Sean Braswell

Imagine a democracy where the children of former public officials had a leg up for winning an elected office themselves — a 10,000-vote head start, perhaps, or a seat on the county council reserved especially for them.

Most Americans rightly would scoff at a system that so brazenly allocated rewards ...

Sports heroes are supposed to play for the love of the game, at least at first, even if the money comes later and fame becomes its own pastime. Rare is the star athlete who just falls into it — who does it because he doesn't have anything better to do.

Would you give a penny to help a deserving stranger attend college?

A plethora of crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending services such as Kickstarter and Upstart have grown up in recent years to help you answer that Sally Struthers-esque question and to provide prospective college students with a ...

It was the kind of moment that has defined the lives of many young performers and future stars. Abandoned by her birth parents, Terry had spent the better part of three weeks hiding under the bed of the German couple who had taken her in.

Crippled by anxiety and shyness, ...

With the advent of the "sharing economy" and successful peer-to-peer ventures like Airbnb and RelayRides, it is now possible for millions to turn a quick buck by renting out underused assets like a spare guest room or a even a dog that needs walking.

But many of us who endure ...

It's all over but Sunday's ride down the Champs-Elysees: Italian cyclist Vincenzo Nibali has locked up an unassailable lead in the 2014 Tour de France.

Nibali, 29, is poised to take his first title in cycling's premier event and will become the first Italian to wear the yellow jersey ...

In case you missed the buzz on Facebook, scientists recently determined that "beer goggles" do in fact exist, though not precisely in the way we thought. Consuming alcohol, it seems, tends to elevate desire and reduce inhibitions more than alter our actual perception of another person's attractiveness.

But there's ...

We tend to think of income groups such as the "top 1 percent" as being relatively stable collectives, particularly in nations like the U.S. that, despite popular rhetoric, enjoy rather low levels of social mobility.

But the truth is more complicated, and more volatile. The average American's chances of ...

A big deal has been made about the Republican Party's so-called Hispanic problem during recent U.S. election cycles. But there's another group — largely white and male — that has also struggled to increase the number of Latinos in its ranks: America's religiously unaffiliated. Until recently, that is.

The ...

With the 20th FIFA World Cup men's soccer tournament opening this week in Brazil, it's hard to imagine a time when the world's eyes weren't fixed, every fourth summer, on which nation would be next to hoist the famous gold trophy. But from 1938 until 1950, the young event took ...

By the time a bright-eyed secretary named Peggy Olson walked through the fictional doors of the Madison Avenue advertising agency Sterling Cooper in 1960, one very real female pioneer was already hard at work down the street.

Like her Mad Men counterpart, the 84-year-old broadcasting legend Barbara Walters, who retired ...

Austin, Texas, is known for its massive music festivals, like SXSW and Austin City Limits. But alongside these epic, world-renowned events are some hidden gems. One is the Pachanga Latino Music Festival, which just this year featured a stellar lineup of artists we love, including Gaby Moreno, AJ ...