Pop Culture Happy Hour - The best summer snacks (according to you)

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

There’s plenty to love about summer: Summer music, summer road trips, summer movies. But to enjoy all those things, you have to sustain yourself with summer snacks. But what are the best summer treats of all? We asked our listeners, and we are revealing the results in a game all about summer snacks. (Today’s episode originally ran as a bonus episode for NPR Plus supporters.) For other episodes where we unpack your votes, check out:Top 5 Pixar movies, ranked by listenersTop 10 Muppets, as voted by listenersConnect with Pop Culture Happy Hour:Letterboxd / FacebookOur weekly newsletterSupport Pop Culture Happy Hour+See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

There's plenty to love about summer. Summer music, summer road trips, summer movies, but to enjoy all those things, you have to sustain yourself somehow. And that means summer snacks. But what are the best summer treats of all? It's an important question. So to make sure that we were getting the real true answers to what the best snacks are, we didn't want to just rely on ourselves. We wanted to let the people decide, and we are revealing the results in a game all about summer snacks. I'm Linda Holmes, and in this episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're featuring an episode you might not have heard before. It first ran as a bonus episode, which we published every month for our NPR Plus supporters. To get access to these bonus episodes

and support shows like ours, sign up for NPR Plus by visiting the link in our episode description. Now, on to the show. Here with me today are my Pop Culture Happy Hour co-hosts, Stephen Thompson. Hey, Stephen. Hello, Linda. And Glenn Weldon. Hi, Glenn. Hey, pal. And also here is my dear pal Aisha Harris. Hey, Aisha. Hey, hey, Linda.

So we paired up summer treats, and we put the question of which is better to pop culture happy hour listeners. Now, our brilliant producers have crunched the numbers. They were in there with their abacus and their slide rule. And I have the answers in front of me about which our listeners picked. My co-hosts do not, so I'm going to ask them to guess what was my. more popular with our listeners. They will get a point every time they guess correctly how the community voted. It's going to be very hard to separate what I suspect listeners' opinion will be

with the immutable truth of whatever I think the correct answer is. But that is our job, Stephen. That's what we're supposed to do. I think I have the edge here because I am famously a man of the people. I have the comment touch. But my well-known status is Joe Lunch Pail. Won't necessarily serve me well because this is a subset of the population. This is the NPR audience, so I think I need to be more Joe Kinoa, right? Oh, right. So before we get started, by the way, I do want to make a note. Some of these things may not be things that you consider snacks.

That's okay. Oh, did we hear from people, Linda? If you eat enough of anything, it's a meal. So these are always questions of specific application. Don't worry about it. First up, we have one of my very favorite things, fried dough. So we asked our listeners, which is better, chero, or, or funnel cake.

I'm going to start with you, Aisha, what do you think are listeners preferred? Okay. I know what I would pick, of course. I feel like a lot of people will not consider Churro to necessarily be a summer snack. You can eat it pretty much all year round, especially in California. So Chiro is like a dessert if you go out for Mexican food. So I'm going to say more listeners went with funnel cake. Just because it has that very specific, like, summer, I'm at the fair or at the beach kind of feel to it.

So you're going funnel cake. How about you, Glenn? Yes. I disagree because, I mean, I don't have a wide experience with churros. I mean, I think of them as West Coast. I think of them as Mexican. But, of course, they're originally from Spanish and Portuguese cuisine. And my only inroad into that cuisine, really, is my husband.

He's Cuban. But Cubans don't really mess around with churros. They are a pastelito people. But that said, conversely, I am a person who grew up in Pennsylvania near Pennsylvania Dutch country. Pennsylvania Dutch or German immigrants. Funnel cakes are in my blood, in my coagulated blood. But I think they're more specialized. I think outside of a state of fair, you don't see them in the wild.

Churros are on the streets of New York. They're sold at every zoo, every theme park. I think they're going to win the day. I'm going with churros. All right, churros. How about you, Stephen? I agree with Glenn. Funnel cakes, A, like Glenn said, they're more specialized.

They're more, I think of them as a county fair food. I also think, like, I could only replace one to two meals a day with a funnel cake. Sure. Whereas I could replace all meals with churros. Gotcha. So I'm going to go with churro. You're going to go with churos. I just want to do.

to say before I reveal the answer that the best possible answer is really missing from this, as you know, if you have ever been to the Minnesota State Fair. Because the actual correct answer is State Fair mini donuts. Now, if you have ever seen State Fair mini donuts, there's a little machine and it plops out the little dough into a little tiny mini donut and to the hot oil, and it bobs down the little machine and eventually it gets flipped over and then it travels down a little conveyor belt. It gets tossed into a thing of sugar and it comes out and you eat it. I'm going to say roughly 17 seconds after it was fried. And I'm telling you right now, State Fair mini donuts are the actual answer. But they have to be apple cider, I feel like.

Flavorily. No, it's not a lot. Oh, come on. Anderkey. No, State Fair mini donuts are fat flavored. The actual answer from our listeners, Chiro did beat funnel cake. Churro got 54.4% of the day. I can vote, though. So funnel cake, very respectable showing.

Okay. I mean, they're right, because churros, to me, are better than fun. Funnel cake is too messy. Funnel cake is a little more chaotic, right? Yes. Churros are a little more orderly. Anyway. Next up, you cannot have snacks without drinks, so we asked which refreshing summer drink is better.

Lemonade or iced tea. I do want to note. Some of our listeners asked, why did we not offer the compromise solution of the drink note is the Arnold Palmer, which they admit. of iced tea and lemonade, I will grant you, that is also a good drink. If you like a compromise, that's a good compromise. I am told that it is also known as a half and half, a flop, or a muddy water. Anyway, between these two classic drinks, lemonade and iced tea, what do you think our listeners chose? Stephen Thompson, I'm going to start with you. To me, this one is clear. It's iced tea.

It is a far more versatile drink. It is far more likely to be heavily caffeinated. You can drink it unsweetened. You can drink it sweetened. You can drink it hyper sweetened. When I moved to D.C., I really discovered the wonders of sweet tea. I feel like I'm going to make a joke about how, yes, sweet tea comes from Washington, D.C., but I'm not going to say it because people won't know. I'm kidding. D.C. is nominally the South. I gotcha. I got you. So to me, lemonade, it's fine. It's tart. It's delicious. But it's a little too tart. Sure. And if you want a refreshing summer drink, it's iced tea all the way. Gotcha. Ayesha, what do you think? I mean, I think the correct answer is lemonade myself, but using my highly scientific research and my past as a former server in a

restaurant and remembering what people tended to order in the summer, almost always iced tea with lemon on the side. So I think it's got to be iced tea. I don't get it because Stephen, you said it's versatile, but like, I don't know. I like my tea hot. I think it's weird when it's cold. Maybe that's just- Life contains multitudes.

All right, Glenn, what do you think? This is an interesting question, because on the the surface, it seems like a 50-50 proposition. It's not, as Stephen mentioned, this is actually a 3366 question because ice tea comes in two forms, sweetened and unsweetened. Both are popular. You take the sugar out of iced tea. You got iced tea. You take the sugar out of lemonade. You have literal acid. So also, ice tea is the hot summer version of the most popular drink in the world, one of the most popular drinks in the world. This is iced tea in a walk. Yeah, you're all wrong. Lemonade came in first place with 60.4% ice tea came in second with 39.6%.

That's exactly. I mean, I'm losing, but I'm actually happy about these choices so far. I just want to say, I personally don't drink much iced tea unless I am pretty specifically drinking it and thinking of it as water. Slightly more interesting water. But anyway, our listeners chose lemonade and good for them because lemonade's delicious. I was so sure. Okay. On to one of the most obvious summer cookouts.

matchups, hamburger versus hot dog. Glenn, what do you think the listeners went with? Here's where I begin to question my common touch, because if it's up to me, there's no contest here, hamburger's rule, hot dogs drool. It's a consistency thing because I think they're just too consistent. They're gross. They're too homogenized. They lack texture, grit, whatever.

They lack interest. It's the meat of least resistance. It's why you give them the children because you don't have to risk them having anything like flavor. It's why they slide down the gullets of the Joey chestnuts of the world. It's why baloney grosses me out, really, because they're just, I don't know. It's just featureless, undifferentiated sponginess. Now, sausage, chorizo, totally different vibe.

Because of the grid, because of resistance and spice and texture, I can't believe that people have hot dogs more than hamburgers. I don't want to live in that world, so I'm going hamburger. All right. Aisha, how about you? Wow. I'm offended. I know. I'm still just shaking my head over here.

Spitting truth. Look, I love a good artisanal hamburger. You know, I've never been a McDonald's hamburger person. I prefer the bistro version. But I love a good ballpark, like the brand ballpark hot dog. Like all beef, I do like pork, but I don't like it in my hot talks for some reason. There's nothing like it. If you're grilling it, it has flavor.

It has that just like, especially if it's charred. So I feel like hot dog. And I'm going to, again, this is based off of my pitch when we were talking about funnel cake. I think that hot dog hamburger, you can eat. all year round. Hot dog feels very specific to summer. This is probably not how people voted, but if I were voting, I'd say, I think baseball games, I think, you know, going to an amusement park. I think of, you know, going to a barbecue and having also like a hot dog just feels easier to eat than a burger if you're like trying to stand and talk to people. So I'm going to say

the people went with hot dog and if they did, they're right. All right. Very good. Stephen, how about you? Yeah, Aisha said it all. I think hot dog is the more. summery food. I don't think of this as my forearm so much as a shelf onto which hot dogs may be lined up at various summer sporting events. Love a hot dog with a little, little strip of mustard on one side, a little strip of ketchup on the other. Unbeatable. You talk what flavor? Beatable. It's right there, buddy. Very beatable. Eminently beatable. I love how we're learning all of our icks. All right. Well, I mean, I am happy to tell Glenn only. Oh, my God. But the answer is hamburger.

Hamburger beat hot dog, getting 60. All is right with the world. 60.5% of the vote for hamburgers. I believe in humanity. 65%. No, 60.5. 60.5. Still.

My umbrage remains. 60.5%. Yeah. That seems. I reserve the right to eye umbrage. That's weird. It is a little weird. All right.

Well, we have more questions in our summer snacks quiz, but first, let's take a quick break. Welcome back. So we're going to move on to dessert now with one of the questions that I have to say people have felt most passionate about. This is the Dairy Queen faceoff. We asked Dilley Bar versus Blizzard versus Peanut Buster Parfet. Oh, by the way, our editor, Jessica Reedy, had a note for me. We were asked why Dipped Cone was not in there. She says too similar to the Dillie Bar. So we chose to. I see that. We'll let listeners litigate that themselves. Ice cream with a shell. Ice cream coated in chocolate is all one thing. All right, Glenn, why don't you kick us off? What do you think? Dillie Bar, Blizzard, Peanut Buster, Parfay.

Yeah, this is going to be Blizzard in a walk. I don't agree with it because my preference is purely nostalgic. Because Blizzard's were introduced in 1985. I was in high school. My preferences were already set. But my preferences started with the peanut buster parfait, which should win but won't. Because after dinner, Dad would load us up into the AMC Gremlin. And we go out to the DQ on Route 202.

Linda Holmes outside Westchester. And we'd watch the sunset as we sat on the picnic tables, eating our peanut buster parfaits. I had one, he had one. That place is now a car dealership. Anyway, Blizzard, wildly popular. It's going to be the Blizzard. Love it. All right, Blizzard. Glenn picks Blizzard. Stephen, what do you pick? Well, I grew up eating at Dairy Queen's all over Central Wisconsin. You're Stevens Point, you're Shawno. And I've tried every Dairy Queen menu item many times. In fact, in the interest of rigorous research, I went there just two days ago, to confirm what we're in. We're what I have thought all along, which is that the best dairy queen menu item is a blizzard with heath bars.

That to me is a perfect food. It's an aggressive stance. I would have bet, by the way, $1,000 that Glenn would have uncorked a giant anti-dilly bar screed in this conversation. I'm aware of its work. Because Glenn hates a waxy candy. It's true. Any candy that can be compared to candle wax. And the dilly bar coating is too waxy.

Yep. I get it. I get it. All right. So, Stephen, what do you think? that it's a blizzard. I think it's a blizzard. And you think the audience is going to pick blizzard. I'm going to say yes. Okay. How about you, Aisha, what do you think? I mean, I don't even know I'm playing anymore. Like, I'm not getting any of these correct. I don't know our listeners.

Like, who are they? I don't know. I think it's obviously a blizzard, but like, honestly, none of these are the best. I'm a very boring person when it comes to dessert. I don't like mixing things too much together. I like a plain vanilla cone, maybe, maybe a little sprinkle, but not much. But I have memories myself of going to Dairy Queen. There was one in West Haven, Connecticut, and there was another one in Hampton, Connecticut. Went to both of them.

They were always treats. My dad would take my sister and I after, like, tennis or just for, because he wanted, he has a very big sweet tooth. And we would always get the misty slush, which is basically DQ's take on the icy. It's different from the misty freeze, which is a mixture of slush and soft serve ice cream. I just like the slush.

Just give me, like, the cherry. The grape, those were the best. That's what it should be. But I think our listeners, what do I know? I don't know. They're probably going to say Blizzard. So tell us what it is. It's Blizzard.

It's Blizzard. Also, Aisha, I want to second your statement on the Misty Freeze, Misty Slush. An ice cream novelty that is thirst quenching is really hard to come by, and that's one of them. Yeah. I am delighted to say that you are all correct. Blizzards came in first place with 78.1% of the vote. Wow. I'm on the board.

Nice. Peanut Buster Parfay. 12.8%. And in the third place is the dilly bar, 9.1% poor, poor dilly bar. I love a dilly bar. I got to say, I got nothing against a dilly bar. While we are talking about ice cream, next up we have waffle cone versus sugar cone versus cake cone. Now, if you don't know the difference here, the cake cone is this small, flat-bottomed one that tastes like styrofoam. The sugar cone is the normal cone-shaped one. And then the waffle cone is the big one where you can see it, like, wrapped and folded over. How do we think our listeners chose on cake cone versus waffle cone versus sugar cone? I'm going to start with Aisha. This is a tough one. I did work in an ice cream shop for a couple of summers way back when.

I feel as though most people, a lot of people really love to get the waffle cone. Now, the waffle cone is so messy, especially if you put too many scoops of ice cream. It loses its structural integrity. Right. I think the best way to have a waffle cone is to have it in a bowl and then put the waffle cone on top and then you can like crunch it in. That's the ideal way to do it. But anyone who tries to like eat it standing up, you are a daredevil. I don't get it. I'm going to say waffle cone. I think that's where the people lie. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I'm awful cone. It's where the people lie. Good pick. Good pick. All right, Glenn, how about you? I think the sugar cone is popular. I don't understand why. It is dark brown. It's pointy. It has a very pronounced molasses flavor like a burnt molasses character. Yes, there is. That when you get to the bottom and you haven't done your homework and you haven't pushed the ice cream all the way down with your tongue, you just have this little nubbin of bitterness.

The flat bottom cake cone is the best cone, which as you mentioned, it is like, Linda, it's very like thin styrofoam, just a hint of flavor. It knows its place. That's so right. Which is why it works because it is a vessel. It provides structure. It is only the mildest of flavors. You can use your tongue to make sure every compartment is filled out in every level. Waffle cones, sugar cones.

They're bossy. They're divas. They're competing with the flavor of the ice cream. The cake cone is perfect. People are going to say sugar cones, and I don't know why. All right. All right. Stephen, what do you think? Okay, so the nice thing about the cone with the styrofoam bottom, if you're eating soft serve, it does have a really nice way of soaking into the ridge of the cone in a way that is very pleasing to me. But I got to say, waffle cone, it's just the most delicious cookie substance to eat of the three. And I think it goes the best with ice cream. Yes, do you have to be careful about the structural integrity?

Of course, but you knew the job was dangerous when you took it, people. I'm going to say waffle cone all the way. For the daredevles among you. I do want to say, for me, I kind of lean toward Aisha's answer, which is the best cone is no cone, right? I can abide that. When I go to get ice cream, I always get just a dish of ice cream because that's what I care about. I care about the ice cream, assuming that it is good, right? My family used to, when we were on vacation in Maine in the summer, used to go to this place called Dormons Dairy Dream in Thomaston, Maine.

True. And I would get a little dish of chocolate chip ice cream with chocolate sprinkles. And this was when I was a little kid and I was there last summer. And you know what I ordered? Same thing. Still good. Little dish of chocolate chip ice cream, chocolate sprinkles. Absolutely correct answer.

But for our listeners, this is an important. another one that was not particularly close. Waffle cone came in first with 60.1% of the vote. Second place was sugar cone with 27.6% of the vote. In third place was the styrofoam cone with 12.3%. That's okay. It gets off on being underappreciated. It's fine. I'm with you, one though. I do prefer the styrofoam cone. Well, we're going to stay on ice cream for one more question. I don't know about you, but in the summer I personally get a lot of of opportunities to listen to ice cream trucks, the sound systems of which are of varying quality. So we asked, do you love an ice cream truck or do you just want to go to an ice cream shop? Stephen, I think it's your turn to go first.

Yeah, and this is really, to me, one of the toughest ones. Obviously, like, an ice cream shop is a more pleasant place to go than the exterior of an ice cream truck. They tend to be air conditioned. you tend to have like a large menu of sophisticated to the palate options to choose from. And when you get to an ice cream truck, you're choosing from like, is the treat I'm eating vaguely shaped like SpongeBob or is it vaguely shaped like Spider-Man? And like that is a, you know, not as fancy.

But the ice cream truck comes to you. It comes to you when you're at your most in need of refreshment. And there's an element of surprise that sometimes comes with the arrival of the ice cream. truck that makes me think that more people are going to have a strong emotional reaction to like when an ice cream truck came to save the day. So I'm going to go with ice cream truck, in part because like part of my relationship with going to get ice cream is that very often what I am when I want ice cream is thirsty. And ice cream isn't always the best thirst quencher. But when you go to an ice cream truck, they've got stuff like bomb pops and stuff.

snow cones and popsicles that are more thirst quenching than ice cream is. So I'm going to go with the ice cream truck. All right. Glenn, what would you pick, ice cream truck or ice cream shop? Well, I'm just going to come out and say what we're all thinking. Ice cream shops smell weird. There I said it. They smell weird. Is it the cleanser? No, what it is. It's a very high in the nose kind of sinusy smell. It's the sugar. Yes, it is the frion. Frion smells weird. Big Freyana's going to tell you, oh, we're an odorless gas. They lie. They're not an odorless gas.

Also, at ice cream shops, you've got all those people who are sampling everything with those little wooden spoons and they're testing. Do it? Can I have the butter began? Can I have this chocolate? It's chocolate. You know what chocolate tastes like? Then they put it back in a little cup at the top of the thing.

I hate it. Ice cream truck. Again, my love of the ice cream truck is based on nostalgia because every summer at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, an ice cream truck would roll up. As you said, Stephen, they come to you. Would roll up to Wedgwood Swim Club, which sounds a lot fancier than it was. And the SWIFT team would line up And they'd get their bomb pops and their

Water Oasis, as we said back then. I would get an ice cream sandwich Because nobody else got an ice cream sandwich Which meant that the ice cream sandwiches In the ice cream truck spent all their time In the back, bottom most darkest, coldest part of the freezer So that the wafer got crispy, hard and crispy.

So my heart says ice cream truck But I think people like being obnoxious And holding up the line and deciding with the little wooden spoons. I think people like choice as Stephen mentioned, so I think people are going to say ice cream shop. So you say shop. Aisha, what are you saying?

Well, as I already said, I worked in an ice cream shop for a couple of summers, shop with the two peas and meat. Oh, God. Another thing. And another thing. So this place actually, fun little side note here, it was called Kelly's Cone Connection. And can you guess how she spelled Kelly's Cone Connection? Oh, no. No, no, no.

No. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, okay, yeah. So, look, look, she was a sweetheart, and eventually they changed it so that it wasn't all three games. But, like, it was a little joke in my town. And it was actually connected to a drive in, like, grill. So, like, in the summer, they'd have all the classic car shows and everything. It was very, like, given us 1950 vibes.

Yeah. But anyway, I have very fond memories of working at that shop with some of my friends and, you know, getting to interact with people. But I agree with Stephen that there's just so much nostalgia for ice cream trucks. The music, it just gets stuck in your head. And it is like inside out, the jingle that just won't get like 20 years later, you will remember it. Now, I am not someone who enjoys hard ice cream in part because I have sensitive teeth. And so, like, biting into an ice cream sandwich is just going to, it makes my skin crawl and my teeth hurt.

So I was never an ice cream truck kid. I was always like, give me the soft stuff. But I think the ice cream truck, nostalgia baby, it almost always wins every time. Should I change my vote? Oh, no. Nope, too late. I'm not going to stick with it. All right.

I just want to say that I also would go with the ice cream truck. But our listeners went ice cream shop. There we go. They're kidding me. They like the choice. 83.7%. 83.7%. I don't know our listeners.

I am out of step. All right. This is perhaps. especially important here in the East Coast, but we asked about two classic summer seafood nibbles, the lobster roll and the crab cake. Which do you think our listeners shows lobster roll or crab cake? Ayesha Harris, which one?

My family is from Baltimore, so I'm going to go with crab cake, and I think that listeners went with crab cakes. All right. Glenn. A lobster roll made with imitation lobster is sad. A crab cake made with imitation crab is just a crab cake, crab cake.

All right. Interesting. Stephen. I'm going to have to have my Maryland citizenship revoked. I've lived here for 18 years, but I love our lobster roll and I cannot pass that up as my choice. All right.

It's lobster, man. Well, Stephen, our listeners went with you. It's lobster roll came in first with 54.4% of the vote. Crab cake came in second with 45.6% logically, you know. Both of them are very expensive. We are tallying up the score and I will tell you we have a tie between Stephen and Glenn. You both got four correct. You know, listen, it's all good.

We have a tie. Aisha, you got too correct. So everybody was in it. Let's face it. Everybody was in it. Thank you for my participation sticker. No, no, no way, no way. Everybody did a wonderful job. Glenn Weldon, Iisha Harris, Stephen Thompson. Thank you so much for being here to play this game with me. Thank you, buddy. Thank you. This episode is produced by Ramel Wood and Mike Katziff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. And Hello, come in, provides our theme music.

Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time. Thank you.