Kenny Malone
New NPR Series: "We Keep Us Safe" from the Embedded podcast adds Malone as the Planet Money host introducing NPR Embedded’s We Keep Us Safe trailer. His role is a handoff: he tells listeners about the new series and lets the trailer frame CHOP, Antonio Mays Jr., and the question of how a protection-oriented protest space became the site of a fatal shooting.
The laws of the office revisited adds Malone as the host whose teenage grocery-cashier story makes Goodhart’s Law concrete. His “items scanned per minute” example shows how a public workplace metric can turn into Workplace Metric Gaming when employees protect the number rather than the underlying service.
Betty Boop, Excel Olympics, Penny-isms: Our 2026 Valentines adds Malone as the host coordinating a lighter Planet Money episode around “Valentines” to nerdy systems. He works with Jennifer Jenkins on the public-domain Betty Boop card, tests the “Boop boop a duopoly” antitrust joke, and links the episode’s segments across Public Domain Reuse, Competitive Spreadsheeting, RFID Checkout, Coin Retirement Economics, and Procurement Records Journalism.
Kenny Malone appears in Can World Cup mania grow MLS in the U.S.? as the Planet Money host closing the episode with Becky Sullivan. In this source, his role is not as a biographical subject but as part of the reporting frame that turns World Cup enthusiasm into an economics question about Major League Soccer.
The episode uses Malone’s hosting context to connect concrete club stories to larger mechanisms: Major-Event Attention Conversion, Sports Fandom Network Effects, and the uncertain history of whether domestic leagues benefit after hosting major tournaments.
Can the Trump administration make college cheaper? adds Malone as the host framing a different economics question: whether limiting federal graduate borrowing can lower tuition or instead make students carry the immediate cost of Federal Student Loan Caps.
Indicators of 2025 and What to Watch in 2026 adds Malone as the participant pitching Consumer Sentiment Indicator for 2025. He argues that weak sentiment captures the year’s anxiety about prices, inflation, jobs, housing, and the future, extending the wiki’s Aggregate Indicators Lived Experience Gap branch from economist trust into a year-end macro indicator.
The real horror of ‘Alien’ and how it explains why we’re not paid enough adds Malone as co-host translating Arin Dube’s labor-economics vocabulary through Alien scenes. The episode places his hosting role inside the show’s broader pattern of turning unusual source material into Economic Way Of Thinking.
Who decides what big box sells? Our GAME got us answers adds Malone as co-host following Sell Me a Sasquatch after buyer acceptance into final product decisions and manufacturing. His reporting includes the long wait after Erika Beras’s pitch, the factory-floor call with Tori Welch, and the store visit where the game appears on a big-box shelf.
Connections
- NPR and Planet Money - network and show context.
- Embedded podcast, We Keep Us Safe, Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), and Antonio Mays Jr. - investigative-series trailer branch introduced by Malone.
- Goodhart’s Law, Workplace Metric Gaming, and Workplace Incentive Design - office-incentive branch added by the new episode.
- Jennifer Jenkins, Betty Boop, Public Domain Reuse, RFID Checkout, Coin Retirement Economics, and Procurement Records Journalism - Valentine-episode branch.
- Becky Sullivan - reporter and closing co-host for the episode.
- Major League Soccer, FIFA World Cup, and Sports Entertainment Flywheel - sports-business question framed by the episode.
- Corey Turner, Federal Student Loan Caps, Bennett Hypothesis, and Loan Cap Access Risk - student-loan policy branch added by the new Planet Money episode.
- Consumer Sentiment Indicator, University of Michigan, and Aggregate Indicators Lived Experience Gap - 2025 indicator branch added by the crossover source.
- Alien, Weyland-Yutani, Labor Monopsony, and Compensating Differentials - labor-economics-by-film branch added by the Alien episode.
- Sell Me a Sasquatch, Tori Welch, Mass Retail Production Deadline, and Packaging As Product Experience - board-game manufacturing and launch branch added by Planet Money.