Al Letson on his play Julius X

You may know Al Letson as a journalist—he’s the host of the popular investigative podcast Reveal. Before that, he created and hosted the public radio show State of the Re:Union. But Letson is also an actor, writer, playwright, and poet. His play Julius X: A Re-envisioning of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare kicks off Folger Theatre's 2025-26 season. Julius X isn’t an adaptation of Julius Caesar — it’s a new play that borrows from Shakespeare’s language, characters, and plot to tell a different story. In Letson’s play, Julius X is a fictionalized version of Malcolm X. The play mixes lines from Shakespeare with Letson’s original poetry and songs. It expands the roles of Shakespeare’s female characters, as well as that of Cinna the poet. Letson discusses the origin story of Julius X - a hint: it involves an audition, his lifelong love for Malcolm X, and the lessons he learned as an artist from Bill Moyers' series, The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 9, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. Final mixing services are provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc. Al Letson is the Peabody Award-winning host of Reveal. Born in New Jersey, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, at age 11 and, as a teenager, began rapping and producing hip-hop records. By the early 1990s, he had fallen in love with the theater, becoming a local actor and playwright, and soon discovered slam poetry. In 2000, Letson placed third in the National Poetry Slam and performed on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam, which led him to write and perform one-man shows. In Letson’s travels around the country, he realized that the America he was seeing on the news was far different from the one he was experiencing up close. In 2007, he competed in the Public Radio Talent Quest, where he pitched a show called State of the Re:Union that reflected the conversations he was having throughout the US. The show ran for five seasons and won a Peabody Award in 2014. In 2015, Letson helped create and launch Reveal, the nation’s first weekly investigative radio show, which has won two duPont Awards and three Peabody Awards and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice. He has also hosted the podcast Errthang; written and developed several TV shows with major networks, including AMC+’s Moonhaven and Apple TV+’s Monarch; and DC Comics recently released his series Mister Terrific: Year One.