HeY, we had an idea.

Crooked Ideas is a nonprofit working in partnership with your anxious-but-hopeful, news-obsessed pals at Crooked Media. Our mission is to engage our audience in the biggest policy debates shaping our world. But shaping it into what? Well, that’s the whole deal. Crooked Ideas brings expertise, humor, and content that inspires people to understand their agency, even when our problems seem insurmountable. A better future isn’t just possible – amazing people around the world are already building it.

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FEATURED CAMPAIGN Empire City Live

ICE and the war on immigrants. Federal police takeovers of major cities. Racial profiling. Surveillance … How did we get here? To begin to address these issues, you need to understand where it all started.

Join us virtually or in person to discuss the themes of the award-winning podcast, Empire City.

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What We Do & Why We Do It

Change starts with an idea – a big idea, a small idea, maybe a compact mid-sized idea. But that’s just the beginning. To solve our biggest issues, we need these ideas to spread – fast. Using our favorite tools (expertise with a little dusting of humor), Crooked Ideas is here to do just that.

Through a mix of podcast & digital content, social media, and community & influencer events, Crooked Ideas works in partnership with Crooked Media to produce content around today’s most important issues across the Crooked network.

Whether it’s a local issue or a global crisis, we can’t solve problems unless we can make sense of what’s happening and know when we can take action. We can keep doom-scrolling or numbing out, but what if we come up with some better ideas that actually create change.

Our CURRENT CAMPAIGNS

The Anti-Doom Initiative

Humans created the climate problem, and humans can solve it. Or aliens. But we can’t count on those freaks to show up. And we don’t need them to. Humanity invented vaccines, built airplanes with toilets, and turned wolves into tiny friends who wear sweaters. We created AND fixed a hole in the ozone layer. Both took a lot of work!

And that’s why we’re focusing on climate. Yes, it might seem terrifying: the impact, the scale, the effort to protect the polluters who cause it. There’s a lot of propaganda out there that wants to turn us into cynics, to make us believe that corporate greed isn’t to blame and that transitioning to clean energy will ruin the economy. We know better.

The Anti-Doom Initiative spotlights the projects already moving towards solving the climate crisis, and those in the pipeline that we need to get over the finish line. Even as we see a full-scale attack on rolling back climate wins, Crooked Ideas is working in partnership with Crooked Media to ramp up climate coverage across the Crooked network so we don’t slow down the progress we’ve made (and have just enough fun to take the edge off).

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Empire City Live

Crooked Ideas is fostering a debate about what keeps us safe, and what role law enforcement should play in doing so. Inspired by award-winning limited series podcast Empire City: The Untold Story of the NYPD– which sheds light on the origins of the world’s largest police force – we’re hosting a series of events, coupled with a learning curriculum for educators, to bring this debate to life. 

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Where WE SHOW UP

Crooked Ideas is a nonprofit organization that collaborates with Crooked Media to offer curious minds a straight-forward breakdown of the most complex issues of our time. All content produced in partnership with Crooked Media is free to the public. Crooked Ideas aims to build an informed community and spark collective action in the biggest policy debates shaping our world. Where you can find us:

Stay In Touch

Crooked Ideas is committed to keeping you up-to-date on how to support the biggest issues of our time. Subscribe for periodic updates and ways to get involved:

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