The crew talk about a hail cannon, Kate Bush, and the manipulation of weather by the military via Operation Popeye.
Article of Conversation: Hail Cannon
Tropes:
- Humans Are Morons: When told by Tom about how Hail Cannons don't work:Gary: People are firing massive amounts of explosive gases in the air to make a massive boom for no f***ing reason at all?".Tom: ...yes.Gary: I love our race.
- Manipulative Editing: In the bonus material, Tom has to re-record a line from earlier in the recording because of the date he got wrong, then immediately says to the audience that it'll make him look like he didn't get it wrong at all. Gary jokingly suggests "kill them" to preserve the secret.
- Pun: Tom asks what was thrown in the air to make cloud busting happen, and both Gary and Matt go for things called "Buster" (copies of The Great Train Robbery (1978) and dogs called Buster). When Tom asks for Chris' answer, he refuses.
- Speak in Unison: Happens twice; the first time was a genuine fluke, the second time Matt says it was "vaguely scripted":
- The first time it was when Matt suggests that a hail cannon allows one to create hail, Chris and Gary ask "why would you want that?" in the exact same rhythm and cadence.
- The second time was Gary and Matt referencing "Bohemian Rhapsody" after Chris says "thunderbolts and lightning", and the former two say "very, very frightening" in unison.
- Shout-Out:
- To Michael Gambon, which Chris says "Is it a Meteorological event" in an accent rather similar to Gambon's.
- To BRIAN BLESSED!!!!!, when Gary asks if the discovery of shockwaves to affect hail was found by BRIAN BLESSED climbing a mountain shouting "STOP THAT, I'M CAMPING". BLESSED is mentioned again as "BRIAN BLESSED skydiving" when Tom asks what's better than a hail cannon.
- To Queen, more specifically Bohemian Rhapsody's lyrics of "thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening".
- To Star Wars. Tom uses The Force from that series to describe the supposed description of Orgone; the supposed esoteric universal life force.
- To Kate Bush (as her song "Cloudbusting" inspired the Hail cannon concept) and Prince for his song "Purple Rain" (because of a tangent about whether the song was about the US military seeding the clouds with lead iodide creating purple rain; it was not).
- Weather-Control Machine: The Vietnamese Military were seriously looking into this to extend monsoon season in the 1960s, named "Operation Popeye".
