This week on Uncommon Knowledge, an interview with former secretary of state George Shultz.

In recent months, George Shultz has joined former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former secretary of defense William Perry, and former senator Sam Nunn to direct the “Nuclear Security Project.” The aim of the project? “[T]o galvanize global action…ending [nuclear weapons] as threat to the world.”

What, I ask in today’s segment of the interview, would Shultz’s old boss, Ronald Reagan, have made of this project?

“President Reagan never subscribed to the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. He said it was immoral, that we keep the peace by being willing to wipe each other out. There’s gotta be a better way. So he advocated the elimination of nuclear weapons publicly, right from the start. He agreed with the concept of deterence—and that’s what we were doing—but he wanted to push things in a different direction.”