Samantha Brown on Her 'Places to Love' and 25 Years as a Travel Host

Samantha Brown Media

When Samantha Brown was hired to host a show on the Travel Channel back in 2000, she was just happy not to be waiting tables anymore. She’s been on the road ever since, though, and 25 years later is hosting her own show for PBS. Samantha Brown’s Places to Love is about to enter its eighth season, and the show is very much sculpted by the lessons Brown has learned over a quarter-century in the game. Namely, she knows now that it’s the people that make the place.

Of the early days of her career, Brown says, “Being on the road 220 days out of the year was just lonely—I was mostly shooting castles, monuments, and cathedrals, which just naturally puts you in the past.” Long walks at the end of long shoot days helped Brown learn how she really likes to travel: instinctively, intuitively, spontaneously, and socially. “The energy of locals doing their everyday thing really filled me up,” she says. “That’s why, for Places to Love, I make sure the focus is on the people, neighborhoods, and places where you can be a part of the community.”

The last time Brown sat down with us for a chat, on an episode of the Women Who Travel podcast back in 2021, she was reflecting on the year prior, which she—and most of us—spent cloistered in our homes. Now that she’s decidedly back out in the world and the cameras are rolling once more, she joined us to talk about how her viewpoint has changed, trends she’s totally called, and more.

At our 2024 Points of View Summit, you mentioned your current approach to producing Places to Love, which involves a lot of boots-on-the-ground scouting. How did you land there?

It started when I was more of a “hired host” for The Travel Channel, and those shows were really centered on showing you the greatest hits, no surprises. Just like: What is the place known for? That's where we're going to take you. And that was great. But at the end of the day, I just wondered, What else is there? I actually felt a real loneliness and kind of disconnect with the location, and thought, “I guess I'm really not a traveler.”

So, when the cameras were off, I would go for long walks. I would walk a lot to the point where I forgot where I was, or where my hotel was—I was in Paris—and just kind of ventured into real neighborhoods where people lived, and sitting down in their restaurants. This is even before Yelp, so you had to go to know. I loved it—and all of the sudden, I was in a totally different energy. That’s how it all started and it’s a really important part of our production—to figure out what a place is known for and then find the unexpected. Take Asheville, which does beer, but it might also have this lovely little amaro spot and that’s what we’ll feature.

Can you speak a little more on the human element?

I have a beautiful piece of art behind me [right now] by the artist Jenny Pickens from Asheville, North Carolina, that I found on Black Wall Street—a historic neighborhood that they're really trying to bring back. I was wandering, talking to people, and there was [Jenny]. I fell in love with her painting, and I liked her, and boom, there we go.

You’ve mentioned Asheville twice now—can you expand on your apparent love for that city in particular?

I think Asheville is one of those places—Austin, Texas is the other one—that were hidden gems when I started my career. These were the cities that only the cool people knew about, that were just bubbling in their creativity and their metamorphosis. And now, they’re just where everyone wants to be. They are very unhidden. But the creative flow of these cities will never be taken away from them. It truly is their vibe. Asheville is just a place that I've been going to for 25 years; I think we shot our last episode there in 2022. They went through the devastating floods, and your soul aches for them, because it's an energy center, not just for the United States, but really for the world.

Are there any destinations that you thought you couldn’t be surprised by, that you thought you knew it all about, that flipped your expectations?

The Jersey Shore. It was just a title to me; I knew that it brought a lot of joy, that there were beaches. But when I went, I was like, “Holy crap, this place rocks.” We started out in Asbury Park, and just loving the rock-and-roll history there. The great photographer Danny Clinch, who's one of the preeminent rock-and-roll photographers of our time, snuck into the Stone Pony as an underage kid, and took pictures of Cyndi Lauper on her first show. His gallery is there. And then you go down to Cape May, which is so precious and beautiful, and it's got incredible history. Like the Harriet Tubman Museum is there. Harriet Tubman worked there in the 1850s in a hotel in hospitality, and that's where she made money to fund some, not all, of her Underground Railroad trips, because New Jersey was a free state and Delaware wasn't. There's so much great history. There are beautiful independent farms where you can visit and enjoy their produce and their livestock. You know, they slaughter their own pigs. The Jersey Shore, it's such a title. It's so general, and yet the experience is so personal and so unique.

I think a lot of Americans, especially from the coasts, are averse to traveling within the United States for a variety of reasons despite our country’s diversity. You’ve shouted a bunch of destinations within the US. Is that a conscious choice?

I mean, this year we’re doing the entirety of Route 66 for Places to Love, starting in St. Louis and working our way down to Santa Fe through Tulsa, Oklahoma City, going through the Texas panhandle. Next season we’ll complete the entire thing. Last year we were only in Illinois, we just did that one state, and then we're like, oh my God, we gotta do the whole thing. You think there's just not much there. And yet, stopping at these little towns, you talk to people and connect, and you also start to get it. Being in the middle of flat prairie land, I understood why people wanted to live there. We, in New York or California, have a tendency to think we live in the only places where things happen in the United States. But there are hardworking people elsewhere, and boy do they surprise you.

As an example, in [McLean, Texas], we went to this town where there was the Devil's Rope Museum. Devil's rope is barbed wire, and [the museum is] owned by a 90-year-old Texas rancher. The reason he had such a collection of different types of barbed wire is because it was invented, in the early and the late 1800s, at the advent of the patent office. A lot of people thought that if they made a new type of barbed wire, they would patent it and make millions. That never happened for anybody. So I'm talking to the owner, and I have an idea of who he might be, you know, in Texas as a rancher, and I'm in a barbed wire museum. And he turned to me and he said, “The worst thing a man has ever done to another man is use barbed wire against him.” I just thought, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait, roll the cameras. I'm like, we got to talk about that, like, that's that was that, like, hit you. And then he started talking about World War Two, and how all of this space in Oklahoma and Texas was used for POW camps, which I had no idea about. I had no idea the Germans would be shipped here because it was too expensive to have them on the coast. And then, he talked about the border with Mexico and using it against immigrants. He had a very solid idea that it was wrong, that this was something that you should never do.

Season 8 of Places to Love is now airing on PBS, with the anniversary special rolling out starting January 17.

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler

The Latest Stories from Condé Nast Traveler

• Want to be the first to know? Sign up to our newsletters for travel inspiration and tips

• Thanksgiving in Paris Is One of the Most American Things You Can Do

• 15 Unwritten Rules to Know Before Visiting New York City

• Welcome to Park Ranger Instagram—the Most Wholesome Corner of the Internet