(soft music) - I first got into radio because of my name.

The name is Funke, of course, and people smile and laugh, but it was in college, when that was a real hip term.

And so they gave me a radio show because of my name.

It's really funke in German, which means spark or flame.

And spark or flame is the root of the word in German, ruined phone.

And it comes from the original radio sets.

A positive and a negative pole.

There was a spark that went across the gap and that was the spark or funke gap radio set.

So people tell me, I'm in the right line of business.

My mom and my dad were wonderfully creative.

My dad was an amateur painter, and mom was trained as an actor.

She was from New York City.

So ,she did all the theater she could hear, and he continued to paint.

And they had kind of little circle of creative friends.

It was just a natural part, then, of growing up.

I had a sense that it had something to do with vitality.

(soft piano music) When I went off to college, there were two critical experiences I had in the arts.

(tense music) I happened to be assigned in class, Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness".

The one with Francis Ford Coppola and the "Ride of the Valkyries".

(helicopter engine thrumming) (tense music) I finally, viscerally got it.

I got what literature could do.

I thought for me, and that was that an author could either from his or her own experience, create a narrative and characters and his images, and beautiful language to craft something.

A form of some sort, and to put it out in the world.

And then we as readers, could take that in.

And if we were open, and I think that's really important.

If we were open, we could get a sense from the inside of a different way of seeing the world.

I don't think it has to be sympathetic with your own way.

In fact, it's probably better that it isn't that way.

I was appalled by the heart of darkness and the way Joseph Conrad put forth a vision of the world.

I didn't want the world to be like that.

But that there could be someone who saw the world like that, just made me grow deeper and more curious about who we are as humans.

(melodious orchestral music) I went to school in Chicago, and we used to go to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

And the great Georg Solti was the maestro.

And it was a performance of Beethoven symphony number seven.

Everything went right in the orchestra, and the audience was hungry and receptive and open.

And instead of that thing that happens when the piece comes to an end, and people are up on their feet and shouting before the final notes die away, this was just silence in the whole hall.

We all knew that we had experienced something incredible.

(audience clapping) It was a communal experience of beauty, and we went on a journey with Beethoven emotionally.

I thought, if that's what arts can do, then I would really like to work in that field, because I think it can change our hearts or help us grow and expand our horizons.

(soft music) These are how the things came together in my life, not consciously, but I found myself in this medium, where you could bring music and words and storytelling together.

If I devote my attention to you and your self expression, and really listen, you know that I'm not judging, but then I'm really open, that often gives you as a person who is by definition, I think creative, a sense of being able to take a risk, and to go and to discover something about yourself, that you may not have realized you had.

(soft music) The arts are not, for me, not a luxury, because they have to do with ways we can discover our humanity.

It's the beauty of the diversity, and that if we can recognize that and respect it in each other, then it's the old or maybe there'll be some more harmony, in the ways that we live and that the arts can be one way of coming to see and respect others.

We can surprise ourselves by what turns up there, if we pay attention.

(upbeat music) And I couldn't imagine anything better than that.

(soft music)