The study of public finance—the role of government in the economy—has faded in geography as attention to private finance has grown. Disrupting the tendency to fetishize private financial power, this article proposes an expanded conception of public finance that emphasizes its role in shaping geographies of inequality. We conceptualize the relationship between public and private finance as a dynamic interface characterized today by asymmetrical power relations, path-dependent policy solutions, the depoliticization of markets, and uneven distributional effects. A reimagined theory and praxis of public finance can contribute to building abolitionist futures, and geographers are well positioned to advance this project.

This critical commentary reflects on a rapidly mobilised international podcast project, in which 25 urban scholars from around the world provided audio recordings about their cities during COVID‐19. New digital tools are increasing the speeds, formats and breadth of the research and communication mediums available to researchers. Voice recorders on mobile phones and digital audio editing on laptops allows researchers to collaborate in new ways, and this podcast project pushed at the boundaries of what a research method and community might be. Many of those who provided short audio 'reports from the field' recorded on their mobile phones were struggling to make sense of their experience in their city during COVID‐19. The substantive sections of this commentary discuss the digital methodology opportunities that podcasting affords geographical scholarship. In this case the methodology includes the curated production of the podcast and critical reflection on the podcast process through collaborative writing. Then putting this methodology into action some limited reflections on cities under COVID‐19 lockdown and social distancing initiatives around the world are provided to demonstrate the utility and limitations of this method.

In the decade leading up to the global crisis of 2007-2008, local governments in the United States used increasingly complex financial structures to underwrite major capital projects. These structures offered potentially lower borrowing costs while also carrying greater financial risk, and in most cases, the bond structures imploded when the crisis hit. Why did some local governments gravitate toward this part of the risk spectrum while others did not? This article develops several explanations for local government risk-taking with a case study of the Chicago Public Schools' use of auction rate securities and interest rate swaps. We argue that the school district's exceptional use of these instruments was due to administrators' familiarity with these instruments, Chicago's long history of using creative techniques to defer tax increases and service cuts, and lack of knowledge about the extent to which investment banks were propping up these securities markets.

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