The Dais · Story Seed Studios · El Paso County

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New series launches, episode companions, and civic guides — everything published by The Dais and StorySeed Studios in 2026.

New The Map · Ep. 2 Blog Post March 29, 2026

He Knows How to Report a Pothole

There is a man somewhere who was taught how this works. His dad explained it — not the textbook version, not George Washington and the three branches in theory. The branch that touches your street. The one with a phone number. He knows the clerk's email, what a CORA request is, and that if the online portal spins indefinitely, you call 719-385-7458. The rest of us are clicking the broken button. The Map, Episode 2 is the story of that gap — and the guide we built is the map his dad gave him, for everyone else.

The Dais · The Map · Episode 2 · Blog

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The Map Series Launch March 2026

The Dais Launches The Map — Housing and Civic Geography

The Map opened with a butterfly farm in California and traced a feedback loop — BAH rates, developer incentives, missing public data, and the names on the agenda — that shapes rent in Colorado Springs whether or not anyone is paying attention. Includes twelve questions you can ask at a public meeting tonight and a full directory of the rooms where housing decisions actually get made.

The Dais · The Map · Episode 1 Watch Episode 1 →

Episode 006 Citizen Guide March 2026

She Did Everything Right. She Was in the Wrong Room.

Laurel Scowl showed up to the March 17th BOCC meeting prepared and got redirected — not because she was wrong, but because the land use process is quasi-judicial and invisible until you need it. The Citizen Fight Guide covers how to be in the right room at the right time with the right documentation. Built for Laurel, and for anyone else fighting a development in El Paso County.

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Series Complete Lesson Zero March 2026

The Import Economy — Four Parts, One Thread

A completed four-part essay series on human trafficking along Colorado's I-25 corridor, the El Paso County funding structures that respond to it, and the gap between what organizations requested and what they received. Alongside it: Lesson Zero, a free financial literacy curriculum for teenagers that starts with a personal budget and ends with a letter to city council.

The Dais · Import Economy · Complete Read More →

Series Launch Episode 000 February 2026

No One Gave You These Orders

The Dais launched with a 97-second introduction about the gap nobody names out loud — the distance between military service structure and how local government actually works. Nobody issues orders to attend a county commissioner meeting. The whole system runs on citizens deciding, on their own, to pay attention. In Colorado Springs, with 45,000 military households cycling through on two- to four-year rotations, that gap is wider than almost anywhere else.

The Dais · Episode 000 · February 17, 2026 Read More →