Oh hey, it's your all-pot dad ward. Just me hanging out in a breezy summer tunic and the linen cool lots.

Alley ward. Back with another episode of Oligies. Are you ready for a weird one? Kind of a random one? Kind of a dark one.

If you're all about bank robberies and or calligraphy and or murder she wrote, why?

The writings on the bathroom wall. You've landed at the correct episode. My friends, but before we get deep into it,

let's first thank some folks patrons at patreon.com who make the show possible.

Thank you to everyone buying merch at oligiesmerch.com. Thank you to the folks who subscribe and rate and especially review,

which I read gingerly each week. I pluck a fresh one, but your reviews keep it up in the charts.

So thank you to this week Anna Banana, who says my first blood meal was acorology, but unlike ticks, I needed more, lots and lots more.

Never did I think I would stay sitting in my car for an extra 30 minutes to finish a podcast about hagfish, but here I am.

Thank you dadwardvonpodcast. The pleasure and a banana. It's all mine. Okay, graphology.

Let's just roll our sleeves up. Let's sharpen our pencils. Let's get into it. So in Greek, graphos means to write.

So it's a study of writing. Should be simple, right?

Not so much. Okay, so graphology is a study of personality through the analysis of hand writing traits.

So can you tell if someone is like organized or anxious or ambitious or critical through the way they write their F's and T's and I's and such.

This was a field pioneered by a Frenchman, Jean Hippolite Maichon in the mid 1800s.

And before you say, wait a second, analyze a personality via handwriting. Isn't that flim flam? It's been called pseudocytes, which is why this episode doesn't focus much on it.

Instead, we're talking all about actual forensic handwriting analysis and signature forgeries and wheels and fraud and court cases.

So that field is technically called graph analysis. And this guest is an expert in that as well as does graphology on the site. So yeah, this episode title is called graphology and this expert does do graphology.

But really, there's not a lot of graphology in this episode. We stick to mostly the scientific penmanship analysis and expert witness stories.

So I was in Nebraska. I was on a tour through the Midwest talking to differentologists. And this was a stop in Lincoln, Nebraska. I think it was Lincoln. It was at her Omaha. Got Nebraska. I'm so sorry.

So I had looked on a site for expert legal witnesses in the area and I'd come across her name as a graphologist before I really understood the distinction.

Anyway, we met at a conference room in the back of a kinkos, which I don't even think they call kinkos anymore, but whatever she came in, she was smartly dressed with curled blonde hair, carrying a folder of paperwork in case we needed visual references.

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