Soon, its host, Ira Glass, will speak in Tulsa. He’ll explain many things about “This American Life,” both the public radio version and its Showtime cousin.

In advance of his Tulsa appearance, Glass spent 33 minutes on the telephone with the Tulsa World. We wanted to know one thing about him: What has the 50-year-old in black-framed glasses learned from his American life?

These are the edited excerpts.

What have you learned from public speaking engagements?

I’ve learned I don’t have to dress like I’m going for a job interview. I’ve learned that, generally, people won’t stand and attack. I’ve learned that I better not say anything too super-important in the first 30 seconds, because people are getting so used to looking at my voice coming out of my head that that is overriding any content that I could be saying.

What have you learned from being a celebrity?

You know, the kind of a celebrity I am is where if I’m in a room full of people who have listened to public radio, and have come out to see me in the four walls of that room, I’m famous. But as soon as I walk down the street to pick up a slice of pizza after the show, they have no idea who I am.

So, I guess, the thing I’ve learned is right now there are a lot of different ways to be famous. I have to say, I think the level I’m at is the level I desire. I think being more famous seems a little more intrusive.

What have you learned from playing poker?

I’ve learned that I’m not as convincing a liar as I thought I might be. I’ve learned to just watch other people while doing math in my head.

What have you learned from great storytellers?

I think sometimes people talk about storytelling like it’s this precious, greek urn that we have to keep in a museum and go and stare at, when, really, good storytelling is just there for fun.

What have you learned from David Sedaris, (celebrated author and “This American Life” regular)?

I mean, Sedaris is just a really amazing writer, in that the work is really funny. But most of it, at its core, has a kind of yearning emotion to it. Even in the latest stories he does, you get a sense of him as a three-dimensional person in a way that, for example, in my own writing, I certainly don’t achieve. I mean, it’s because I’m reading this stuff out loud over the radio that it has personality to it. Whereas, David’s, I don’t know, so much of him comes through in ways big and small — in even the smallest essays.

What have you learned about the differences between telling stories on the radio, and telling stories on television?

It’s funny, because in each one, you can take everyday life and raise it to feel like a fable. But on television, I think that’s harder, because you’re always dealing with the specifics of the actual people, and the way they look and the space in which it happens, which it tends to ground the thing very completely on Earth. Whereas on the radio, from the get-go, you’re kind of creating this weird dream that’s in peoples’ heads.

What is one little thing that you learned about being married?

Well, I got married really late. The thing I learned once I was married was that it was nothing to fear. I was in my forties before I got married. I got married to somebody who I had known for 15 years — or almost 15 years. As soon as we got married, I thought, “Well, why didn’t we do this a decade ago?” It really didn’t make any sense that we had waited so long. That says so much about me in such a compact set of words. I think I was really immature about the whole thing.

What did you learn from your greatest failure?

Frankly, there have been so many failures that I haven’t ranked them. I think you have to have very few failures to have a coherent ranking on an Excel spreadsheet. I mean, I’m somebody who I fail all the time. Half the stories I do, we kill. In my attempts to run a radio show, and work with other people, I say the wrong thing all the time and have to backtrack. And in my personal life, it’s a constant series of apologies.

… I play people, sometimes in my lecture, like a one-minute snippet from my career seven years into my career — and it’s horrible. And I’m not saying this in some false modesty. Like, it gets a huge laugh about how bad it is. Overcoming that by simply doing so much work, and so many stories, that I figured out how to do them was the big drama of my life for a decade.

Last two, and they’re kind of tied together. What do you want to learn?

Like in general?

Yeah. What do you want to learn right now. What’s something that you don’t know, that you want to know.

Well, it’s interesting, because, I mean, basically the only time I’m happy at my job is if I’m kind of immersing myself in some new idea, or some new story, or something that takes me into some world. It doesn’t have to be super big. On top of that, I’ve thought a lot recently about learning to play the piano. I feel like if I would learn to play the piano, I would learn how many years it would take of real work to learn how to compose music. I’m sure it’s impossible, but that’s my thought.

OK, last one. What would you like to unlearn. Something you know that you don’t want to know anymore.

I’m even thinking through my vices. Do I wish I had never learned how to drink? And I think, “That would be a great answer,” but, no, I don’t wish that. I’m glad I can drink.

Do I wish I had never tried any drugs? Let me think: No, I’m pretty glad I had those experiences.

Then you try to think through things that people actually regret. Am I sad that I learned to gamble, and that I know the odds of all the hands in poker and blackjack, for that matter? And I think, “No, I’m pretty happy about that.” I’m financially solvent. It’s not consuming my life. I’m feeling pretty good about that.

Now I’m walking through, “Am I sorry I ever took a yoga class?” No, I’m good with that.

This isn’t something I learned, but I sort of regret it. And that is, I had about a 15-year period where I didn’t own a television. Then, at some point, I bought a television when “The Sopranos” was in its first season, because I heard that television was different. So I started watching television. And now I think I have learned to watch television too much. I think there is too much television in my life. I still think television is great, and better than ever, but there’s just too much of it.

What did you learn from watching episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”

There’s this thing that Buffy says in one of the last couple of seasons, where they are up against something like a force of pure evil, and she says this speech that’s sort of a big, long, kind of faux-Shakespearean speech. At some point, she says, “In all of this world, there’s only one thing that’s stronger than evil.” Then she pauses and says, “That’s us.”

Matt Gleason 581-8473   |   matt.gleason@tulsaworld.com

Read the full transcript.