Recorded live at a TEDx Nashville Mixtape, Come Together Music Project host Shaka Mitchell sits down with two Nashville icons: former CMT Senior VP of Music & Talent Leslie Fram (now founder of FEMco) and legendary "Rhinestone Rembrandt" tailor Manuel Cuevas. Across four song categories, they share the stories behind the music that shaped their teenage years, pulled them into country music, helped them through hard seasons, and still gives them hope — from Stevie Wonder and The Rolling Stones to Hank Williams Sr., Johnny Cash, Elvis, and Ronald Reagan.

Recorded live at Analog Nashville as part of the ongoing TEDxNashville Mixtape collaboration with the Come Together Music Project, this episode pairs two men whose public accomplishments almost overshadow the story underneath them — until the music brings it back out.

Blessing Offor is a two-time Grammy-nominated, Dove Award-winning singer-songwriter born in a village in Nigeria and raised in a small town in Connecticut. He is blind, and he will be the first to tell you that isn't the story he's interested in telling.

Dr. Eiman Jahangir is a Nashville cardiologist, author, and public speaker who emigrated from Iran with his family at age 4 and became the 704th person in history to travel to space — after being turned down by NASA's astronaut program more than once.

These two incredible men shared songs that link them to home, their professional pursuits, moments of loss, and times of redemption. Listen to the full playlist HERE.

Recorded as the country approached its 250th birthday, this episode brings together the two people most responsible for building Braver Angels Music — the songwriting community inside Braver Angels dedicated to using music as a bridge across the political divide.

John Carroll is a Nashville-based singer-songwriter and Co-Director of Braver Angels Music. He spent years playing small bars across Tennessee before Braver Angels became the place where his belief in music-as-connection found an organizational home.

Ben Caron is a Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter and Co-Director of Braver Angels Music. Raised in a small farming town in Iowa, he moved to LA to pursue acting before turning fully to music — and later ran his own multi-summer project busing coastal friends into rural communities for service projects and conversation, the work that eventually connected him to Braver Angels.

Listen to the playlist and share it with a friend.