The story behind new podcast
The Apology Line sounds like film noir, but it s all real. Host Marissa Bridge recalls how her late husband, conceptual artist Allan Bridge, became dangerously infatuated with a 1980 project wherein he set up a toll-free phone line that allowed people to anonymously repent for past trespasses on an answering machine, with compilations of those messages released to the public. The calls ranged from mundane to harrowing, and the concept eventually coalesced around a strange community of regulars, including lonely hearts, pranksters and a menacing figure that Bridge comes to believe is a prolific serial killer. I binged all six episodes in one go, being pulled into the world of confession and obsession much like its subject. (NATHAN WEINBENDER)