# Separation Anxiety (w/ Paul Wells)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-hatchet-7116624/separation-anxiety-w-paul-wells
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-hatchet-7116624/separation-anxiety-w-paul-wells.md
Podcast: [The Hatchet](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-hatchet-7116624)
Published: 2026-02-06T08:52:13+00:00
Episode link: https://hatchetmedia.ca/p/separation-anxiety-w-paul-wells
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/187059311/422dbf48dec8099ded82f7f30f488c8e.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-hatchet-7116624/episodes/separation-anxiety-w-paul-wells
Duration seconds: 365

## Resource

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit hatchetmedia.ca Just over a year ago, when we were launching The Hatchet , there was one thing in particular that worried me — I’ve never felt fluent in federal politics. I think I knew as much as your average journalist — I followed the news, I had my opinions and I had a general sense of the history. But outside of the occasional story, it just wasn’t a beat that I had a lot of experience covering. Once Trudeau resigned in January 2025, it became clear that Parliament Hill was going to dominate the news cycle. And so over that winter break, I set myself a mission. I was going to learn as much as I could about federal politics. I went back and read through (or at least familiarized myself with) as many of the classic books of Canadian political journalism and history as I could. Most were written by authors that we don’t talk about much anymore, despite the fact that they were giants of their respective eras. Christina McCall-Newman , Jeffrey Simpson , Peter C. Newman , Donald Creighton , John Duffy . And then there were excellent books by more contemporary writers about the Ottawa of the past and present from journalists like Susan Delacourt and John Ibbitson . But none of these writers, great though they may be, made me feel like I was getting a nitty-gritty understanding of federal politics more than Paul Wells. Now of course, like almost every journalist in the country with even a passing interesting in federal politics, I’ve been reading Wells for years. But during that winter, I really immersed myself in his work, his books , past features, his current reporting , the whole shebang. And I have to say, I often found myself disagreeing with him. But I emerged with a new appreciation for what he does. We…

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## Transcript

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