Transcript
music
“Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.
carrie poppy
Hello, welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal, nuh, bupbupbup, we take part ourselves.
ross blocher
Yup, when they make the claims we show up so you don’t have to. I’m Ross Blocher.
carrie
I’m Carrie Poppy, and in my lap is Ella Poppy.
ross
Hey, Ella.
carrie
She’s licking my hand.
ross
How y’all doing?
carrie
Me and Ella?
ross
Yeah.
carrie
Pretty good, how are you doing?
ross
I’m doing alright.
carrie
Yeah?
ross
Yeah. Nice to be here, recording a podcast.
carrie
Yeah. Same, same. Ella is feisty tonight, so if you hear the ol’ pitter-patters, it’s her.
ross
It’s the sound of feistiness.
carrie
It’s her feet. Segway! Today we’re talking Segways.
ross
About—[Laughs] Do they work?
carrie
Do they? Why is everyone dying on them?
ross
Are they the future of transportation?
carrie
Is that how Ross and I will die? Distinct possibility. No.
ross
Nope.
carrie
We’re talking about detox foot baths.
ross
Yeah, ionic foot baths. So, we tried one. You found it as a Groupon.
carrie
I did. Guys, we love Groupon.
ross
Can we put the word Groupon into the title of our show, is it too late?
carrie
Oh, yeah. Just permanently, you mean?
ross
Oh, Groupon, No, Ross and Carrie.
carrie
Just rolls right off the tongue.
ross
That’s the best place for it right there. So you found this. We’ve been talking about doing this for a while, taking care of our feet. Our feet need some attention.
carrie
You know, you’ve been saying you wanted advice about how to handle your eczema.
ross
Don’t.
carrie
You wish people would write in and—
ross
Don’t encourage them.
carrie
Oh boy.
ross
Yeah, so with one of these detox foot baths you can, as you might guess from the title, remove toxins from your feet. Maybe that’s what I’m missing. Maybe my eczema-ridden foot can be ridded of the eczema if I can remove the toxins. So, let’s do it.
carrie
Get ironic, ionic, iconic foot baths.
ross
So you’d actually found a Groupon for us to buy our own personal ionic detox foot bath basin. It was going to be like 89 bucks, a real steal off of the normal $200. I said, “Well, then we’ll have this big tub sitting around. I don’t want it, do you want it?”
carrie
But counterpoint, we’ll have this big tub sitting around! I mean, we’d probably give it away.
ross
From the image, it looks like it’s actually the same exact brand as the one that we ended up getting treated with.
carrie
We should have got it.
ross
Should we have?
carrie
Probably.
ross
We could have done a live show and had everybody just come up and take turns sticking their feet in the water.
carrie
There we go. Detoxify the whole audience.
ross
That would be a real service.
carrie
Mmhm. But as we’ll learn, I may have detoxified our whole audience based on how magical my personal foot bath was, but I’ll tell you when we get there. So, we went to—
ross
Garden Massage Spa, in Glendale. Not far away.
carrie
No, not far away at all.
ross
And you had gotten an ionic foot detox for two. It said normally that would be $64.
carrie
But it’s a steal at $29.
ross
So only $14.50 per person, so we thought, “Boy, can’t pass that up.”
carrie
54% off? Come on.
ross
Highlights: relaxing ionic foot baths can help detoxify the body—there’s a claim—and leave patrons feeling refreshed.
carrie
There’s another claim.
ross
So yeah, we showed up on a Sunday morning.
carrie
And I should mention, I’d had one of these before.
ross
Oh, really?
carrie
Yes, in college.
ross
Oh yes, and you told me that your feet had been exceptionally itchy.
carrie
Oh my god, yeah. Probably was like, 20, maybe 21. I was in college, and there was a practitioner of what they called traditional Chinese medicine, which is its own branch of naturopathy. There was a practitioner of that in the town where I went to school. Stockton, what up. I went to see her partly out of curiosity, and one of the things she recommended for me was an ionic foot bath. And I said, “Well, I can do that right now. That’s cheap and quick.” Put my feet in this tub of water, and she put a weird device in it and plugged it in, and lo and behold it filled up with a bunch of disgusting, grimy water, and my feet itched so, so, so bad. I remember pulling them out and scratching them and then putting them back in for as long as I could take it and taking them out and scratching—
ross
Wow.
carrie
Yeah, so that’s my association with it going into this.
ross
Is that it does have a real noticeable effect. And Carrie of the time, what did she think in terms of its utility?
carrie
I remember telling someone about it and saying something like, “Yeah, fills up with these colors,” and so on. Looking back at that moment, I feel like it may have been more me trying to convince myself than totally buying in, but I wouldn’t have told you that it was fake or anything at the time.
ross
And I think people most commonly would get this treatment at the sort of spa that we went to, where they offer a bunch of other things, massage, etcetera, but you can also stick your feet in this bath and have it done. I would imagine that’s more common than people buying their own equipment and doing this on the regular at home, as we almost did. So we walked into Garden massage. It was in one of those—
carrie
Strip mall kind of things.
ross
Yeah, like there’s one big store and there’s a bunch of tiny stores all over the place. So this is one of the tiny stores with its own little tiny parking lot.
carrie
You’ve got your Walgreens or whatever and then a bunch of—
ross
A dental… shop.
carrie
Yeah. Exactly.
ross
Out in front there’s a bunch of signs telling you about the various services, including foot detoxification for—
carrie
How much is that?
ross
$20.00
carrie
Oh, wait a minute. I was told that I was getting a steal with $29 for two, because it would be $32 each normally.
ross
Nope. It’s $12 cheaper, even if you go there.
carrie
[Makes an annoyed/suspicious “hnn” sound twice.]
ross
Don’t know where they got that information. But yeah, right there on the poster, they’re telling you about all these benefits. It says, “The ion detox foot cleanse is a professional detoxification treatment—”
carrie
Oh. Okay.
ross
Professional. “—which helps with total body purification—” Oh, total.
carrie
Okay.
ross
“—and enables the body to heal itself.”
carrie
Perfect.
ross
“During the detox, it will begin to rebalance the positive and negative ions in your body.” Oh, we’ve got ions. “The color of the water will change throughout the treatment. This is perfectly normal, as the body releases toxins into the water.”
carrie
Oh, perfect.
ross
Then there’s a little diagram, and it shows how the water looks at the beginning, looks all nice and clear, and then after five minutes, it starts to get a little yellow-y, after ten minutes, more yellow-y, fifteen minutes just looks gross, twenty minutes it gets darker, it’s like a dark orange, and after twenty-five minutes, I don’t know, that one even looks red, like kool-aid?
carrie
Yeah, or like period blood in the toilet.
ross
[Laughs.] And then there’s this chart that we’re going to see in just a little bit that shows you these various colors and what they mean, like what has been extracted from your body. And yeah, they’re also advertising outside, they have the sea salt packet and hot stone, that’s $15 per session, and Chinese meridian detoxification.
carrie
Oh, that’s important.
ross
Oh, we’ve really got to come back to this place.
carrie
Maybe.
ross
You know, we’ve lucked out. We’ve figured out a way to make a podcast where we get to go to the spa.
carrie
That’s true, though, do you like saunas and stuff?
ross
No.
carrie
Yeah, me neither. I hate a sauna.
ross
Really?
carrie
Yeah.
ross
It’s not something I would ever seek out on my own or even think to do. It’s only been through this podcast that I’ve found myself at many a sauna and spa.
carrie
Ugh. Well, I hate extreme temperatures.
ross
Oh, right. Yeah. I’ve only done it for the podcast, like Rhythmia, and would have at Scientology if I’d gotten to the purification rundown.
carrie
You got kicked out.
ross
So yeah, we go inside and there’s a little entrance area, and it’s all bedecked with various kind of southeast Asian decorations. There’s various menus of the different face masks you can get; a skin whitening facial, an anti-aging facial, a gold mask, acne facial, chemical peel treatment, microdermabrasion, oxygen spray, hydrowater.
carrie
Oxygen spray?
ross
Yeah, oxygen spray treatment.
carrie
That’s—what is that, water? [Both laugh.]
ross
Yeah, where they blow air at you? I don’t know. There’s only one way to find out.
carrie
Someone just spits on you.
ross
I hope not. So, there’s all kinds of things that they offer here. This is a full service.
carrie
Alright.
ross
Wait, but—
carrie
Oh? But there’s more.
ross
It’s not full service, though.
carrie
Oh, right. There is a sign up on the wall that lets you know that if you try anything funny they’re going to kick you out. Sexual stimulation is not part of the Garden Massage Spa. If you inquire about sex, you will be asked to leave with no refund. No sexual contact. Hey, it’s a good rule.
ross
And Carrie saw this, which makes it all the stranger that you still requested sex—
carrie
I did not. I did not.
ross
—and got kicked out.
carrie
Fake news.
ross
[Laughs.] Hey, at least you know what fake news actually means.
carrie
Yes, this is true.
ross
Okay, that did not happen. So, yeah, what did we do?
carrie
So, we said to them, “Excuse me, we have a Groupon. Yes, we’ve arrived. People who have a Groupon.” And they were like, “Oh my God, Mister and Miss Groupon. Please. Come on through.” [Ross laughs.] So I gave her my little voucher, she scanned it, we sat down with a folder she had handed us that has the detoxification color reference chart, so we can figure out, okay, whatever color the water turns is going to tell us which toxins have left my body.
ross
Okay, yeah. So what’s the first option?
carrie
Okay, so there’s yellow-green. That means detoxification from the kidney, bladder, urinary tract, or female/prostate area.
ross
Yeah, it says “protate” area, but whatever.
carrie
Kidney, bladder, urine—it seems like someone was just like, “Yellow, that makes me think of urine.”
ross
Yeah, there’s a couple of spelling errors here. It also says on the side that it’s a professional detoxification treatment, which “healps” with total body purification. I guess if you put together helps and heals, you get “healps.”
carrie
Alright, there you go. If your water turns orange, what have you got there?
ross
Detoxification from joints. That’s what you’ve got with orange. Then next is code brown.
carrie
Detoxification from liver, tobacco, and cellular debris.
ross
I was looking online at some other, very similar charts for other foot baths, and it mentioned waste products under brown. So it was a nice little way of saying like, “Oh, maybe we pulled some fecal out of you.”
carrie
Got a little poop out of there. What’s black?
ross
Oh. Well, besides being gross, if your water turns black that’s detoxification from the liver and gallbladder. But what about dark green?
carrie
Detoxification from just the gallbladder.
ross
Okay, none of that liver nonsense. Then you have the option of white foam. This all sounds really gross.
carrie
White foam is mucus from the lymphatic system.
ross
I’m picturing my water that’s like dark green and brown and has white foam on it.
carrie
I got white foam.
ross
Yeah, none of that sounds good. Then you have white speckles.
carrie
That’s mostly yeast. Make a nice bread.
ross
Okay. You could also have black speckles.
carrie
Which is heavy metals.
ross
And red speckles.
carrie
Blood clot materials, though it says blood “cot”, which—
ross
Blood “cot” materials.
carrie
—ugh, you really don’t want that.
ross
Can you imagine—
carrie
—laying on a blood cot? No thank you. So, they pretty quickly ushered us back in the back room.
ross
Yeah, normally when we talk about doing these sorts of treatments we have to fill out a little bit of paperwork.
carrie
Yeah, there was none of that. I don’t think they even asked our names. Although, I had given them my name when I called, but still.
ross
They had no idea who this mystery man was. We weren’t even on a first name basis.
carrie
I knew what her name was, though.
ross
Oh, did you?
carrie
It was… the name of a Pixar film. So we’ll say her name was Brave, but it wasn’t.
ross
So Brave then led us down a hallway with—
carrie
Okay. … I don’t know why I’m saying “Okay,” that’s correct.
ross
—with a bunch of, like, I don’t know, the Christmas icicle lights. Pretty. Long hallway, and those were covered in sort of dangling green fake leaves.
carrie
You know like, if you walk through a doorway at a hippie’s house, there’s going to be something hanging there? That’s what it was.
ross
Well, it’s not like something you would see at a hastily assembled haunted house, but it had that sort of feeling like, “Hey, we bought some lights and we put them up on the wall.” Then as you walk down this hallway, to your left there’s a bunch of little rooms covered by—
carrie
Curtains?
ross
Yeah. So they led us to one of the couples’ rooms.
carrie
Yes! So, it turns out if you get the foot bath for two, you get to go in together, so that’s nice.
ross
Yeah! We got to have a moment.
carrie
There were two blood cots there that we got to lay down on. There was no blood, it was just a cot. And, you know, there was very pleasant music playing.
ross
Yeah, we liked the music, and it wasn’t what we might have expected.
carrie
Yeah, I’m used to, at so many things we go to, they play relaxing music that’s pleasant enough, but has this very new-agey, twangy [imitates twang sounds] quality. And this was just straight up bells. [Imitates bell songs.] Reminded me of church, when people had the hand bells.
ross
Yeah. Later on, they did go back to new-agey kind of music.
carrie
[Resumes twang impression.]
ross
I feel like we should make an album that is just you doing that. Sixty minutes of Carrie [imitates Carrie’s imitation of twanging.]
carrie
If we get to seven thousand new and upgrading members in five months.
ross
So, I’ve got a very alluring picture of Carrie here—
carrie
Oh, yes. I didn’t really realize how alluring I was until I saw this photo.
ross
—on her blood cot, and you’d worn a skirt, as you normally do. I was wearing jeans, so I rolled them up enough that my feet would be exposed.
carrie
I’m always telling Ross, “You gotta wear a skirt to these investigations.”
ross
I was wondering if I should wear shorts, but I figured, eh.
carrie
Ah, it doesn’t actually matter.
ross
It’s not going to be full body immersion or anything.
carrie
[Laughs.] Detox baptism.
ross
There’s a bucket that they bring in. It’s like our amigo friends from Rythmia, but this one is lined with plastic.
carrie
Yes, a thin plastic, like picture a shopping bag from a grocery store.
ross
And I think we’ll later learn why they want that in there, between the water and the bucket itself. Yeah, so then they bring out some warm water, and have us—
carrie
Really warm. It kind of surprised me at first.
ross
I just thought it was pleasantly warm.
carrie
I mean, it grew on me. So the basin that you’re putting your feet in is sort of horseshoe-shaped, right?
ross
At least, mine was just a regular bucket, but on the bottom there was like a plastic grill, essentially, that you put your feet on, and they had the shape of two feet. So I aligned my feet on top of these plastic feet.
carrie
Like putting your feet in the cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
ross
Yeah, except it was, rather than concave, it was extruded upward, with kind of—you know in some bathroom mats, they’ll have it so—
carrie
Yeah, little bumpy-bumpies.
ross
Yeah, thank you, bumps. That’s the—bumpy-bumpies, that was the term I was looking for.
carrie
Trying to think of that exact word.
ross
That minimizes the surface area of your foot that is touching, you know, whatever it may be. I think that was the idea. So I placed my foot on those.
carrie
I probably did, too, but there’s a reason I don’t remember, and that’s that as soon as they left, I took my feet out. I was like, “Oh, if you’re going to leave, let’s AB test this thing.”
ross
Yeah, Carrie and I got to chat as we were waiting for them to grab all their materials. They would kind of disappear for a while, and then we would see their feet as they came back. Then there were other we would hear them interacting with, the people to our right and our left.
carrie
And I’d be like, “Ah, should I put my feet back? No.”
ross
We’re taking photos of everything, and like, our flashes are going off, because it’s very dark in there, and I’m thinking, “Oh no, it’s gonna look really odd that this one room has bursts of light coming from it.” But yeah, we should describe the equipment itself. So, we have our feet in this water, but then they’re also bringing in an electronic device, and the business end that goes in the water with your feet is this black cylinder, and it’s attached via a long electric cable, and then that attaches to a breakout box of sorts. It’s plugged in, and then on the other end of that white box, there’s a power plug that then is extended to the wall. That gizmo has various lights on it.
carrie
Yeah, you gotta turn that on.
ross
Turns on with three green lights. I assume they are indicators of some sort.
carrie
Of being on.
ross
And it says Foot Spa.
carrie
Foot Spa.
ross
It’s kind of like hutzpah. It’s interesting, I had a guy, and you had a gal who set us up. He sort of plunked that in a little basket, so there was a separate basket just for this little breakout box.
carrie
This was all very perfunctory.
ross
Yes. Oh yeah, absolutely. Just, you know, “Oh, we’re trying to get a lot of things done right now. You put your feet—okay, I’m gonna put this here. This is the process, okay, goodbye, fifteen minutes, see you later.”
carrie
Yeah, I asked him twice, “How long, when are you—are you coming back, or what?” He wanted to get out of there.
ross
And you could tell English was not either of their first language, which is—it was kind of minimal communication, just what we need to get by.
carrie
But we got the information we needed. So, it was going to be fifteen minutes, and he was just going to come by at the very end. We’re like, “Oh, perfect. Thank you for leaving us in our laboratory.”
ross
Time for us to thoroughly examine everything. I didn’t unplug anything, but you, you had an idea of how you were going to provide a comparison test.
carrie
Yeah, like I said, just take my feet out, and if my bath does about the same thing as yours does, then it has more to do with whatever is in the water and whatever is in that pump, and less to do with my feet.
ross
So this may remind you, if you’ve listened to our—I think it was our second episode.
carrie
Second.
ross
Yeah, we got ear candling done. So our suspicion, just a suspicion, was that this would be very similar to that investigation, where the ear candles themselves had the wax.
carrie
So the people who make them say you take these conical candles, put them in your ear, light one end on fire, and they suck wax into them. Out of your ear and into them.
ross
Yeah, as if they could generate that kind of vacuum force.
carrie
Right, and as if we need this for some reason?
ross
Right, there’s a couple things wrong with the claim.
carrie
Yeah. If you have excess ear wax, fine, but get some swimmer’s friend.
ross
And so here they are, making the claim that they are using ionized water.
carrie
But back to the ear candling, we demonstrating that you could actually get the same effect by just setting them on fire on the table in front of you.
ross
Right, so that’s what Carrie is doing here, is saying, “Okay, these are supposed to be removing toxins out of our feet, but if I remove my feet from the process, will toxins still show up?”
carrie
Yeah, pretty smart. Yeah.
ross
Carrie’s got a very smart look on her face.
carrie
Or a look like someone who’s in Newsies.
ross
[Laughs] That’s right. So, I kept my feet in the whole time, and the water started turning yellow—
carrie
Woah.
ross
—and then orange—
carrie
Woah!
ross
—to the point where, yeah, I gotta say, the water’s changing color, that’s for sure. It got to the point where it looked like morning pee.
carrie
Ugh. Like really saturated yellow.
ross
Yeah, like you better drink some water kind of pee.
carrie
Right. Okay, so you went from yellow to orange to brown.
ross
It gave me flashbacks to all my foot soaks in my own urine.
carrie
Oh, gross.
ross
Yeah, the photo I took here looks totally like that.
carrie
Oh, that’s disgusting. God.
ross
[Laughs] Look at it, Carrie.
carrie
It looks like orange Crush, you guys. Ugh. Okay, so orange, that’s detoxification from joints. I wonder if the colors, if you’re only supposed to look at the color you end up with, or—
ross
The in between colors, yeah, that’s a good point, because it goes through stages.
carrie
Right, so maybe at first we were dealing with your kidney, bladder, urinary tract, and female/prostate area, and then we got to the detoxification from your joints. And so, did it get past orange? Because that’s only stage two.
ross
You know, I think at the end it was still just an intense orange. I wouldn’t say it was even into the brown category yet.
carrie
Did you get any white foam?
ross
Not that I noticed.
carrie
Okay, white speckles?
ross
Nope.
carrie
Black speckles?
ross
Nope.
carrie
Red speckles?
ross
No. Sorry, it really was just that intense orange by the end.
carrie
Well.
ross
How about you? Yours should have been sparkling white, because your feet barely touched the water.
carrie
I would love to tell you, Ross, but first.
ross
Yes?
carrie
Listeners are probably thinking right now, “God, I love my feet. I’m so glad they’re talking about this, because my feet are my favorite part of my body, and I want to honor them.”
ross
This is the listener saying that?
carrie
Mhmm.
ross
Okay, and they’re probably thinking, “I want to get an ionic foot detox, but I’m not sure yet. The episode’s not over. I don’t know whether this is legit.”
carrie
“It’s probably going to be completely on the up-and-up, but I’m not positive.”
ross
“So, in the meantime, what is something I could order for my feet to show them that I care for them?”
carrie
Exactly, and we have the answer for you. You want to get some Rothy’s.
ross
Rothy’s!
carrie
Rothy’s is making stylish shoes for women and girls out of recycled plastic water bottles. They are super comfortable, and they’re fully machine washable.
ross
And these are fine looking shoes as well.
carrie
Yeah, super cute.
ross
You’ve got some Rothy’s. My wife has some Rothy’s.
carrie
Yeah. They’re nice and soft and pliable. I can’t even liken them to another material, because they’re just very pleasant.
ross
It’s true, and they’re perfect everyday shoes for life on the go. They’re stylish, they’re comfortable, they go with everything from yoga pants to dresses and skirts.
carrie
And Rothy’s comes in an ever-changing array of colors, prints, and patterns, and they’re available in a range of styles, like sneakers, loafers, points, and more.
ross
And—you may have heard us say this before, this is cool—Rothy’s has diverted over thirty-five million water bottles from landfills to make these shoes. That’s right. They’re made from recycled water bottles, or plastics in general. That’s amazing.
carrie
Plus, Rothy’s ship directly in their shoebox, so there’s none of that unnecessary packaging. Thank God. That drives me up the wall.
ross
So, we’ve got a couple methods by which they’re very environmentally friendly. For that, we thank them.
carrie
These are feel-good flats in more ways than one.
ross
Comfort, style, and sustainability. These are the shoes you’ve been waiting for.
ross
Alright, now that you’ve got your shoe situation figured out, you’re probably wondering, “What can I play on my phone?”
carrie
I am.
ross
It’s a logical conclusion.
carrie
When I put on my shoes, the first thing I think is, “God, I wish I could play a game.”
ross
We were talking about Segways. That’s my version of a Segway right there.
carrie
And that’s why you and I are Best Fiends. Segway. Segway.
ross
I see what you did there. That was better than my Segway. Yeah, so there’s an app called Best Fiends. It’s a free download, and it’s a lot of fun. I’ve been playing it. I am now at level 61.
carrie
Wow, that’s a lot.
ross
I was just playing it in front of Carrie just a moment ago, so she could see my progress.
carrie
It seems like it plays an important role in your life.
ross
Oh, wait a second. Okay. My time is now available that I can spin the VIP wheel again, so pardon me while I do that and get six diamonds.
carrie
Oh, I’m watching it happen.
ross
Oh, I get to spin again. Oh, six diamonds again. Alright, I’ll take them. I got 1,968 diamonds, things are looking up. What I like about it is that it’s not time-based, so you don’t have to quickly do something. You can look at the board and think, “Okay, I want to connect the leaves here, now I need to go to the mushrooms.” So, you’re clearing stuff to accomplish these goals, so you have to either knock out a bunch of crates, or you’ve got to get a certain number of mushrooms, or you’ve got to take down seven slugs. Then if you beat all the goals, then you get all these extra little rewards and stuff, like an awesome bomb that clears the whole board.
carrie
Let me see a fiend. I have a feeling the fiends are going to be the best part.
ross
There we go. Those.
carrie
Aw, yeah, we got cute little fiends, you guys. Okay, so they’re little bugs with big buggy eyes, and slightly anthropomorphized.
ross
Right, yeah. Like the purple one.
carrie
This one?
ross
Well, that’s the slug.
carrie
She’s cute.
ross
Yeah, well, I’m attacking her.
carrie
Oh.
ross
Though, she doesn’t die or anything. She just gets pushed off to the side, because she’s in the way or whatever. But yeah, there’s five different colors of these fiends, and then you get new fiends and you upgrade them. It’s very compelling.
carrie
What’s cool about it is that it’s a casual game, anybody can play, but it’s made for adults. You don’t have to be some big old gamer to love this. It’s great for everybody.
ross
See, I gotta stop. Now I’m just playing it, and not paying attention to what we’re doing here. Wait, let me just clear the water.
carrie
So, if you’re looking for a fun way to pass the time, like Ross is, while engaging your brain, try Best Fiends. And it doesn’t require internet to play. You can play anywhere, so it’s great for traveling.
ross
I don’t know if this an issue for you. I play a lot of games on my phone. So it’s nice, like, “Oh, I can play this one without the internet.”
carrie
Oh, sure. Yeah. Totally. So engage your brain with fun puzzles and collect tons of cute characters.
ross
It’s a five star mobile puzzle game on the Apple app store and Google Play.
carrie
Download free on the Apple app store or Google Play.
ross
That’s friends without the ‘R’. Best Fiends.
carrie
Fiends.
ross
Alright, friend. Here we are again. We’re back in our little room at the Garden Spa.
carrie
Ding ding dong. Church bells.
ross
They come back, and you had your feet out of the water when the guy opened—
carrie
Yes, I did. You know what I had to do, too? He came really fast, and I was like, “Oh shit—”
ross
That’s what she said.
carrie
[Laughs.] It’s going to continue. I grabbed a towel. He came so fast, I had to grab a towel, and I just started “drying” my feet with it like immediately, so at least when they came up and saw my feet, they’d be explanatorily dry.
ross
[Laughs.] Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that was an awkward moment. They didn’t react at all, too.
carrie
I think he just thought I had just taken them out, and I tried to make it look like that was the case.
ross
And they didn’t make a big deal about the color of the water. I think if we hadn’t said anything, they would have just taken our feet out and dried us off and that would have been that.
carrie
Yeah. I had taken a picture with my flash, but flash doesn’t capture color all that well, so I was like, “I can’t really see it, because it’s dark in there.”
ross
You would expect them to want to do a little consultation and say, “Look what we’ve done. We’ve greatly increased your health.”
carrie
So, maybe to their credit, I don’t even know, but they certainly weren’t going hard at that particular part of it. So, I said, “What color is mine?” He said, “Orange with some brown and some white foam.” I could definitely see the white foam, it was pooling all around the—
ross
That is gross.
carrie
—device, yeah. So, orange would be detoxification from joints. Then brown, detoxification from liver. That’s good. Tobacco. Like, liver and tobacco, are we talking about body parts or are we talking about specific toxins?
ross
This is a little apples and oranges.
carrie
Yeah, exactly. Then the third one was cellular debris.
ross
Okay.
carrie
Yeah, apples and oranges and kiwis.
ross
Right, yeah. Cellular debris. Okay.
carrie
Yeah, what is that? I guess that would mean the cells of my body?
ross
Like, sloughed off cells that just are waste products, maybe? Hopefully—
carrie
Somatic cells?
ross
Hopefully it’s not destroying cells that you need.
carrie
Yeah, good point. Oh, and then the white foam, of course. That is mucus from my lymphatic system.
ross
You are secreting mucus.
carrie
But what’s amazing about this is that my feet were not in the water. So, it’s magical, it can get out—it detoxes my joints, my liver, my tobacco—
ross
All without making physical contact. Huh. Unless it pulled all of that out of your feet super fast.
carrie
Yeah, when I took my feet out the water was totally colorless, but may have started to have a little bit of the white foam.
ross
Yeah, they walk off with the amigos, for lack of a better term, and really didn’t say or do much about that. It was just, “Yup, you’ve had it, we’re done.” Except you got a nice massage from your lady.
carrie
Oh, yeah. My nice friend. She massaged my feet and my lower legs.
ross
She spent a long time. She’s pushing down on your thighs and your lower legs, then she’s toweling off each foot individually, and kind of pressing on it, and I’m thinking, “Oh, yeah, that looks nice. It’d be very comfortable.”
carrie
You’re thinking, “I can’t wait for my turn.”
ross
Right, and the water was warm and comfortable, and you had warned me about the itchiness. I didn’t feel any particular itchiness. Then again, I’m used to my feet being itchy, at least one of them. But finally, my guy comes back in, and he leans over, and he grabs both my thighs, and he squeezes them once, squeezes them in a slightly different place, squeezes them in a third place, and that’s it. We’re done here. Wham, bam, thank you sir.
carrie
Wow. Real Goldilocks situation. Three and that’s it. Okay, I got better service, and I didn’t even put my feet in. Hardly fair. Well, so then we went up front, and talked to the woman up front who had taken my Groupon originally—
ross
Brave.
carrie
—Brave, and said, “Yeah, it was really amazing. These were the colors we saw. So I guess that means like, detox from my joints.” You know, sort of looking to her for confirmation, and she just pointed to the orange spot on the chart. I was like, “Yeah, okay.”
ross
Kind of smiled and said yeah.
carrie
“Yeah, if that’s what’s written here, then sure.”
ross
So, clearly this isn’t something they take great investment and pride in, removing these toxins and taking credit for them. I think they just leave it up to your imagination. “Hey, you want this detox thing? We got it.”
carrie
“I’m not gonna say no.”
ross
“We’ll do it.” So, we had to kind of look this up, and figure out what was going on.
carrie
What is this? So, I figured it’s got to be rust or something that just accumulates from the little power thing that you put in the water.
ross
Yeah, and you had the right idea. So, it is electrified. You have electrolysis going on. Not hair removal.
carrie
Right. When I think of electricity, the first thing I think is just put it right in water, and then put yourself in the water!
ross
[Laughs] Right, yeah. Let’s electrify the water and stick our feet in it with this device that’s plugged into the wall.
carrie
This will go well, I saw Home Alone. Wait, is it Home Alone or is it Groundhog’s Day? It’s Groundhog’s Day. Where he grabs a toaster, and then he gets in the tub? Everybody, we’re all with me? Cool.
ross
Yeah, you know what, now that I think about it, I should have been a little more worried about that.
carrie
I thought about it, but since I’d had the experience before and had only been itchy, I thought, “Eh, should be fine.”
ross
So, there’s a DC current being piped through this water, and it’s not just water. They also put in some salt. Some regular old salt, to provide the ions that we were talking about. You want a bunch of free ions that you can rip off all these little electrons and move them to other elements. A little too ionic.
carrie
Mm. And isn’t it ionic.
ross
Don’t you think? So, did you know she wrote that song when she was nineteen?
carrie
Oh, that sounds right.
ross
So lay off of her, everybody. Everyone’s like, “That’s not actual irony.”
carrie
Also, yes it is. I mean, stop everything.
ross
Irony’s all about an expectation that is—
carrie
That you then subvert. Now, she’s adding an extra thing, that it also sucks. That’s true, but all these things are still unexpected. Rain on your wedding day. You didn’t think it would happen, and then it did. It’s bad, but it is also ironic, so fuck all y’all. [Ross laughs.] Anyway, I love Alanis.
ross
Maybe she’ll come on our show now.
carrie
I hope so.
ross
We just defended her.
carrie
Okay, what are we talking about? Feet?
ross
Oh, the process here. So, then there’s another important piece in all of this, and that is this cylinder that they’re putting in the water. As we saw, it was just this black hunk of plastic.
carrie
Like the top of an immersion blender or something.
ross
Oh, that doesn’t give me any mental image, but maybe it does for our listeners.
carrie
I hope so.
ross
It wasn’t a solid piece, there was a grating to it. So, there was something inside that the water could seep through to.
carrie
Something’s happening.
ross
Something’s in there. So yes, it turns out, in these ionic foot baths, that there is a coil inside that is stainless steel. That is an alloy that includes a few different metals, but they include chromium and often nickel, so now you’ve got electricity coming through, you’ve got salt, and you’ve got this metal, and guess what? You start getting some corrosion.
carrie
Gross.
ross
Yeah, and that is why, even without Carrie’s gnarly feet in the water, still all this stuff could come out.
carrie
It’s true.
ross
Your feet are lovely.
carrie
They’re totally norms.
ross
Yeah. I’m one to talk, right? So yeah, that’s what is happening is that just the metal is interacting with the salt and the electricity, and it’s pulling off stuff from the metal and exchanging a bunch of electrons, and it’s creating all this goopy gunky stuff in your water.
carrie
And nickel, of course, very common topical… what’s the word? Makes you all itchy. Irritant.
ross
So, you think that’s why maybe you were feeling itchy the first time? [Ross responds emphatically as Carrie speaks.]
carrie
I think so. Because I know nickel earrings will make my ears itchy. That’s why they make nickel-free earrings, very common.
ross
Interesting. Okay, so we’ve solved that little mystery from your past.
carrie
Yeah, probably. Now, I actually looked up an interesting study from the National Institute of Health. Ever heard of it?
ross
I have. The NIH. While you’re looking that up, I’ll mention that it doesn’t seem that, even with that interaction and the orange gunk coming off of these coils, it doesn’t seem like it really corrodes the metal that much, so you probably get a lot of uses out of this.
carrie
Oh, right, before you completely destroy it, you mean?
ross
Without, yeah, having to worry about the metal completely degrading and disappearing.
carrie
Yeah, that’s an interesting point. I wonder at what point it just becomes inoperable because you’ve destroyed it through regular use. So, in 2012 the Journal of Environmental and Public Health published this study. It was a relatively small study, but they took a couple of these basins, and these—
ross
Commercial products.
carrie
—and the device—
ross
Probe?
carrie
The probe.
ross
It’s not probing anything.
carrie
The device that has the coil in it.
ross
The business end.
carrie
Right, and they did exactly what we did. They had some people put their feet in, and then they also just ran some without feet in them.
ross
Pretty simple test. Apparently some of these devices will have like a wrist band or something that maybe attaches onto the back of your neck, that is likely just to confirm that there is a person attached to this whole rig, so it can kind of have a turn-off incase, oh, there’s no person here, just so it doesn’t give away—
carrie
The game.
ross
—what’s actually happening, yeah.
carrie
Though, of course, you could easily outsmart this, but at least it won’t just wave at you and say, “I’m working without you.”
ross
I wonder if that’s even for the people running it, to help preserve the illusion for them as well.
carrie
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would imagine people at Garden Massage Spa are not informed on what this actually does.
ross
They just know step one, plug it in, step two, put this in the little basket, step three, put this in the water.
carrie
And people seem to like it.
ross
Step four, set your alarm for fifteen minutes and come back.
carrie
Step five, this lady’s feet are totally dry.
ross
Why are there flashes coming out of her room?
carrie
So, in this study, of course, what are they testing? They’re testing whether toxins actually came out of your body, so, how do you do that? We’re going to have to clip people’s hair before and after. We’re going to have to test their urine before and after. I’m picturing all these scientists being like, “Yeah, alright, well.”
ross
“Gotta do due diligence.”
carrie
This is one of the irritating things about being science-minded is like, person A gets to just say anything the fuck they want, and person B has to be like, “Alright, well, if that were true, I guess—alright, then the world would be like this, which means that in order to test that, I would have to do this ridiculous thing, then there’s this, and—” But, if you’re like me and Ross, you enjoy that, anyway. So, they did all that, and what do you think the results were?
ross
Uh, let’s see. Just a wild guess, but I’m going to say that probably there was no change in blood toxicity or any other noticeable measure of bodily wellbeing.
carrie
That is correct.
ross
Hey!
carrie
But. But.
ross
Oh, what?
carrie
Young Jedi.
ross
Padawan.
carrie
Padawan. Is that also Star Wars?
ross
Yes, that’s a Jedi in training.
carrie
Oh, oh! Perfect. Pa-doh-wan?
ross
Pa-da-wan.
carrie
Pa-dah-wan? With an a?
ross
P-A-D-A-W-A-N.
carrie
Pa-dah-wan.
ross
[Mimicking Carrie] “Pa-dah-wan.” No one says it like that.
carrie
[Laughs] What were we talking about? Oh! But, the water itself does have toxins in it afterward.
ross
Which means that now you have stewed your feet in some toxins.
carrie
You’re probably adding toxins—
ross
Some of them have been absorbed.
carrie
—to your body.
ross
Yeah, you might have some extra cadmium, or compounds that you weren’t anticipating.
carrie
Now, these researchers, you know, not wanting to be too ironic with their ionic bath, did say, “Hey, listen. It’s a very small amount. It’s probably not dangerous. You’re not absorbing anything too ugly. But, you know, we’re all LOLing in the background.”
ross
Yeah. If the toxins are flowing in any direction, it’s into your foot.
carrie
It’s in. And that’s fun.
ross
Ironic.
carrie
Yes! It’s ironic. It’s iconic. It’s the ionic foot bath.
ross
It’s bionic.
carrie
Oh, shit! Yup. Mmhm. Semiso—nope. Is that it? Is that just all the ionics?
ross
Semisonic, yeah.
carrie
I don’t think there are any others.
ross
I don’t know. I’m going to lay down and lie on it.
carrie
[Chortles] Boo! End of show!
ross
[Laughs] End of the podcast.
carrie
Not just this episode.
ross
Our collaboration.
carrie
But I think that really is it for this episode.
ross
Yeah, I think we solved this “mystery”, or other people solved this mystery.
carrie
But y’all, I’m going to put on some home foot detox pads as soon as I get off this microphone, so that we can try some other home goods.
ross
Oh, you’re telling them about our next investigation, huh?
carrie
Just an idea. But, we’ll see over the next few days how they work. Are they any better or worse than the foot bath?
ross
So, we’ve done foot reflexology before, and that is powered by this connection, supposedly, that different points of the feet have with other parts of the body. So that’s one area of foot “medicine” or treatment.
carrie
“Pedigogy” (pedagogy).
ross
[Laughs] Oh, nicely done!
carrie
Thanks.
ross
I like it.
carrie
I don’t know if that was very good.
ross
No, that warmed the cockles of my heart. But, now we’ve also tried the ionic foot bath. But yeah, there’s also these products that are supposed to pull toxins from your feet, and that come in the form of pads. So, we’ve bought a bunch of those, and we’ll tell you about them later.
carrie
Yeah, in, you know, a week or so. But if you want to join us, buy some foot detox pads. Send us pictures of your feet.
ross
Or don’t.
carrie
Or don’t, because we show up...
crosstalk
In unison: So you don’t have to.
carrie
[Singing intro jingle.]
ross
I just feel bad if all of the sudden a bunch of people are paying for these products.
carrie
Well, we don’t know if they work, yet.
ross
That’s true, actually. We’re both wearing them right now, aren’t we?
carrie
No, I haven’t put mine on yet. But you are.
ross
We’ll save our ratings for all the foot products. We’ll talk about them then.
carrie
We’ll just rate feet. Good, bad.
ross
Feet?
carrie
Different.
ross
Are they good? Are they bad?
carrie
Or are we “defeetist” (defeatist)?
ross
[Laughs] Okay. That’s it for our show.
carrie
Our theme music is by Brian Keith Dalton.
ross
Our editor is Victor Figueroa.
carrie
And our administrative manager is Ian Kramer.
ross
You can find us online facebook.com/onrac.
carrie
Or on Twitter @ohnopodcast.
ross
Or on Maximum Fun, where you can also click the donate button and support our investigations, which we would greatly appreciate, and then you could join all of the other amazing people—our favorite people, dare I say—who support the show with their donations.
carrie
Yup.
ross
Carrie’s real favorite person is probably—
carrie
Ella.
ross
Oh. Okay.
carrie
Yeah, that’s my girl.
ross
But if you had to pick a second favorite person.
carrie
Dick Van Dyke.
ross
Alright. Okay. A third? Let’s just keep going down the line.
carrie
A third, after Dick Van Dyke. Well, living or dead, or just living?
ross
Living.
carrie
Drew?
ross
[Laughs.] Yeah, okay. Drew Spears.
carrie
Yeah.
ross
How are you guys doing?
carrie
We’re doing really well. Are you reminding me that we got engaged yesterday?
ross
Yeah.
carrie
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ross
I thought maybe I would lead toward that.
carrie
Well, people can hear that in real time if they go and listen to my episode of This Podcast Is Self Care, where I am the special guest.
ross
People are really excited now. So, you want to hear the story? You want to hear this go down in real time?
carrie
Ross hasn’t heard it.
ross
Like Carrie said, go download—well, it hasn’t been released yet, but it will be. This Podcast Is Self Care.
carrie
Yeah, so go subscribe to it.
ross
You and I can both now listen to this and hear the engagement go down.
carrie
Ross is actually gesturing toward the audience. Yeah, there they are. That’s not my TV, that’s the audience.
ross
No, no, no, to the right of the TV.
carrie
Oh, my vase. Okay.
ross
Mazel Tov.
carrie
Oh, thank you!
ross
This is exciting.
carrie
Yeah, yeah. You’re married.
ross
Yes. In fact, Friday is our 19th anniversary, so I got a little head start on you, there.
carrie
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ross
But, we’re happy for you lovebirds.
carrie
Thank you, Uncle Ross.
ross
Exciting. Alright, I guess—
carrie
Oh, I’m not in that play anymore. I had to quit. So, don’t buy tickets, everybody. Did you already buy tickets?
ross
I didn’t.
carrie
Oh, good.
ross
You’re not in the play?
carrie
No, they’re—another thing I can’t really spill the details of, but for a good reason. There’s a conflict. But it’s a good conflict, so it’s okay, and I had an understudy, and it’s fine.
ross
Yeah, we were going to record yesterday and then Carrie called me and said, “Well, we’re engaged now, Drew and I—”
carrie
“I can still record.”
ross
“—if you need to, we can—” I was like, “No, you go celebrate being engaged.”
carrie
So we went to Crossroads. Crossroads is really good. Then we told the waiter—this show will never end—we told the waiter that we had just been engaged.
ross
You can just turn this off if you’re not interested in these interpersonal issues, but I am. Go on.
carrie
And he said, “Aw, that’s amazing! Happy anniversary, guys.” We were like, “What?” And then he proceeded to tell us, “Ugh, wonderful to have you here for your anniversary.” And at the end he’s like, “Thank you for thinking of us for your—” By that point, we were in, we couldn’t be like, “Well, it’s an engagement.” Then, on the way into the restaurant, the hostess, she said—she had it down on her little RSVP reservation description—she had “a new engagement”, so she said, “Aw, congratulations!” Then she turned to Drew and said, “Well, I guess I really mean congratulations to you, because you did the brave part. You asked.” And I said, “Oh, no. I asked.”
ross
Oh, you’re giving it away.
carrie
Well, just that. There’s more to it.
ross
Oh, okay.
carrie
And she was like, “What?” She was like flummoxed by that. “You? You asked? Oh. Really?” Like, yeah, yeah. It’s 2019, babe.
ross
You’ve thrown me off my script.
carrie
Afterward, I felt—I was like, “Aw, I wish I had said, and it was on a podcast! Like and subscribe.”
ross
Now, it doesn’t get more 2019 than that. Awesome. Well, this is great news, and—
carrie
Thank you.
ross
We are all excited for you and Drew.
carrie
I’ll see if we invite you.
ross
All of us. You, me, and the vase.
carrie
And the vase. And Ella. Okay..
ross
Bye.
carrie
Bye Ross, and Dorian, bye, bye, Victor, bye.
music
“Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” plays again.
promo
[Ocean sounds in the background.] Speaker 1: [Piratey voice] Ahh. There’s nothing quite like sailing in the calm, international waters on my ship, the S.S. Biopic (bi-AH-pic). [Ship’s horn toots.] Speaker 2: [Piratey voice] Avast! It’s actually pronounced… “BI-oh-pic.” Speaker 1: No, ya dingus! It’s “Bi-AH-pic!” Speaker 2: Who the hell says that? It’s “BI-oh-pic!” It comes from the words “biology”— Speaker 1: It’s the words for “biography” and “picture!” [Boat horn honks.] Speaker 2: If you— Dave Holmes: Alright, that is enough! Ahoy! I’m Dave Holmes; I’m the host of the newly-rebooted podcast formerly known as International Waters! Designed to resolve petty—but persistent—arguments like this! How? By pitting two teams of opinionated comedians against each other with trivia and improv games, of course! Winner takes home the right to be right. Speaker 1: What podcast be this? Dave: It’s called Troubled Waters! [Boat engine revving, driving off.] Where we disagree to disagreeee! [Voice trails off into the distance.]
speaker 2
Comedy and culture.
speaker 3
Artist owned—
speaker 4
—Audience supported.
About the show
Welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal, but take part ourselves. Follow us as we join religions, undergo alternative treatments, seek out the paranormal, and always find the humor in life’s biggest mysteries. We show up – so you don’t have to. Every week we share a new investigation, interview, or update.
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