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Army veteran and his civilian buddy create a YouTube cooking show where they talk about what it really takes to get veterans — and others — to open up about the hard stuff.

Take two Alabama natives, relocate them to the nation’s capital, mix well and let them marinate on difficult topics.

That’s the recipe for “Eat Your Feelings,” a cooking and storytelling show created by Army veteran Cory Brown and co-hosted by strategic communications pro Sam Nathews. This week’s features special guests Brown and Nathews who talk about what it really takes to get veterans — and others — to open up about the hard stuff.

The answer, it turns out, might be as simple as preparing and sharing a meal.

Brown served in the Army for 16 years, including time doing convoy security and route reconnaissance in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. Like a lot of veterans, he came home carrying baggage beyond what he stuffed in his duffel bag. And like a lot of veterans, he watched those around him struggle quietly for years before some of them stopped struggling altogether.

“Since 2008, we’ve lost like 15, 16, 17 people to suicide,” Brown says. “And the first several of them — we’re talking about a cavalry troop, right? So you know everybody in it.”

Then came the phone call about Kevin Zachary, his closest battle buddy.

“It’s one thing when there’s a guy in another platoon and you know him,” Brown says. “It’s another thing when it’s a guy that was in your squad, your section, that you hung out with every day for months in a combat zone. It hits different.”

That loss — and a long drive from Washington, D.C. to Dothan, Ala., for the funeral and back — was a turning point. “I spent all that time on the way back thinking, what am I gonna do now?” Brown says. “I can no longer just sit here and wait for phone calls about guys.”

His answer was “Eat Your Feelings.”

The show’s premise is simple. Brown and Nathews cook a meal together with a guest while talking about grief, loss, identity, the barriers to asking for help, what it means to keep going. The cooking isn’t a gimmick.

“We’re not sitting down in a counselor’s chair staring at each other talking about hard things because that’s what we’re here to do,” Nathews explains. “You’re just standing around in the kitchen at your buddy’s house, slinging stuff on the stove and whatever comes up comes up.”

That dynamic — the chopping, the timing, the small shared focus of making something together — lowers the threshold for honest conversation in ways that a clinical setting often can’t.

“I needed something that was for everybody,” Brown recalls. “I’d seen people struggle in the military and veteran community, but my wife is a nurse — there’s the first responder and healthcare community. I’ve worked in corporate America for 14 years. A lot of us have these struggles.”

He knew he needed something, a catalyst, to start these conversations.

“What can I use as the vehicle to get there?” he wondered. “I knew it had to be something that I was connected with, passionate about. I loved cooking shows. I was finally able to put it into all these feelings inside me, put it into a place that I could like work with it. So ‘Eat Your Feelings’ became like using cooking with me and Sam cutting up.”

What makes “Eat Your Feelings” unusual isn’t just the kitchen. It’s the dynamic between the two hosts.

Brown is the veteran with the story. Nathews is the civilian with the questions — and the willingness to sit with the answers. The two grew up in towns right next to each other in Shelby County, Alabama, and didn’t meet until they both ended up in Washington, D.C. That gap in their experiences, veteran and civilian, gives the show a unique quality.

“The level of service and sacrifice of the men and women that Cory has been fortunate enough to introduce me to,” Nathews says, “is just an incredibly humbling experience.”

Nathews brings his own weight to the table, too. His mother was killed after she was struck by another vehicle in 2021. He came to the show in the middle of that grief. “When you’re going through school, there’s not a course on how to deal with grief or what to expect,” he says. “You’re just kind of out there in the wilderness. And you don’t know if what you’re experiencing is right or normal.”

The brutal honesty and shared feelings expressed on the show shape its appeal.

“One of the things that was most helpful for me,” Nathews says, “is hearing somebody put into words what you’ve been feeling and didn’t know how to describe. And then to say that that’s normal, and even expected.”

Season Two of ‘Eat Your Feelings’

The second season of “Eat Your Feelings” arrives with nine new episodes and a guest list that includes Ryan Manion of the Travis Manion Foundation and other veterans, caregivers, and advocates doing work that matters. The show doesn’t shy away from difficult topics — domestic violence, suicide loss, barriers to therapy — but it doesn’t wallow in them either.

“The format of the show is true to life,” Nathews says, “because there’s no warning signs for when it’s fun and when something heavy is going to turn your world upside down. We’ll be laughing one minute, literally crying the next, and then back to laughing and throwing food at each other. That’s kind of how life is.”

Brown says the goal has always been simple, even when the conversations aren’t.

“Somebody out there who’s not gonna share their story like this — they can relate to it. They can grapple with their grief. They can hear how somebody took that grief and created something. That helps people in their own lives who will never share their story with the world. But they need to know: how do I get past this moment?”

Also, Tango Alpha Lima hosts Stacy Pearsall, Adam Marr and Joe Worley discuss:

• Advances in alternative therapies, including psychedelics, for veterans.

• Blast injuries and traumatic brain injuries.

Don’t miss this inspiring conversation. Subscribe to the Tango Alpha Lima Podcast on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Join a community that celebrates authentic veteran stories and proves that service is a lifelong commitment.

Your stories. Your service. Your community. This is Tango Alpha Lima.

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