Listening to radio using grass stalks - GIF

[nova_robotics]

They were clearly wearing some medium weight rubber gloves.

Yeah but it's still capacitively coupled through their bodies to ground. You don't have to touch a conductor to become part of a circuit. It's how your cell phone screen works. That's why there are sparks where the plants touch the metal even though there's no ground wire running from the plants completing the circuit. There's no ground wire because the people ARE the ground wire. Probably also why they're visibly in pain a couple times. If it's real. I'm still not 100% convinced, but I'm leaning toward real.