it ‘The Alexandria Library of the 21st Century.’”
Save 692 Rare Recordings Before They’re Lost
Justine went on to say,
“In recent years we have devoted much of our time and limited means to digitizing and restoring many of our classic recordings. 692 have been digitized from their original tapes, but they’re not playable and can’t be made available to the public until they’ve been properly restored.
“Each program requires approximately sixteen hours of careful, hands-on restoration to be brought back to life. It’s a monumental task, and one that goes far beyond what our everyday funding can support.”
Here is a sampling of what is in some of these iconic recordings:
- Joseph Campbell showed the world that beneath every culture runs the same deep river of story. Five of his conversations are waiting to be restored, including “The Myth of the Fool.”
- R. Buckminster Fuller coined “Spaceship Earth” and spent his life proving that human ingenuity could solve what politics couldn’t. Six of his conversations are in the archive, including “Being with Bucky.”
- Albert Hofmann, Ram Dass, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and John Lilly sat together in 1977 for “LSD: A Generation Later,” a conversation between the pioneers of consciousness research that will never happen again.
- Jerry Brown, Frank Herbert, and Captain Edgar Mitchell came together for “Space-Age Humanity.”: a governor, the author of Dune, and an astronaut who walked on the Moon, all in one room imagining the future.
- HH the Dalai Lama, Alice Walker, Jack Kornfield, Robert Thurman, and Edward James Olmos explored what compassion actually demands of us in “Compassion in Action.”
- Daniel Ellsberg, the man behind the Pentagon Papers, reflected on the world we choose to create in “A World of Our Own Making.”
- Werner Erhard, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Marilyn Ferguson, and Patricia Sun gathered in 1979 to ask one question: “The Future: What Will It Be?”
- Linus Pauling, the only person in history to receive two unshared Nobel Prizes, recorded a rare conversation at New Dimensions.
Please help support our efforts to make this wonderful collection available to the world, now and forever.
Justine’s information and how you can donate.
Here is what your tax-deductible gift makes possible. All donations, no matter how large are small are helpful:
- $243 restores one complete program.
- $2,430 restores an entire series of ten programs.
Any funds raised above our goal will go toward making sure these teachings are accessible to as many people as possible.
Every dollar counts. Please donate what you can, and pass this along to anyone you know who would value this project…
If you would like to see my interview with Justine Willis Toms, you can do so here.
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