Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC

Sounds.

Hello and thank you for downloading the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service.

History is told by the people who were there.

Schemes for sharing bikes and cars are now a normal part of city life across the globe.

But the first cycle sharing scheme was developed in the 1960s in Amsterdam. In 2019 Janet Ball spoke to the Dutchman who came up with

the idea. In 1965 the Dutch Provo Movement was formed in Amsterdam.

It was a playful anarchist group which used nonviolent but theatrical protests to bait the police and push its anti-establishment,

anti-royal, anti-consumer agenda.

One of its members, 30-year-old industrial engineer Lude Schimelpenock, was determined to find a solution

to Amsterdam's rising traffic congestion and pollution levels.

The 60s is still a point that six were changing. The and in one of their first editions Lood announced a revolutionary idea to cut car usage,

paint a collection of bikes white, leave them around the city and let people use them for free, but at first they didn't have a lot of bikes.

I think it must be about 10 bucks.

And the bikes go out in the town and the police take them away because they were against the

anarchist profile movement. They were gone very fast and when you, what was the white bike? It was only an article in a small

magazine and a few bikes painted white. But the white bike had been born and had caught the public's

...