In the summer of 2002, Hyder Akbar, a 17-year-old high-school student from California skipped his graduation, shaved off his cool teenage goatee and went to Afghanistan to visit his father, who had himself returned to his homeland to be part of President Hamid Karzia's new administration. Before he left, he met radio producer Susan Burton, who gave him a tape recorder and encouraged him to keep an audio diary. The result was an hour-long, highly personal documentary, that won public radio awards in the US and was broadcast last week in RTÉ's welcome new Documentary on One slot on Wednesdays.
Akbar's father's connections gave him insider access and in Kabul he recorded the day-to-day reality, the details that don't make the news bulletins. Kalashnikovs are so common that Akbar learned to shoot one; days were spent with his one-eyed war-hero uncle hearing about the Russian occupation; he met local warlords, and when a bomb exploded in a market he recorded the sound of broken glass crunching underfoot as, whispering into his microphone, he tried to describe the chaos that was beyond anything he could have been prepared for in the Californian suburb.
The following summer Akbar went back to Afghanistan again with a tape recorder and the second documentary, Teenage Embed: Part Two (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday), proved to be as powerful as the first. His father has been appointed governor of Kunar, a remote region of Afghanistan, and Akbar, now 18, came across as being more mature and less wide-eyed. He was no longer amazed at burkhas, beards and the sight of loaded AK-47s in people's homes. Instead, he has become at times an unofficial cultural and linguistic translator between Afghan warlords and US forces. His father's job was, he thought, impossible, with threats of interference not only from al-Qaeda and the Taliban but also from opium dealers and the re-emerging Afghan communists. In their dealings with people the US forces sounded hopelessly ill-equipped to come to grips with the impregnable wall of cultural difference and historic grievance.
The most terrifying moment on the tape was when the 18-year-old was ambushed while travelling with an army convoy. He kept recording, with the sounds of gunfire pinging off the sides of the jeep and soldiers yelling at him to keep his head down providing the backdrop to his reporting.
Hearing Akbar's soft teenage voice also served as a reminder of how rare it is to hear a young voice on talk radio.
Teenagers do sometimes phone in to various programmes but even when the subject-matter is particularly relevant to them, as in the annual dissection of the Leaving Cert, it's more likely to be mammies that get on air.
It was hard luck on producer Susan Dennehy that her new series, Sixteen (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday), which is essentially a selection of soundbites from 16-year-olds on a variety of issues, was broadcast on the same day as Hyder Akbar's astonishing programme, because it made for an unfortunate contrast. Akbar's dreams for Afghanistan and his social and cultural awareness were worlds away from Dennehy's teen interviewees, who sounded bright and articulate but who didn't have a lot to say.
While it's great to hear any young voices on the radio, it was difficult to see the point of this programme, unless it was somehow to confirm ye olde generation's ideas that all young people do is text each other obsessively, blag drink off older teens and hang around the green because "there isn't a mall around here".
Some of the voices were admirably positive about self-image, studying, and alcohol abuse; however, teen soundbites spliced together to make a programme don't give a true reflection of a generation and were always going to sound like a well-meaning Transition Year project.
I'd prepped for Sixteen by tuning in to Talking Proper (RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday), a programme about the effects of music on language, in which presenter Terry Dolan, in his own plummy, highly academic-sounding voice, talked about the sort of language young people use these days.
"Saying bad when they mean good," he intoned, giving the audio version of your dad disco-dancing at a wedding.
"Phat, wicked, dope," chipped in studio guest Eamon Carr, giving further examples of street slang for something good.
"In Dublin they say coolaboola," said Dolan. The other studio guest, Shay Healy, talked about street language here embracing other cultures.
"You hear Irish people now saying they got their mojo working," he said.
The real-life Irish teenagers on Sixteen didn't use any of that lingo, although I did learn a new expression. Asked about alcohol, two voices said they'd never go "knacker drinking", preferring to drink in each other's houses. Knacker drinking, to suburban Irish teens, seems to mean drinking outdoors. There, depressingly, is another one for the learned Dolan.