WUOT Staff

Brandon Hollingsworth

Brandon Hollingsworth is your All Things Considered host. He arrived in Knoxville along a circuitous path that began in his home state of Alabama. He was the only kindergartner in his hometown who watched more Tom Brokaw than Big Bird, but never considered news as his career until college.

His radio career began in 2005 at a low-power community college radio station in Birmingham, delivering five-minute newscasts at the top of each hour. A year later, he was named Morning Edition host and news director of campus radio station WLJS in Jacksonville, Ala. He held the position for two years, during which he also became the east Alabama bureau correspondent for Alabama Public Radio, the state's largest public radio network.

Upon his college graduation in 2008, Brandon became Alabama Public Radio's Morning Edition host, based in Tuscaloosa. In his two years with APR, he criss-crossed Alabama to learn more about the state's people and the issues that face them. Some his favorite reporting topics include transportation, history, baseball, regional culture, and the earth sciences.

After nearly five years of waking up before the sun, Brandon decided to retire the alarm clock and seek later hours. It's that desire, plus the challenge of covering new ideas and topics, that brought him to Knoxville.

Brandon's hobbies include playing music, drawing, writing, geology, meteorology, and astronomy. He's a devoted fan of the national pastime; his favorite baseball team is the San Francisco Giants (World Champion San Francisco Giants, thank you very much), and though he'll root for the Smokies, he's a Birmingham Barons fan by birthright. Brandon has visited eight of the nation's 30 major league ballparks, and plans to add to that number as quickly as possible.

His instrument of trade is bass clarinet, though in his years as a high school band member, he played everything from tuba to tenor sax.

Brandon is a 2008 graduate of Jacksonville State University, and holds a B.A. in Communications. He is a native of St. Clair County, Ala., a fact of which he is intensely proud.