narrator: on this episode of "earth focus," two cities-- freetown, sierra leone, and san francisco, california-- continents apart, vastly different culturally and economically, yet facing the same struggle to adapt to rapid urbanization, all set against the backdrop of a dramatically changing climate. [film advance clicking] man: oh, no! woman: the red cross says more than 600 people are now missing and that more than 200 have been killed after heavy rain caused a severe mudslide in the west african nation of sierra leone. [car horns honking] [insects chirping] amarasekaren: oo oo oo! what's happening? what's happening? no big problem, huh? ok. when we get problem... man: whoa! [men shouting] [indistinct conversation] narrator: while freetown residents fight for accountability, in san francisco, climate change isn't debated as much as it's mitigated. billions of dollars are pouring into the bay area, but is tech-driven development prepared for a sea level that's rising? scholl: san francisco is experiencing a tremendous building boom and has been for the last 5 years. tam: we have ucsf hospita

. >> raymond is a university student in freetown and he has two jobs and shares an apartment with a friendhat is the amount? 5000? >> he is struggling to make ends meet and the rising cost-of-living is having a huge impact. the price of food alone has more than doubled in theast six months. >> i used to get tea here for 10,000. >> the cost-of-living is not easy. who ask the local currency is less than one u.s. dollar. six months ago you could get three tins of sardines for the same price. >> what i'm making is not enough . not enough for mychooling, for my sustainability. next like many others here, he is feeling the impact of the high cost-of-living. sierra leone imports most of its staple foods and despite the large agricultural sector, things like corn and sweet potato, they are not self-sufficient. $100 million is spent annually on ricin ports alone. flex the covid pandemic made a big impact on the ecy. the cost-of-living is high. jumping from 22% to 25% in just a month. >> it's not just the price of food that has gone up. the government increased the price of fuel four times is februa

so freetown collective field of love, um, wait, on free town collective. yeah field of love. mm-hmm. and and then that's why we're gonna do tests. oh which has a new one is nice though. the new one is nice. it's called jolene. jolene jolene how ya mango sweet, so there we go. so i've put that in the chat and that'll make its way this is this is the official five song playlist 4 tiffany drayton's black american refugee thanks f. my name is eric wakeen. i'm the deputy director of the hoover institution and the director of its library in archives, and i'd like to welcome everyone back to one of our long awaited library archives book talks which we are co-hosting with hoover's history working group, which is chaired by our moderator and senior fellow neil ferguson homewell, introduce momentarily. um, i know we'd hope to have this event live a combination in person and hybrid, but we've had to settle for purely harvard one. so thanks for joining us. i know there's hundreds of people on on the screen. so thank you before i hand things over to neil. i just like to mention that