The Paul Wells Show

Here's how the Paul Wells Road Show: Calgary went. On Sept. 28, Paul Wells was at the sold-out Martha Cohen Theatre in Calgary to celebrate Alberta's unique place in Canada and ponder its uncertain future. Guests include Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas, economist Trevor Tombe, city builder Kate Thompson and musical guests Jesse Morrison and The Dust Collectors. 

Follow all of Paul Wells's writing at paulwells.substack.com

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author Anne Applebaum joins Paul Wells to discuss her Atlantic magazine cover story, "Empire of Grift." She argues that Donald Trump's foreign policy now has two engines: ideologues who see the Western Hemisphere as America's to run, and grifters using U.S. power to enrich themselves and Trump's circle.

She describes her recent trip to Venezuela, discusses the standoff over Greenland, and discusses MAGA's strange fascination with breaking up Canada.

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Paul Wells interviews Jill Lepore, Harvard historian, New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize winner about The Rise and the Fall of the Artificial State, her latest bestseller.

"Few grand transformations have been more precipitate or more heedless,” Lepore writes, "than the rise of what could soon be “government without consent, even government without humans.”

But she's not here peddling despair. She believes a democracy of and for real people can make a comeback, if people only have faith in institutions and in themselves.

The Paul Wells Show is sponsored by Cameco and The Transition Accelerator. For more of Paul's writing, go to paulwells.substack.com

Toronto-born James Appathurai is one of the top civilians in the administration of NATO, the Western military alliance. As Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Innovation, Hybrid, and Cyber, he helps the alliance respond to a terrifying range of emerging threats, from new weapons to attacks that can hardly even be detected. In a rare interview from NATO headquarters in Brussels, Appathurai tells Paul Wells about all these threats, and about Canada's fast-changing role in NATO.

For more from Paul Wells, read paulwells.substack.com

Pulitzer-winning historian Anne Applebaum is releasing a paperback edition of her book Autocracy Inc., on the autocrats who are eroding democratic freedoms around the world. Her timing is impeccable: she says Donald Trump is moving the United States closer to autocracy. In this week's episode she discusses all the ways Trump is undermining democratic norms, and explains why his attempts to stop the Ukraine war are coming up short.

Author and Globe and Mail writer John Ibbitson joins Paul to discuss his book, The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of Modern Canada. Ibbitson talks about how the decade-long showdown between these two Prime Ministers set the stage for the world we live in today, and why he believes Diefenbaker has been unfairly maligned in the historical record.

This interview was recorded live at the National Arts Centre. It first aired October 18th, 2023

The year since Wayne Eyre retired as Chief of Defence Staff has seen unprecedented change in Canada's national-security environment. Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced plans to boost Canada's defence-related spending from less than 2% of GDP to 5%. The United States has become an unsteady ally. What do those big changes mean for the future of Canada's military? An in-depth conversation.

Veteran foreign correspondent Scott Anderson, who's written for the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair and Esquire, has a new book, King of Kings, about the fall of the Shah of Iran and the rise of the ayatollahs in 1979. He opens with a big claim: that the Iranian revolution changed the world as much as the revolutions in France, the United States or Russia. He tells Paul about the failure of two leaders — the Shah and President Jimmy Carter — to understand what was happening in Iran. 

When John Tory resigned as mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow decided to take another shot at the job. Despite much of the establishment lining up against her, she won. She talks to Paul about that campaign, and about trying to implement her vision for the city on a shorter-than-usual term, while dealing with a $1.5 billion deficit from COVID.

This episode was recorded live at the University of Toronto’s Munk School. It episode originally aired on November 22nd, 2023, a few months after Chow's election.

Was the commission into foreign election interference asking the wrong question about China? That’s what journalist Jonathan Manthorpe thinks. He argues the real issue is that for decades Canada has failed to confront China’s efforts to control Canadians of Chinese heritage and influence Canadian institutions. 

He wrote a book about it, Claws of the Panda: Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada. It was originally published in 2019, but it’s now been updated to take into account everything that’s happened since, right up to the Foreign Interference Commission 

This episode originally aired May 1st, 2025