Humanitas Industry 101 Podcast

Since 1974, Humanitas has honored professional film and television writers whose work explores the human condition in a nuanced and meaningful way.

As a part of this effort, Humanitas created the Kieser Award, named in honor of Humanitas’s founder– it honors those who have dedicated their substantial talent, work, and resources to creating transformative stories that celebrate our common humanity.

In early September, Humanitas presented the 2026 Kieser Award to Winnie Holzman at The Humanitas Prizes Award Show & Toast.

This episode is the recording of Winnie’s inspiring acceptance speech, which we wanted to share with you.

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Learn more about Humanitas’ Industry 101 event series on our website, http://humanitasprize.org.

Link to the full Humanitas Industry 101 resource collection here: http://www.humanitasprize.org/101-resource-page.

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Credits:

Host/Writer-Producer: Michelle Franke

Featuring: Winnie Holzman

Audio Editor-Producer: Campbell Moore

Writer-Producer: Daniel Plagens

Mixing/Mastering: Jeff Schoeny at Voxstop

Music: "We Don't Stop" and "Got to Be" by Mooveka

Music Licensing: Artlist.io

Recorded at The Humanitas Prize Awards Show & Toast in September 2026 at Avalon Hollywood.

This episode comes from a writing workshop with Winnie Holzman and Richard Kramer recorded on February 2, 2002.

They talk about process, collaboration, and finding a way to make your writing truthful. Winnie and Richard worked together on thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Once and Again, which they were working on at the time of recording.

Richard is an Emmy and Peabody award winning writer, director and producer of numerous TV series, including Tales of the City, St. Elsewhere, Queer as Folk, and most recently Soundtrack.

Winnie Holzman is known as the creator and showrunner of My-So-Called-Life, for which she received an Emmy nomination, and for her work on the Broadway musical Wicked and its Academy Award-winning film adaptations.

Winnie was also recently honored at the 2026 Humanitas Prizes Awards Show and Toast with the Kieser Award. Her acceptance speech will be released as a bonus episode.

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Learn more about Humanitas’ Industry 101 event series on our website, http://humanitasprize.org.

Link to the full Humanitas Industry 101 resource collection here: http://www.humanitasprize.org/101-resource-page.

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Credits:

Host/Writer-Producer: Michelle Franke

Featuring: Winnie Holzman and Richard Kramer

Audio Editor-Producer: Campbell Moore

Writer-Producer: Daniel Plagens

Mixing/Mastering: Jeff Schoeny at Voxstop

Music: "We Don't Stop" and "Got to Be" by Mooveka

Music Licensing: Artlist.io

Today’s Industry 101 Podcast episode comes from a writing workshop with Fay Kanin recorded on January 19, 1995.

Fay Kanin was a screenwriter and playwright who began working in Hollywood in the early 1940s, often in collaboration with her husband, Michael Kanin. Across her six decades as a writer, actor, producer, and activist, Fay built a reputation as an excellent writer and a steadfast advocate, most notably for women and film preservation.

She was nominated for an Oscar and a Tony Award, received the ACLU Bill of Rights Award alongside several Emmys and Peabodies, and was the first woman to serve as the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ president for four terms. Fay also received the Humanitas Kieser Award in 2003 and was nominated for a Humanitas Prize for Friendly Fire. She passed away in 2013 at the age of 95.

In this episode, Fay discusses why she became a writer, how she chose her projects, and the themes that she kept returning to.

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Learn more about Humanitas’ Industry 101 event series on our website, http://humanitasprize.org.

Link to the full Humanitas Industry 101 resource collection here: http://www.humanitasprize.org/101-resource-page.

Today’s episode comes from a writing workshop with Eric Roth recorded on March 21, 2000—the same year he won a Humanitas Prize for his work on The Insider. Eric discusses how he chooses what to write, his process, and a little bit about his Oscar-win for Forrest Gump.

Eric Roth is a six-time Oscar nominee and won in 1995 for his work on Forrest Gump. In 2012, he received the WGA Laurel Award for Lifetime Achievement. Eric won the feature film Humanitas prize for Munich in 2000.

His extensive filmography includes: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, A Star is Born, Mank, Dune Part One, Forrest Gump and many more.

As a brief introduction, we caught up with Eric recently and asked him to reflect on his life as a writer: what's changed and what's stayed the same over the past 25 years.

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Learn more about Humanitas’ Industry 101 event series on our website, http://humanitasprize.org.

Link to the full Humanitas Industry 101 resource collection here: http://www.humanitasprize.org/101-resource-page.

Today’s Industry 101 Podcast episode comes from a writing workshop with John Wells recorded on April 17, 1993.

John discusses why he became a writer, humanistic writing, and gives his advice on writing characters, and the role of the writer’s thematic point of view when working on a script.

He is a producer, writer, and director who has produced over twelve thousand hours of television across his 30+ year career in entertainment.

John’s work includes series such as ER, The West Wing, Shameless, Maid, and The Pitt and films including August: Osage County, Burnt, and The Company Men.

His shows have received over 300 Emmy nominations with 60 Emmy wins and 5 Peabody Awards. He has been nominated for 7 Humanitas Prizes, and won in 2006 for an episode of The West Wing.

John previously served as President of the Writers Guild of America, West from 1999 to 2001 and from 2009 to 2011.

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Learn more about Humanitas’ Industry 101 event series on our website, http://humanitasprize.org.

Link to the full Humanitas Industry 101 resource collection here: http://www.humanitasprize.org/101-resource-page.

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Credits:

Host/Writer-Producer: Michelle Franke

Featuring: John Wells

Audio Editor-Producer: Campbell Moore

Writer-Producer: Daniel Plagens

Mixing/Mastering: Jeff Schoeny at Voxstop

Music: "We Don't Stop" and "Got to Be" by Mooveka

Music Licensing: Artlist.io

Our first episode comes from a discussion between legendary writers, directors, and producers, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, recorded December 11, 1993.

While the business of screenwriting has changed dramatically over the last 32 years, their advice about structure and character remains evergreen.

With five Emmys, an Oscar, and multiple Humanitas Prizes between them, Marshall and Ed have a storied partnership spanning film and television.

They met as students at American Film Institute (AFI) and have gone on to write, produce, and direct projects such as The Last Samurai, Legends of The Fall, Traffic, Thirtysomething, and My So-Called Life.

This conversation was moderated by Greg Apparcel during the Humanitas Master Writers Workshop series held in the early 90s through the early 2000s.
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If you’d like to hear more about Ed Zwick’s time in Hollywood his memoir, Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood, was released in 2024 by Gallery Books and is available where books are sold.

Books and authors mentioned in the episode include Shakespeare (King Lear), The Oresteia, Stanislavski, Uta Hagen, and Aristotle.

Link to the full Humanitas Industry 101 resource collection is here: https://www.humanitasprize.org/101-resource-page.

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Host/Writer-Producer: Michelle Franke

Featuring: Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick

Audio Editor-Producer: Campbell Moore

Writer-Producer: Daniel Plagens

Mixing/Mastering: Jeff Schoeny at Voxstop

Music: "We Don't Stop" and "Got to Be" by Mooveka

Music Licensing: Artlist.io