Placing the young people's words in the mouths of adults makes them demand to be heard seriously; it also causes a dislocating effect that is often very funny.
"Two months" was all the man said and there was a burst of laughter before I heard, "Seriously, how are we going to keep a pigeon in the bathroom for two months?" A tall cabinet provided the perfect place to sleep each night.
"It's when you hear people seriously suggesting that Portugal should fiddle its official statistics, so that we are still rated poor enough to qualify for European subsidies, that you wonder if this has gone too far," he muses.
It's a great accompaniment to black tights and a thigh-skimming microdress we hear, but seriously - someone must be having a tough time dreaming up these tenuous terms.
He had lunch with Felix G. Rohatyn, an architect of the plan that helped New York City head off bankruptcy in the 1970's, to hear how seriously Mr. Rohatyn views the city's current financial problems.
With the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees and damages, both sides are taking Tuesday's hearing seriously.
But, he added, "She is one of the only ones I've ever heard talking seriously about renewable fuel sources".
I'd never heard drunkenness seriously depicted on the radio before – comedy shows ("I am sho shorry, Mishish Higginbotham, I thought you were the 'atshtand") were a different matter.
This is an Inquiry that could shape the future of our industry and it is vital that the views of working journalists – and journalism — are heard and seriously considered.
Nevertheless, many Democrats I heard from seriously questioned whether Geithner was the right man for this largely political task.
In my own career, I have struggled with the balance of how "hard" I need to be at work with my clients, with my peers and with my potential investors in order to be heard, taken seriously and respected.
