Mergers and Acquisitions features specific themes – each curated by a guest editor. The podcast explores these themes with guests from multiple disciplines and geographies.

Season 1 ran in 2021-2022, beginning with Aneil Tripathy’s exploration of Climate Change. Cindy Isenhour and her guests focused on the economics of Waste and Discards. Ipshita Ghosh drew upon her work on entrepreneurship to focus on Enterprise. Rounding out season 1, Kelly McKowen featured discussions about Unemployment, and Jenny Huberman curated a collection on Digital Capitalism.

Season 2 ran in 2022-2023 beginning with Economic Anthropology, Otherwise curated by Tanya Matthan, focusing on how economic anthropology might be practiced in more politically relevant ways. The second collection focused on Ethnographies of White-collar Workers in East Asia. Xinyan Peng and her guests dove into cultures of management to explore the intersection of political economy and personal life. Sandy Smith-Nonini’s collection, Energy Permacrisis explored the complex factors that contribute to the current crises and the possibility of energy justice reform.

Season 3 ran in 2024-2025 starting with Dawn Rivers’ collection on Work, featuring conversations with Sarah Besky, Carli Ficano, and Christine Jeske. Next Dinah Rajak, Sarah-Jane Phelan and Jenny Hewitt provided a fascinating glimpse into the labor of teaching during the pandemic in their series Care in the Classroom. In our third collection, Economies Emerging,” Nikita Taniparti explores the emergence of economic alternatives. Finally, Kathryn Graber and Ariana Gunderson ask, Is Talk Cheap? to explore language as both an expressive system and embodied economic practice.