The City By the Sea Scores Episode on ‘Samantha Brown’s Places to Love’

Samantha Brown enjoys a traditional clambake (with lobster!) with McGrath Clambakes & Catering.

Samantha Brown has visited seventy-four countries as a travel expert and host of “Samantha Brown’s Places to Love,” now in its seventh season on PBS. So what made the jet-setting host pick Newport for her latest episode? We sat down with the New Hampshire native to get her thoughts on quahogs, mansions, the Gilded Age and Rhode Island’s complicated Colonial history. 

What made you choose Newport?

We love to do places that are top of peoples’ minds as travel destinations, but go at a different time to do two things: One, to make it more attainable and accessible to all — we went to Newport in April [2023] — and two, to help extend the travel season. 

You really explored the history of enslaved people in the city, and of Alva Vanderbilt, who was a noted suffragist. What made you choose those angles?

I love history, but I always love to see it through the lens of ‘What does it mean to us today? What can we learn from it? And who are the people who can give us that perspective best?’ One of my favorite pieces in the show is when [historian] Keith Stokes takes us to God’s Little Acre Burying Ground and to Division Street. On that one street is where an abolitionist and preacher lived, and he lived right next to a captain of a slave ship, and they lived next to a man who rented a home to the man who would go on to found the synagogue there. So in one street, you have this full spectrum of the human experience at that time, and they all lived together. I feel like we need more proof of how we can go forward with each other, and that was a brilliant example. 

Brown tries her hand at clamming with commercial fisherman David Ghigliotty.

You also went clamming during your time here. What did you think?

In every episode we try to focus on sustainability. And commercial fisherman David Ghigliotty was our sustainability focus. And, of course, Rhode Island is famous for — I can’t say it — quahogs?

That was excellent! You did a great job!

I feel like I say ‘qwa-hog,’ and David — rightly so — corrected me in a great Rhode Island way. He was a joy. And we really found out what it meant to be a commercial fisherman. David was telling me that this is something that people don’t want to sign up to do anymore because it’s just too hard. Hopefully, he’s not the last of his kind but it’s something that needs to be saved.

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The Newport episode of “Samantha Brown’s Places to Love” airs Feb. 16 on PBS stations.