Why we ridetogether.
RideWitUS is a community bike school in podcast form. Built around three things — bikes, the people who ride them, and the long arc of staying upright through every decade we get.
The show.
Audio-first. 35 to 40 minutes per episode. Modular cut-points so an instructor can pull a single skill clip and play it in class. Modeled on the BetterViceClub format developed at CentenarianOS Academy. Every episode has a companion class, a flashcard deck, and (where the route applies) a 360° ride tour in Wanderlearn.
The community.
The curriculum is built around FreeWheelin' Community Bikes in Indianapolis — a youth-employment-and-mechanic-training nonprofit that teaches through a tiered apron system: Green, Red, Purple, Black. Apprentices in the YEET program earn the bikes they learn on. Wednesday open-shop nights, Saturday community rides, donation days that keep the donation bay full.
RideWitUS makes the apron-tier curriculum portable: anyone with headphones gets the same instruction the YEET apprentices get on the bench, taught at a pace and on a bike that makes sense to people who don't already own a wrench.
The four seasons.
Simplest bike first. Complexity earned. The bike progression matches the apron tiers.
Season 1
Apron Foundations
Maps to FreeWheelin's Green and Red Apron entry curriculum. Every demo is on a single-speed cruiser — the simplest bike at the donation bay, no derailleur, no shift cable, no cassette to fight. Flats, brakes, drivetrain basics, true wheels, bearings, fit.
Season 2
Apron Advanced
Now with gears. Wheel building, bottom brackets, freewheels and cassettes, derailleur tuning, the internal-hub bikes you'll meet at the shop (Sturmey-Archer, Shimano Nexus), frame alignment, restoration triage. The transition from single-speed to multi-gear is the through-line.
Season 3
Bike Design & Folding-Bike Engineering
After two seasons on a cruiser, the Brompton enters as the engineering object lesson. Frame geometry, the hinge, 16-inch wheels, materials, manufacturing, the fold, and what folders mean for urban transport.
Season 4
Program Operations & Community
The roles around the Program Instructor seat — pedagogy, Bike Lab, community rides, YEET apprenticeship, donation days, partnerships, data, grants. The full FreeWheelin program lens.
The host.
Brand Anthony McDonald — operator of the WitUS ecosystem, scholar of the apron, and the voice you'll hear on every episode. Indianapolis-based. The full bio (and the rest of the work) lives at brandanthonymcdonald.com.
Now that you know what we're doing —
Tune in →