| At sunset on Friday, Jews around the world will gather for the start of Yom Kippur, the yearly Day of Atonement dedicated to self-reflection, fasting, and asking forgiveness for one’s sins. It’s an ancient occasion for saying sorry, carried along to modern times. In 1980, an inventive New Yorker came up with a more high-tech approach for expressing remorse. (High-tech by eighties standards, anyway.) Operating under the name Mr. Apology, the man activated the Apology Line, a phone number that members of the public could call to leave anonymous messages about their misdeeds, or to listen to recordings of other people talking about their bad behavior. Mr. Apology conceived the endeavor as a sort of art project, playing some of the messages at Manhattan’s New Museum the following year. As the hotline caught on, calls increasingly came from outside the city, and the messages grew longer and more detailed. Thirteen years after the Apology Line débuted, The New Yorker’s Alec Wilkinson reported on the relationship that formed between Mr. Apology and one of the callers. In his messages, a man who identified himself as Jumpin’ Jim recalled not the commonplace misconduct normally shared by diallers—infidelity, concealing secrets—but the commission of a grave crime. The confession elicited a strong response from listeners, and soon Jumpin’ Jim was asking to speak to Mr. Apology directly, and then to meet in person. Mr. Apology began to worry about his own safety, and that of Jim’s family. As he figured out how to respond, the circumstances began to seem surreal. “Mr. Apology,” Wilkinson wrote, “felt as if a character from Dostoyevski were living in an outer borough of New York.” | 
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