Three Questions with Trey Shaar
Producer, reporter and All Things Considered fill-in host Trey Shaar has been a KUT fan since 1988 when he was delivering the Houston Post and San Antonio Express-News before the sun came up.
After nearly 20 years in the television news business – including the local FOX affiliate – he leapt at the opportunity to join the KUT newsroom in 2013.
Trey’s fingerprints are all over the local stories you hear during All Things Considered – from news gathering and copy writing, to editing reporter scripts. He also decides what order stories end up on the air. When host Nathan Bernier is on vacation, Trey takes on hosting duties in addition to producing and reporting.
As the son of a Navy man, Trey moved around a lot. He eventually settled in his mother’s native Texas where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin. When he’s not producing the news, he’s helping to raise two elementary school-aged kids.
Say hello to Trey on Twitter @treyshaar
What are you listening to these days?
Sometime in the past year or so, I was looking for new podcasts and found The Dana Gould Hour. He’s a standup comedian who was a writer on The Simpsons back when it was, well – better. One of the tag lines for the podcast is, “Never an hour.” In fact, it often runs well past three hours, but it’s released more or less monthly, so it’s not hard to keep up, especially given the time required for my commute between campus and South Austin.
And as the world gets more niche-oriented, I’m really into a YouTube series called That Pedal Show. It’s a couple of guys in London who sit around trying out and talking about electric guitar gear. Their enthusiasm is infectious and they’re particularly good players, unlike what you’ll find on so many other gear-demo efforts out there. It’s a great way to take a break from the rest of the world.
Read anything interesting lately?
Among the things I’ve read lately, my favorite has been Springfield Confidential by Mike Reiss.
He used to be head writer on The Simpsons and the book is just chock full of jokes. Another all-time favorite is Alphabet Juice from Roy Blount Jr. (a name Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me fans will recognize). It’s a book about words. Check out this subtitle: “The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory.”
What are you loving about the ATX lately?
Now that March is upon us, we’re hitting the peak of the half of the year I like to call “Not Summer,” when people from the world over travel to Austin and find this paradisiacal wonderland, blissfully oblivious that it’s about to become one of the hottest places on the planet. And while there’s not much to like about Austin’s world-leading traffic congestion, it is conducive to keeping up with marathon-length podcasts – and there’s bound to be something interesting happening on KUT!
