food supply

India has banned nearly half of its rice exports. The news has sent many Americans scrambling to stock up. We’ll explain what the ban means for global food prices. Plus, what should come first, new electric vehicle charging stations or new power lines? And, the hosts weigh in on UFOs during a round of Half Full / Half Empty.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• • “Sen. Duckworth’s Barbie moment” from Politico

• • “India’s ban on certain rice exports sends some U.S. consumers scrambling to find it on store shelves” from Marketplace

• • “From Rice Ban to War and Heat, Food Inflation Risks Are Back” from Bloomberg

• • “Biden Administration Poses Strict Targets for Vehicle Fuel Economy” from The Wall Street Journal

• • “The advantages —and drawbacks — of decentralized social networks” from Marketplace

• • “NASA Plus is the latest streaming competitor” from The Verge

• • “U.S. recovered non-human ‘biologics’ from UFO crash sites, former intel official says” from NPR

• • “Could electric planes tempt Americans to fly short distances instead of driving?” from Marketplace

We want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question. Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART and you might be featured in a future episode.

Inflation was running hot even before Russia invaded Ukraine, but disruption in Europe's bread basket certainly hasn't helped matters and there are now plenty of warnings that a global food shortage could be looming. Even if the normal cycle of sowing crops and harvesting them can keep going uninterrupted in Ukraine, wheat exports would still need to get out of the country. With Russia currently blockading the Black Sea, this seems like a major challenge. In this episode of Odd Lots, former Nato Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis presents one idea to get Ukrainian grains out and to the rest of the world. He suggests reaching back to a military playbook last used in the Tanker War between Iraq and Iran.

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