421: Sonic’s Butt Game

August 27, 2025·49 min·4 clips

John Green reveals he once ate an SD card thinking it was a pretzel chip, forcing him to recover a lost vlog.

1. Dear Hank & John episode 421 is recorded in person at Hank Green's Montana office, an unusual format for a podcast that typically connects the two brothers across Montana and Indianapolis. 2. Hank Green is a science communicator and Complexly co-founder; John Green is a bestselling author currently promoting a book about tuberculosis after a multi-continent tour. 3. The episode's central tension is between comedy riffs—Crash Bandicoot, raccoon evolution, LaCroix soda—and two emotionally weighty listener responses about cancer survivorship and mortality. 4. Hank describes eating his SD card during a Vlogbrothers recording session, mistaking it for a pretzel chip, and having a repair technician confirm via CT scan that it was irreparably damaged. 5. Hank's aphantasia (inability to form mental images) is discussed at length: he does not know what is behind kitchen cabinets in a 15-year-old home and gets lost driving to John's house every time despite having been there many times. 6. Hank argues that pulling is mechanically easier than pushing because it forces the legs—the most calorie-dense and strongest muscles in the body—into the movement in a way pushing often does not. 7. John reads Philip Larkin's poem 'The Mower' to Hank in flat prose rather than poetic cadence, with the closing lines 'We should be careful of each other. We should be kind while there is still time' landing even on a poetry-resistant listener. 8. Listener Doozy from Melbourne asks about bandicoots and bilbies; Hank discovers on Wikipedia that the Crash Bandicoot developers codenamed the project 'Sonic's Ass Game' because they were trying to compete with Sonic the Hedgehog. 9. Hank confirms that Crash Bandicoot is depicted as a genetically engineered eastern barred bandicoot who wears driving gloves, but shares none of the real animal's distinctive large ears. 10. Jim Carrey is mentioned as having declared retirement from acting unless an extraordinary role came along, then immediately taking the villain role in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. 11. Listener McKenna, a leukemia survivor, writes that their hospital experience turned them from a Protestant Christian into an atheist who no longer trusts humanity and asks for advice. 12. Hank says his cancer experience increased his appreciation for humanity by showing him how thoroughly people show up for each other under the worst conditions, including for friends who died. 13. Hank notes his primary fear during illness was not death but being absent for people who loved him, and describes that realization as unexpectedly affirming. 14. John argues that faith crises after illness often come from having held beliefs like 'everything happens for a reason' and then witnessing suffering that no coherent master plan can explain. 15. John says he maintains faith in humanity partly by walking 'alongside forces of love that are greater than myself,' while Hank describes holding conflicting truths about humanity simultaneously without a single framework. 16. Hank discusses 'beef days,' a personal protocol he and John use to concentrate meat consumption on a few days per year, which he reports has cut his beef intake by roughly 90%. 17. The brothers debate LaCroix sparkling water: John is obsessed and describes the ideal flavor as 'like you're drinking plain soda water and somebody in the next room shouts grapefruit,' while Hank prefers Spindrift's actual fruit juice. 18. The episode alternates between absurdist comedy riffs and deeply personal advice segments without tonal warning, which is characteristic of the show's format. 19. Fans of the Vlogbrothers community, science-curious comedy listeners, and people navigating post-illness existential questions will find this episode particularly rewarding. 20. Listeners expecting a clean topic focus or structured discussion should note the episode shifts from bandicoots to cancer survivorship to raccoon evolution without transition.

As heard by us

A messy, funny opening gives way to a sharper look at illness, belief, and the people around it.

Dear Hank & John opens in small domestic chaos: tea logistics, microphone interference, and the SD card mistake that is funny precisely because it is so gross. The brothers keep the pace loose, and the teasing lands without flattening the embarrassment into a single joke.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For the tea break that somehow becomes an SD-card autopsy and a survival conversation.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Dear Hank & John