Cities are made — and remade — by the people who live in them. That fact sits at the heart of PathBreakers, The Kresge Foundation’s podcast, which returns this month for a second season with a central question, a new video format, and sixteen conversations with leaders effecting change where they live.

One question will run through every conversation: Who has the power to shape what happens in their city?

At a moment when the question of who gets to shape American cities has never felt more urgent, Season 2 of PathBreakers turns to the people answering it. The answer is complex — shaped by the particular place where the question is being asked. But our premise is simple: the work of building equitable, thriving cities doesn’t happen in a single office, agency, or boardroom. It happens in neighborhoods, newsrooms, community gathering spaces, classrooms, parks, and around kitchen tables. And it happens when those threads come together in unexpected ways. PathBreakers is an invitation to listen in on that work and to the leaders making it possible.

This season is built around place. And at Kresge, if we’re talking about place, we’re talking about cities. In this case, the four cities where Kresge focuses on driving community-level change: Detroit, Memphis, Fresno and New Orleans. 

Rather than standalone profiles, each city gets four-part mini-series: three episodes with local leaders answering the season’s central question, plus a conversation between a City Hall leader and Kresge President & CEO Rip Rapson. Together, these episodes offer both the ground-level view and the civic one. Our hope is that they reveal what makes a place a place — and what makes progress possible.

Opening Arc: Neighborhoods of Opportunity in Detroit

We will start in Detroit, with an episode featuring Detroit’s new leader, Mayor Mary Sheffield, who sat down in recent days with Rapson to talk about her agenda for neighborhoods, how she hopes philanthropy and other collaborators will work alongside her, and what regular Detroiters should expect from her team.

Following Sheffield, we’ll welcome three Detroit leaders — Orlando Bailey of Outlier Media, Caitlin Murphy of Live6 Alliance, and Simone Sagovac of Southwest Detroit Community Benefits Coalition — to discuss with hosts Tracey Pearson and Jamie Bennett how they shape their city from the ground up through innovative information sharing, coalition building and trust building with residents.

Future arcs will travel to Memphis, New Orleans, and Fresno, where leaders are taking on questions of development, climate resilience, and how narrative shapes a city.

Listen or Watch

Season 2 marks PathBreakers‘ evolution into a full video podcast — recorded on camera and released as both a video series and audio-only episodes. Episodes run approximately 30 minutes and are available wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as in full video on Spotify and YouTube.

Check out our trailer below. Subscribe today, and share with the urban changemakers in your life who are asking the same questions. The first arc starts May 13.