December 30, 2025 • 8 mins
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You was listening to the Hammer and Nigel Show. It's
New Year's Eve Eve here on the Hammer and Nigel Show.
I'm Jason Hammer. Big Nightge is out, Chris Hammer is
filling in, going and in studio from the WIBC Newsroom,
John atte Cruz, John at we were talking during the
break here. In addition to being an amazing multifaceted journalist
(00:25):
here at WIBC, you teach like a hip hop dance class, right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I used to professionally dance basically my entire life, and
I went on tour with multiple groups and did all
that stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Did you go on tour with name names?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Oh gosh, I'm it's gonna date me.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I'm older than you are. Don't give me that crap.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Okay, do you know who Black Street is?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah? No, Diggity idyt.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, I went on tour with you.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Do I know who Black Street is? Teddy Riley? Come on, yes,
I was.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I was eighteen nineteen. It was before social media, before
we had the cell phones. I don't have anything from
my time being their back dancer, but I went on
tour with them for abudyear and a half.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So when you're like at a wedding and somebody puts
on no giggoty. Now do you feel like, Okay, it's PTSD,
it's game time. I got to go out there foot
on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Literally don't remember what I even danced to about that,
No clue, it's OLLI blur.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So yesterday we did the biggest stories in Indiana for
twenty twenty five. Today I challenged you to find the
biggest stories in all of America for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yes, I have to tell you I had a little
bit of a hard time. There's so many things that
happened this year. Once I started kind of backtracking and
seeing all the big news that happened throughout the United States,
I was like, oh my gosh, how am I going
to like whittle all this down to five? So again
I went a chronological order, and of course we had
to start with the inauguration of President Trump.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Okay, so we're going chronological order here. These aren't like
your one through five rank, this is chronological chronological.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah. So I started in January. So January, here we
are January twentieth, as he was sworn in as a
forty seventh president of the United States, and I thought
that was obviously a really big deal considering where we
were the past few years, and that was a major change.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
And it seemed like the inauguration went a little smoother
than his first one. You had like some actual bands
that wanted to perform, you didn't have Sean Spicer up
there going it was the biggest gathering in the history
of humanity, Like, it seemed like it went a little smoother.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yes, absolutely, And then we fast forward to March, where
I think things started to get a little dicey when
it came to the topic of immigration. I think March
is when it really first started to hit, and that's
when the whole Salvador in prison came up. And then
I still really started to hammer in on lots of
deportations and all that. And I actually just recently looked
(02:42):
at the Homeland Security website and as of September they
have deported two million people or have self deported in total.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
The self deportations are amazing to me. So you've got
a group of people here saying, all right, if it
means I'm going to have a chance to maybe come back,
I will do it the right way here, right. I
think that's fascinating I think that's the goal. This is
what you're looking for.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Right, absolutely, yes, So I think that was a big deal,
And honestly, I think it still carries over because even
now I think some of that immigration stuff is carrying
over through everything that's happening in Minnesota with the whole
fraud happening there. So then we went through March and
then here we go with May and we have the
fourteenth Pope, Pope.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Leo, an American Poe.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
An American pope from Chicago.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
All the deal is a White Sox. I knew Chris
was going to go there.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I'm not going to get behind this.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Guy, right, get there.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
The only person that could fix the White Sox is
the Lord. So they're going to need all the help
they can get over there, right right.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
That's uh, that's something because if you go back and
watch like video of the White Sox World Series run
from a number of years ago, one of the shots
shows him in the crowd, like the Pope was there.
Divine Intervention was on the south side of Chicago. I
just hope he doesn't park the popemobile down there because
somebody's gonna steal it or it'll be on blocks by
(04:00):
the time he gets out there to see.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It again, right, So yeah, I thought that was a
big deal.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Especially in the newsroom.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
We were just getting like play by play of everything
happening with him when that was all happening. And then
obviously I want to fast forward. This is a number
four heading into September Charlie Kirk's assassination, which just completely
I felt like the world just literally stopped.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
This was what it sounded like on our program. This
is the audio of when we made the official announcement
that Charlie had passed. Now, we had been getting tips
for about fifteen minutes from unverified sources. He's dead, he's
passed away. No, he's on life support. As you know,
John Att, there's so much, so much coming in and
(04:40):
a lot of it's wrong when stories break right out
of the gate, so you gotta be right. You have
to nail it. And we found out when President Trump
put something on social media and this was from the
Hammer and Nigel Show that day. Nige, we had been
seeing drips and drabs of information coming to us the
last thirty so minutes. We wanted to make sure we
(05:04):
had a reliable source here. I feel like this is
about as good as you're going to get. President Trump
writes on truth Social Quote, the great and even legendary
Charlie Kirk is dead. No one understood or had the
heart of the youth in the United States of America
better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by all,
(05:26):
especially me, And now he's no longer with us. Milania
and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife, Erica
and family. Charlie, we love you. The shooter is still
at large, And that was live coverage for when we
saw the post by President Trump announcing the death of
(05:46):
Charlie Kirk. And at the time, like Nigel points out,
we didn't know who the shooter was. Somebody had been
taken into custody and pictures were taken, but it wasn't
the guy. And now we know that the suspect Tyler Robbinson,
and would be found a couple days later.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, it was just a crazy time, as you know,
like we were in the newsroom just like floored and
then again just getting all the information and then kind
of like you're in this space of like is this
really happening right now?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I think everybody remembers where they were when they saw
or first heard about this story. I was at you, Indy,
I just got done with the class. I was working
on a project. And the way I found out about
it is all the videos of it that were being
shared on Twitter that were just disturbing and very disturbing.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And you know, my son, he's going to be sixteen
this weekend, and he saw it at school and at
the time did not have a phone.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
But yeah, there are some very up close shots that
just break your heart. I feel like that's probably the
biggest story of twenty twenty five. But what else do
you have that rounds out your list?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Last one rounds out? I just I think this towards
the end of the year, with elections coming on, just everything.
The lovely mayor elect over in New York City Zorn MANDOMI, Yeah,
I mean that's a I think that's a big deal.
A Democrat who is a socialist is completely re turning
what politics are going to look like in New York City.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, it's going to be an experiment for sure. Absolutely.
You know, it's never worked anywhere else. Now. Any socialists
will tell you, well, I do a different type of socialism. Okay,
it's never worked anywhere else, but you do you.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
We'll find out as a socialists. Nobody in the history
of humanity has ever done socialism correct apparently, is what
I'm learning from these people.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
It's not that it fails all the time, it's nobody's
done it, done it correctly. Excellent, interesting, john Nette. Tomorrow
we will be talking about celebrity deaths and the biggest
pop culture entertainment stories of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
That'll be fun.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
If somebody wants to follow you on social media or
challenge you to a hip hop dance contest, how can
I find you?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
All my handles is just the John at Cruz. I'm
everywhere on social media. Can find me and connect with me.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Who would be better in your dance class? Chris Hammer,
who is twenty one years old, but he's like a
fifty year old, or me.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
He's like a fifty year old.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Oh, he's the oldest twenty one year old you've ever
seen in your life.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I am horrible at dancing.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
You do not want to say.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I have to say, you have a couple of shots
at tequila and you'll do perfect.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
I'll be like Elaine out there doing the little kicks.
Johnette thank you. It's the Hammer and Nigel Show.
You was listening to the Hammer and Nigel Show. It's
New Year's Eve Eve here on the Hammer and Nigel Show.
I'm Jason Hammer. Big Nightge is out, Chris Hammer is
filling in, going and in studio from the WIBC Newsroom,
John atte Cruz, John at we were talking during the
break here. In addition to being an amazing multifaceted journalist
(00:25):
here at WIBC, you teach like a hip hop dance class, right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I used to professionally dance basically my entire life, and
I went on tour with multiple groups and did all
that stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Did you go on tour with name names?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Oh gosh, I'm it's gonna date me.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I'm older than you are. Don't give me that crap.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Okay, do you know who Black Street is?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah? No, Diggity idyt.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, I went on tour with you.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Do I know who Black Street is? Teddy Riley? Come on, yes,
I was.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I was eighteen nineteen. It was before social media, before
we had the cell phones. I don't have anything from
my time being their back dancer, but I went on
tour with them for abudyear and a half.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
So when you're like at a wedding and somebody puts
on no giggoty. Now do you feel like, Okay, it's PTSD,
it's game time. I got to go out there foot
on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Literally don't remember what I even danced to about that,
No clue, it's OLLI blur.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
So yesterday we did the biggest stories in Indiana for
twenty twenty five. Today I challenged you to find the
biggest stories in all of America for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yes, I have to tell you I had a little
bit of a hard time. There's so many things that
happened this year. Once I started kind of backtracking and
seeing all the big news that happened throughout the United States,
I was like, oh my gosh, how am I going
to like whittle all this down to five? So again
I went a chronological order, and of course we had
to start with the inauguration of President Trump.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Okay, so we're going chronological order here. These aren't like
your one through five rank, this is chronological chronological.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah. So I started in January. So January, here we
are January twentieth, as he was sworn in as a
forty seventh president of the United States, and I thought
that was obviously a really big deal considering where we
were the past few years, and that was a major change.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
And it seemed like the inauguration went a little smoother
than his first one. You had like some actual bands
that wanted to perform, you didn't have Sean Spicer up
there going it was the biggest gathering in the history
of humanity, Like, it seemed like it went a little smoother.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yes, absolutely, And then we fast forward to March, where
I think things started to get a little dicey when
it came to the topic of immigration. I think March
is when it really first started to hit, and that's
when the whole Salvador in prison came up. And then
I still really started to hammer in on lots of
deportations and all that. And I actually just recently looked
(02:42):
at the Homeland Security website and as of September they
have deported two million people or have self deported in total.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
The self deportations are amazing to me. So you've got
a group of people here saying, all right, if it
means I'm going to have a chance to maybe come back,
I will do it the right way here, right. I
think that's fascinating I think that's the goal. This is
what you're looking for.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Right, absolutely, yes, So I think that was a big deal,
And honestly, I think it still carries over because even
now I think some of that immigration stuff is carrying
over through everything that's happening in Minnesota with the whole
fraud happening there. So then we went through March and
then here we go with May and we have the
fourteenth Pope, Pope.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Leo, an American Poe.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
An American pope from Chicago.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
All the deal is a White Sox. I knew Chris
was going to go there.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I'm not going to get behind this.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Guy, right, get there.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
The only person that could fix the White Sox is
the Lord. So they're going to need all the help
they can get over there, right right.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
That's uh, that's something because if you go back and
watch like video of the White Sox World Series run
from a number of years ago, one of the shots
shows him in the crowd, like the Pope was there.
Divine Intervention was on the south side of Chicago. I
just hope he doesn't park the popemobile down there because
somebody's gonna steal it or it'll be on blocks by
(04:00):
the time he gets out there to see.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It again, right, So yeah, I thought that was a
big deal.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Especially in the newsroom.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
We were just getting like play by play of everything
happening with him when that was all happening. And then
obviously I want to fast forward. This is a number
four heading into September Charlie Kirk's assassination, which just completely
I felt like the world just literally stopped.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
This was what it sounded like on our program. This
is the audio of when we made the official announcement
that Charlie had passed. Now, we had been getting tips
for about fifteen minutes from unverified sources. He's dead, he's
passed away. No, he's on life support. As you know,
John Att, there's so much, so much coming in and
(04:40):
a lot of it's wrong when stories break right out
of the gate, so you gotta be right. You have
to nail it. And we found out when President Trump
put something on social media and this was from the
Hammer and Nigel Show that day. Nige, we had been
seeing drips and drabs of information coming to us the
last thirty so minutes. We wanted to make sure we
(05:04):
had a reliable source here. I feel like this is
about as good as you're going to get. President Trump
writes on truth Social Quote, the great and even legendary
Charlie Kirk is dead. No one understood or had the
heart of the youth in the United States of America
better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by all,
(05:26):
especially me, And now he's no longer with us. Milania
and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife, Erica
and family. Charlie, we love you. The shooter is still
at large, And that was live coverage for when we
saw the post by President Trump announcing the death of
(05:46):
Charlie Kirk. And at the time, like Nigel points out,
we didn't know who the shooter was. Somebody had been
taken into custody and pictures were taken, but it wasn't
the guy. And now we know that the suspect Tyler Robbinson,
and would be found a couple days later.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, it was just a crazy time, as you know,
like we were in the newsroom just like floored and
then again just getting all the information and then kind
of like you're in this space of like is this
really happening right now?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I think everybody remembers where they were when they saw
or first heard about this story. I was at you, Indy,
I just got done with the class. I was working
on a project. And the way I found out about
it is all the videos of it that were being
shared on Twitter that were just disturbing and very disturbing.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And you know, my son, he's going to be sixteen
this weekend, and he saw it at school and at
the time did not have a phone.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
But yeah, there are some very up close shots that
just break your heart. I feel like that's probably the
biggest story of twenty twenty five. But what else do
you have that rounds out your list?
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Last one rounds out? I just I think this towards
the end of the year, with elections coming on, just everything.
The lovely mayor elect over in New York City Zorn MANDOMI, Yeah,
I mean that's a I think that's a big deal.
A Democrat who is a socialist is completely re turning
what politics are going to look like in New York City.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, it's going to be an experiment for sure. Absolutely.
You know, it's never worked anywhere else. Now. Any socialists
will tell you, well, I do a different type of socialism. Okay,
it's never worked anywhere else, but you do you.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
We'll find out as a socialists. Nobody in the history
of humanity has ever done socialism correct apparently, is what
I'm learning from these people.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
It's not that it fails all the time, it's nobody's
done it, done it correctly. Excellent, interesting, john Nette. Tomorrow
we will be talking about celebrity deaths and the biggest
pop culture entertainment stories of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
That'll be fun.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
If somebody wants to follow you on social media or
challenge you to a hip hop dance contest, how can
I find you?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
All my handles is just the John at Cruz. I'm
everywhere on social media. Can find me and connect with me.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Who would be better in your dance class? Chris Hammer,
who is twenty one years old, but he's like a
fifty year old, or me.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
He's like a fifty year old.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Oh, he's the oldest twenty one year old you've ever
seen in your life.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
I am horrible at dancing.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
You do not want to say.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I have to say, you have a couple of shots
at tequila and you'll do perfect.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
I'll be like Elaine out there doing the little kicks.
Johnette thank you. It's the Hammer and Nigel Show.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics
Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.