Meet Kevin Leak, South African palm reader to the stars. (Photo: Paula Froelich)

I had no idea what a chirologist was until I went to South Africa. I don’t feel that bad about not knowing — the spell checker and auto-dictionary in Word on my MacBook Air doesn’t know what one is, and I’m convinced that it knows everything. But when my driver in Johannesburg told me out of the blue that he had a friend who used to be a prison warden and was now a chirologist, I pulled a Scooby Doo (your head swings around and you say, loudly, “WHUH?”).

Turns out, chirology is a fancy name for palm reading. Continue reading →