Ramtin Arablui

Thomas Coltrane.

And we want to give a special shout out to producer Lawrence Wu, who I'm sure you've heard on the credits before.

He's been with us since we started ThruLine about seven years ago.

And actually, really, even before we started it.

He was burning the midnight oil with me and Ramtin back when the show was just an idea in our heads.

I can't say enough how grateful we are that he took a chance on us.

Thank you, Lawrence, for building the show with us and helping to make it better.

We're really going to miss you.

Thanks to Augie Nuzzer, Ellis Oriola, Mark Roth, Luther Pearson, Christy Miles, and Ryan Muzzy for their voiceover work.

Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes...

Thanks for listening.

Hey, it's Run.

In this month's ThruLine Plus episode, our producers take us behind the scenes of making our episode on the first transatlantic cable.

To listen to these insider bonus episodes every month, sign up for ThruLine Plus at plus.npr.org slash ThruLine.

We start our story with a contested presidential election, the election of 1800, one of the most partisan showdowns in our country's history.

The country was still pretty new, and everybody was trying to figure out how this democracy thing was going to work.

Things like trade, taxation, foreign relations, state versus federal power.

The Federalists, the party of incumbent President John Adams, and the Democratic Republicans.

The party of candidate Thomas Jefferson.

The Federalists wanted more stability.