I sat down tonight to watch the first episode of the new season of This American Life. TAL is a program about people and their stories, it first aired as a radio program on public radio (which is where the sometimes infamous parrot story originated) and last year was turned into a television show by Showtime. The season premiere was titled “Escape”.

27 year-old Mike Phillips lives with his Mother, and deals with all the same issues a child living under the parents roof go through. Rebellion, Dependency, Disagreements, Control all play a part in Mike’s story. The one factor we never had to go through is Spinal Muscular Atrophy, which has slowed the normal move into Independency to a crawl. SMA keeps Mike confined to a wheelchair, keeps him from communicating normally, keeps him from truly being his own person.

This whole thing sounds incredibly depressing, but it isn’t, at all, it is one hundred percent inspirational, is is hilarious, it is motivating. A few years ago Mike wouldn’t have had much of a future, but technology has advanced faster than the disease can take him, and even though he has numerous near death experiences a year he lives a (sort of) normal life. Just the way Mike speaks of these near death experiences is what truly makes you realise how different his life is. He is so accepting of them, he has thrown in the towel to the fact they are always there. Literally this man could die at any instant and yet he finds the time to enjoy his life, to rebel, to love, to do so many things we don’t.

I said something there about Mike speaking, I should have been more clear, Mike cannot speak. Mike has to click words into a computer (Apple, of course) to communicate with people, the words are then spoken by a computerized voice. The host, Ira Glass, realises how impersonal this whole computer voice is and and asks whom he would like to sound like, if he could pick any person in the world. Mike suggests either Edward Norton or Johnny Depp, “Because they’re both badasses”. A few minutes later, Glass narrates, “Ladies and gentlemen, Johnny Depp”.

This was the point it hit me like a load of bricks, where I realised the breadth of this story. Hearing Johnny “freaking” Depp voice the words of Mike Phillips completely broke me, in the most amazing way. Everything clicked, the whole story was twisted in a way that you needed to see it, that this was the kind of story that needed a character the likes of Depp for you to understand. It’s what This American Life does best, it tells a story you might normally block out or brush off after a few moments, and it tells that it in such a way that it will never leave your mind.

I strongly recommend everyone watch this episode, I know it is replaying on Showtime most of this week, and probably on Showtime OnDemand shortly.

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