Another time, Salim asked listeners what they thought about the violent insurgency that has roiled Iraq.
"We asked them, is it terrorism or is it resistance," Salim said. "A very large proportion -- almost 100 percent -- said terrorism. They did not like it."
In the time of Saddam, Iraqi stations other than the official state station were forbidden. Even so, dedicated listeners like Ameen secretly tuned in to the Voice of America and the British Broadcasting Corp and strained to hear Iraq news reports in Arabic.
Those days are still fresh for Salim, who was a host at a station called Youth Radio run by one of Saddam's sons. Callers were prerecorded, and content was censored. "Now I'm free to say anything I want," Salim said.
The radio's staff is overwhelmingly young, which Salim said was a policy of the station from its inception in April. Women in hejabs, the Islamic head covering, and high heels click around the office. Sound engineers move mice at computers. Photocopied pictures of employees' smiling faces are pinned to a bulletin board near a staircase.
Employees like Sharaa, who is 26, bring a fresh sense of optimism to the station. He also writes for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London. He said he had been interested in politics from the age of 12, but was not able to apply any of that knowledge until now.
The station was started with seed money from the Swedish government. Its founder, Ahmed al-Rakabi, the former chief of the US-financed Iraqi Media Network, was born in 1969 in Prague, in what was then Czechoslovakia, after his family was forced to leave Iraq to escape political repression under Saddam.
On the station's first day, Salim simply sat at the microphone and asked listeners what they wanted to talk about. Now, in addition to the government official call-in shows, the station has programs in which lawyers answer questions. It also has a program called Fatwa, led by both Sunni and Shiite clerics, which invites callers to discuss differences in religious practices. A fatwa is an order from a religious leader.
The late-night show in which people call in to dedicate songs and discuss their relationships is particularly popular. The topic is a racy one in Iraq, which has become more conservative since the 1980s, when Saddam, in an effort to appease religious leaders here, required stricter adherence to religious rules.
One night a few weeks ago, a woman called to confess that her boyfriend of four years had just married her closest friend, after she introduced them several weeks before, Salim said. Listeners called to offer sympathy for the unforgivable betrayal.
Ameen welcomes such public heart-to-hearts. "Let everyone talk," he said. "All of Iraqis in different lines must talk, must talk under sun, not in secret."
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