This week was one of our strongest shows yet, with a wide diversity of news items that were genuinely fun (and complicated) to chew through. And even though we started off kind of grumpy, we laughed through tech difficulties, crypto puns, and fintech CAC. It's called coping. Here's what we got into:

This is our Wednesday show, the time of the week when we niche down to a single topic. Today? Fashion.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets.

Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week with Grace on the dials, which meant that we had a flat lovely time recording Equity for you. Of course, Equity is TechCrunch's venture capital focused podcast where we dig into the most critical funding rounds, and natter about the key news items impacting startups.

Hello and welcome back to Equity. This is our Wednesday show, the time of the week when we niche down to a single topic. Today? Gaming.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets.

Hello friends and welcome to bonus Equity, the sort of podcast episode where you get even more chat for the same low price of zilch. We are here to ensure a high ROI for your podcasting dollar! To cap the week off, Danny and Alex and Chris got together live on Twitter to chat through the demise of the Zoom-Five9 deal. Those of you who remember how recently the deal was announced are likely a little surprised -- how did it fall apart so quickly? Well, a few reasons: There could be inherent risk in all-stock transactions provided a rapidly-changing market. It may be the case that Zoom simply did not bid enough for Five9. And there's a mix of anti-trust and national regulatory issues to the deal that never got fully hammered out.

Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, meaning that we were running full-strength for our roundup of this super busy week. Before we hop into the topics, you can follow the show on Twitter — all the cool kids do! — and keep in mind that on Mondays Equity provides a short kickoff to the week, we chat a single topic on Wednesdays, and Fridays are when we go through the full week. Make sense? Hell yeah:

We got the crew together — Natasha and Danny and Alex — this time 'round to talk fraud, one of our favorite topics. There's been a raft of fraud lately which caught our eye. The heart of today's episode is a question about fraud, and what more of it might mean: Does more fraud indicate that we're in a growing bubble, or that we're in the later-stages of a bubble about to burst?

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets.

And the winner of TC's Startup Battlefield is.... gonna have to listen to find out

Today we got the gang together -- Natasha and Danny and Alex -- to chat about the most recent IPOs in tech-land, namely debuts from Freshworks and Toast. TechCrunch has covered their pair of firms somewhat closely during their IPO run, as they each have some notable characteristics:

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets.

Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, which meant we had the full team. And speaking of teams, Mary Ann is joining the Friday show on a weekly basis now. She's been a friend for years, and a colleague now twice-over for Natasha and Alex and we could not be more excited.

This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic. This time 'round we took a look into the world of on-demand delivery in Europe, with an especial focus on the so-called "instant" grocery sector, and delivered convenience items.

We are back! From this morning, I suppose. But the news cycle doesn't wait for our publishing schedule, so the Equity crew got together to yammer all about the Intuit-Mailchimp acquisition. A $12 billion deal comprised of stock and cash, it's a big on. And as Mailchimp has both a history of boostrapping and a founding story in a non-Silicon Valley city we had lots to chat about. As a general reminder, if you do listen to the show, hit us up on Twitter as we are doing more and more of these Spaces. They are good and relaxed fun, so don't take them too seriously. We like to have fun. Alright, Equity is back on Wednesday with our regularly scheduled programming. Chat then!

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets.

Natasha and Mary Ann took over this week's show with Chris and Grace, which meant that our overdeveloped senses of curiosity filled up the script just fine (even on a somewhat short week). Unintentionally, today's episode was built around a theme of inclusion - from auto-insurance to women's health, and from payments to knowledge. But here are some more specifics on what we got into:

For the Equity Wednesday deep dive, we took the conversation to Twitter Spaces. Danny, Mary Ann, and Jonathan Metrick, Chief Growth Officer at Portage Ventures, dove into growth marketing.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff to catch up on weekend news and prep for the days ahead. We're here on Tuesday this week since us folks in the United States had off for labor day.

Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris gathered to dig through the week's biggest happenings, including some news of our own. As a note, Equity's Monday episode will be landing next Tuesday, thanks to a national holiday here in the United States. And we have something special planned for Wednesday, so stay tuned. Ok! Here's the rundown from the show:

After a 17-hour marathon through nearly 200 startup pitches, the Equity team was fired up to get back on Twitter and chat through some early trends and favorites from the first day of Y Combinator's demo party.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.

After news broke that meditation app Headspace and on-demand mental health care platform Ginger were merging, we couldn't resist hopping on the mics to do a bonus episode. And, because we were in the mood for hot takes, Natasha and Alex held the conversation on Twitter Spaces. The special guests we had on, who we'll get to down below, did not disappoint.

Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris were joined by none other than TechCrunch's own Mary Ann Azevedo, in her first-ever appearance on the show. She's pretty much the best person and we're stoked to have her on the pod. And it was good that Mary Ann was on the show this week as she wrote about half the dang site. Which meant that we got to include all sorts of her work in the rundown. Here's the agenda: