Louis Meyers can seem like a holdover from a bygone era in broadcasting, when television interviewers had a more formal and reserved style. As host of “Meet the Author,” a monthly talk show on Town Meeting TV in Burlington, Meyers never makes himself the center of attention. Invariably dressed in a navy suit and tie, he presents a serious, near-expressionless visage, like that of David Brinkley or Jim Lehrer. One almost expects the show to air in black and white.
Each month, the Shelburne physician, who’s also a voracious reader, sits down with an author to discuss some meaty book and how it came to be. Meyers, 70, is neither a journalist nor employed by a network affiliate; semiretired, he works part time as a hospitalist at Rutland Regional Medical Center. Yet somehow he’s managed to secure an impressive lineup of guests since launching the show in January.
Among them is Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and op-ed columnist for the New York Times. “Please call me Nick, because I’m aging and graying each time you call me ‘Mr. Kristof,’” the reporter implored Meyers during their September 19 interview about Kristof’s 2024 memoir, Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.
“What is it about the New York Times that … sustains you?” Meyers asked him.
“There is an enormous commitment to covering important things around the world,” Kristof replied. For example, he said, during the Iraq War a single reporter’s drive from the Baghdad airport to downtown cost the newspaper $10,000 for security protection. While readers didn’t know about that investment, Kristof said, “It was important for understanding the world and what our soldiers were going through.”
“Meet the Author” has also featured Karen Tumulty, longtime political columnist for the Washington Post and author of the 2021 biography The Triumph of Nancy Reagan; Terri Thal, Bob Dylan’s first manager and author of 2023’s My Greenwich Village: Dave, Bob and Me; and Ian Urbina, a Pulitzer Prize-winning member of the New York Times investigative team that broke the 2008 story about then-New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s patronage of sex workers. Meyers interviewed Urbina in June about his 2019 book, The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier, concerning the more than 50 million people worldwide who work at sea on freighters, commercial fishing vessels or recreational cruise ships, often in horrendous conditions.
In October, Meyers will have arguably his most impressive interview subject to date: Anthony Fauci, renowned physician, immunologist and public health policy adviser to several presidents. They will discuss Fauci’s 2024 memoir, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service.
How does a medical doctor with no journalism training convince prominent authors to appear on an obscure community-access television show? In short, by extending them or their agents an invitation. In Kristof’s case, Meyers simply emailed him directly.
“Why not? The worst they’re going to say is no,” said Meyers, who has yet to be rejected. “I tell my authors that people all over Vermont will have an opportunity to see this.”
Technically, that’s true. “Meet the Author,” which is produced by CCTV Center for Media & Democracy in Burlington, airs at various times throughout the month on Town Meeting TV, a regional government-access channel serving 25,000 cable subscribers in Chittenden County. CCTV is also a member of the Vermont Access Network, an association of 24 community media access centers that serve 100,000 cable households statewide. Comcast subscribers across the state can watch “Meet the Author” on channel 1087; the show is also available to more than 1,500 media access centers around the U.S. It can be streamed online, too, through CCTV and YouTube.
“I’m interested in people and their stories.”
Louis Meyers
Even in Vermont, Meyers isn’t a household name, despite his TV presence and his multiple campaigns for elected office. Since moving to the state in 2012 from Alexandria, Va., the moderate Democrat has lost three bids for a seat in the state Senate. In 2022, he ran in the Democratic primary for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing to now-Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.).
A native of Bethesda, Md., Meyers remembers taking a Myers-Briggs personality test in high school, which suggested that he might do well as a journalist. Instead, Meyers pursued a graduate degree in social work, then worked as a probation officer for several years before going to medical school. What do his varied life pursuits all have in common?
“I’m interested in people and their stories,” he said. “It’s why I became a primary care physician.”
“Meet the Author” isn’t Meyers’ first foray into broadcasting. For two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, he hosted a live call-in program on WDEV in Waterbury and other Vermont stations. On “Health Care Today,” Meyers regularly featured guests with impressive medical credentials, including physicians and researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health. On one show, Meyers interviewed two women cardiologists from the Cleveland Clinic about women’s heart health; on another, he discussed migraines with the chief of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The show ended its run in 2022 when Meyers launched his bid for Congress. At the time, he said, WDEV listeners weren’t as engaged on health care topics as he had hoped, as evidenced by the show’s sparse number of callers.
“[Sportscaster] Brady Farkas would come on after me to read the news and say, ‘I have four free tickets to the Red Sox this weekend,’ and the phones would light up,” the doctor lamented. Evidently, migraines and prostate problems were no match for the Green Monster.
A few months after ending his Congressional campaign, Meyers resurrected “Health Care Today” on Town Meeting TV but gave it up after 10 episodes because he wasn’t attracting guests with national reputations.
With his latest program, Meyers seems to have found a more workable formula. Even prominent and award-winning authors appear willing to give him an hour of their time for a remote interview that promotes their books.
Meyers has a slow and methodical interview style, which reflects his more than three decades as a primary care physician. Soft-spoken and patient, he does something that interviewers frequently neglect: He listens to his subjects and lets them talk without interruption.
“He’s a good interlocutor. You go on some people’s show, and they do all the talking,” said Hinesburg author Bill Schubart, whom Meyers interviewed in February about his 2017 novel Lila & Theron. Though Schubart initially felt that their conversation was “a little all over the place,” he said, “I think he’s finding his feet, and that’s a good thing. He’s an honest guy.”
Meyers, who said he looks up to such interviewers such as PBS’ Charlie Rose, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and NPR’s Terry Gross, may not be as polished as the seasoned journalists he tries to emulate. Still, for readers in search of an in-depth discussion, his disarming manner and egoless delivery on “Meet the Author” may be just what the doctor ordered.
New episodes of “Meet the Author” air throughout the month on Town Meeting TV and can be streamed at cctv.org.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Book ’Em, Lou | A perennial political candidate talks with noteworthy authors on his new TV show”
This article appears in Oct 1-7 2025.
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