On Saturday, Harry reads close family, friends, and former staff will gather in Las Vegas to celebrate his life.

Next week, the former Senate Majority Leader will lie in state in the Capitol, Rotunda.

Reed was born in 1939 in the tiny desert mining town of Searchlight, Nevada.

He was raised in the kind of poverty that only survives in pockets of the U.S. today.

As Chair of the Nevada Gaming Commission, he transformed Las Vegas from a mob-run town to a corporate and labor-run city, earning himself a depiction in Martin Scorsese's 1995 film Casino.

He served 30 years in the Senate, leading the Democratic Caucus from 2005 until his retirement after the 2016 election.

Today, we're joined by three of his close aides.

Ari Ravenhof joined Team Reed in 2005, and was a guest on our recent episode about the history of the Office of the Parliamentarian, which was surprisingly one of the most popular shows we've done.

He later became Deputy Campaign Manager for Bernie Sanders in 2020, and he also worked as the researcher for Reed's memoir, The Good Fight, one of the few political memoirs I've read that was actually a page-turner.

Now Bernie's 2020 campaign manager was Fazz Shakir, who joined Reed's office in 2013. Kristen Orthman joined him in 2010, and like Fazz stayed through his retirement in 2017.

She subsequently became a senior aide to Elizabeth Warren, and is now communications director at the DNC.

So I wanted to start with a quick Reed story and see if it jogged any recollections on him.

And it's something that I told him I booked, and I mentioned the book, not the plug it, but because it's relevant.

So by Ryan's book.

So it was a story about how Harry Reed, during the lame duck of 2010, told the White House that he was going to, and this was his quote, Roll the Dice on repealing Dolan-Ask Dolan Tell.

That they had been trying it for the last two years, they've been trying it for longer, and that hadn't been able to get it.

Obama said, I don't know, man, I really want to get my new start treaty passed. Like that, Obama's number one priority in the lame duck was getting his new start tree.

This is a nuclear non-proliferation agreement that he had struck with Russia.

And he was deeply worried under this theory that losses beget other losses.

That if you put Dolan-Ask Dolan Tell repeal on the floor, and it goes down, then it's like a virus, it's contagious, and it kills everything else.

Because he also wanted to pass DACA, which was struggling even harder than Dolan-Ask Dolan Tell repeal.

And Reed told him, look, I understand your concerns, Mr. President, but I'm going to roll the dice and hung up, which is what he does.

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