For fifty years Radio Popolare was the soundtrack of life in Milan, and in time it also became the means by which its listeners understood the world well beyond the city. The station earned the right to speak for them with its open microphones, which were the first to make room for dialogue as a lever of thought. From that legendary 24 December 1975, when the paper was registered at the Milan court, the plan of its first director Piero Scaramucci was for a radio open to people: a listener could be a follower who recognised himself in the values the station professed or someone who disputed its positions, and both had the right to speak. In between stood the people of the radio — those who keep the set always tuned to its frequency, who follow the news on the app, who get up at dawn so as not to miss a programme. What marks its broadcasting is the plurality of the opinions aired, never in the service of any master but of the search for truth on behalf of its shareholders and subscribers. It began with an important role in reporting against the official account of the events of its day, and that thread of investigation and careful social and political analysis ran through every bulletin in the decades that followed. After fifty years all this has become both private and collective history: of the cooperative with its twelve thousand members and of everyone who tuned in from far away and helped it grow.