Book review: The Art and Science of Connection
- Phil McAuliffe
- Apr 9
- 5 min read
Kasley Killam's book is full of ideas to help you and I feel socially well
Hello, you wonderful human.
I introduced you to the concept of social health in a previous article and how feeling socially well is as important to your wellbeing as your physical, mental and emotional wellness.
The article is ‘Introducing social health: a powerful reframe for your loneliness’. You may want to read that along with this review.
I quoted Kasley Killam in that article and introduced her as one of the founders of the nascent global social health and wellbeing sector (of which HUMANS:CONNECTING considers itself part).
Simply, Killam is someone who you want to listen to, because she’s doing amazing work highlighting how important social health is to you. Happily, she’s also giving you and me plenty of ideas to help us become socially well.
And she’s put them in a book called:
‘The Art and Science of Connection: Why Social Health is the Missing Key to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier’
It takes real talent and skill to translate findings from scientific and academic analyses into a format that is accessible and digestible by regular humans. Keeping academically and scientifically pure is not approachable to people who do not work in the field, and summarising studies and their findings risks missing the important nuances.
It’s the eternal debate about which is more important: the art or the science? It takes deft skill to negotiate the two.
Killam has that skill – and she has it in spades. The fantastic thing about her work is that the field of social health largely did not exist until she started her research. Killam’s work over many years created the sector.
Killam shares how her experiences of loneliness growing up fed her curiosity and, as is the case for many of us who work in the sector, she began to do something about it. She noticed that the information provided by researchers in different fields seemed to arrive at similar conclusions, but there was no ‘satisfying overarching narrative’ that was helpful for her.
If you’re a regular listener to the HUMANS:CONNECTING podcast, you’ll know just how powerful curiosity continues to be for our guests in driving change or the need to understand a problem better. Curiosity comes after an activation event: something happened, there was an immediate emotional response (frustration, loneliness and anger are most common) and then – a little time later – curiosity formed part of the response to the event.
This curiosity is clear within Killam.
She shares the story of how she came upon the concept of social health in 2013, when Killam found the work of a scholar at Southern Illinois University named Robert D. Russell who wrote an article called ‘Social Health: An Attempt to Clarify This Dimension of Well-Being’. As Killam writes:
‘He [Russell] had noticed that the World Health Organization defined health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being’ but the no one had really developed the third component. Russell conducted surveys and interviews to arrive at a definition: social health, he wrote, is the ‘dimension of an individual’s well-being that concerns of he[sic] gets along with other people, how other people react to him[sic] and how he[sic] interacts with social institutions and societal mores.’
Killam writes that there was very little done that she could find beyond this article. Her curiosity was inviting Killam to go deeper.
I’m so grateful that she followed that curiosity, for without it I fear the concept of social health would still be languishing on dusty shelves and you and I would not have the powerful reframe that the concept offers us as we do what we need to do to become connected humans.
While I do love a good genesis story, here’s
Why you need to read this book
‘The Art and Science of Connection’ is informative and empowering. Killam gives you the keys to drive your life towards your own social wellbeing – whatever that looks like for you.
It's a common trap for content about loneliness and social disconnection to identify the size and scope of the problem, discuss reasons for it, and then conclude by saying 'more research is needed’ before offering generic solutions akin to ‘humans need more connection’.
Killam doesn't fall into that trap.
She gives us examples of how other humans have improved their own social health and every age and stage of life. The ideas and theories are then followed up with worksheets and summaries that prompt reflection and invite to action in our own lives.
For myself, I was inspired by the story of Patrick Bernard and his neighbours in Paris. His simple, uncomplicated actions to improve his own social health have fundamentally transformed his neighbourhood and made it a place where people thrive. (More about Bernard’s République des Hypers Voisins (Republic of Super Neighbours) initiative in this article.)
Reading the book felt like I was being gifted with page after page and chapter after chapter of simple and actionable ideas that I could use to maintain my own social health. It’s a beautiful, life-sustaining and affirming gift.
Where to find it
You can buy ‘The Art and Science of Connection’ through your favourite online book retailer.
It was challenging to find hard copies of the ‘The Art and Science of Connection’ in bookstores, but I did manage to buy a copy in a major bookstore in a major city in November 2024.
This may simply be an issue in Australia, and I hope it was because every copy of the book was being snaffled up quickly.
That’s it for this review
While we’ve come to the end of this review, there’s so much more content on how you can become a more connected human to come.
The next article will help you respond to loneliness and social disconnection you feel when navigating life’s transitions. If you subscribe to our mailing list, you won’t miss that article or any future content on our blog and podcast when it’s released.
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Subscribing to the mailing list puts you in control of what you see. And you’ll get a lovely little email from me when there’s something new for you. And you can unsubscribe any time if you’re not feeling it anymore: we’ll still think you’re amazing.
Until next time, be awesomely you.
~ Phil
Important:
All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.
If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.
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