Last night, the CBC National newscast carried a segment on loneliness, featuring two speakers.

One of them was Riaz Meghji, who appeared on last week's cover of the Georgia Straight.

He was invited onto the newscast because he addresses loneliness in his new book, Every Conversation Counts: The Five Habits of Human Connection That Build Extraordinary Relationships.

In this week's Georgia Straight Talks video, I focused on Meghji's book.

In addition, my weekly video also reviewed two of my other articles in the print edition: Michael Mortensen's ideas for making the most of living in compact apartments and a new dance series by Vancouver's Joshua Beamish.

The video was created by Lucas Renzo Giovannetti, director of video and animation properties with the Georgia Straight's parent company, Media Central. Check it out below.

Meghji, the former host of Breakfast Television in Vancouver, highlighted several strategies in his book for building empathy and forging stronger human connections.

They include such things as putting yourself in someone else's shoes, practising small acts of kindness, and enjoying fictional books.

"Reading a novel drops you into a character's mind and lets you see the world through another set of eyes," Meghji writes. "Bonus points if yuou read a novel written by and about a person who's different from you."