Dan Buettner

Dan Buettner (born June 18, 1960) is an American National Geographic Fellow and New York Times-bestselling author.

He is an explorer, educator, author, producer, storyteller and public speaker.

He co-produced an Emmy Award-winning documentary and holds three Guinness records for endurance cycling.

Buettner is the founder of Blue Zones, LLC.

Dan Buettner was born on June 18, 1960, in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

After graduating from the University of St. Thomas in 1983, Buettner took a year to explore Spain before taking a job with National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., to recruit celebrity participation in a fund-raising croquet tournament with journalist George Plimpton.

Buettner graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 1983.

Soon thereafter he went to work for The Washington Post columnist Remar Sutton and Paris Review Editor George Plimpton to organize the National Public Radio's Celebrity Croquet Tournament.

In 1986, Dan Buettner launched the first of several Guinness World Records for transcontinental cycling.

"Americastrek" traversed 15,536 mi, from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina; the 1990 "Sovietrek", where Dan was joined by his brother Steve, followed the 45th parallel around the world and covered 12,888 mi, as Buettner recounted the trip in his book Sovietrek.

Both Africatrek and MayaQuest were adapted into educational computer games by MECC in the late 1990s.

In 1992, in "Africatrek", the Buettner brothers team-cycled from Bizerte, Tunisia, to Cape Agulhas, South Africa, with cyclist Dr. Chip Thomas, covering 11,885 mi over eight months.

In February 1995, Buettner developed a genre of exploration that enabled online audiences to direct teams of experts to solve mysteries.

His MayaQuest [USA Today CITATION] expedition sought to help solve the mystery of the 9th century Maya Collapse.

Carrying laptop computers and a newly demilitarized satellite dish, the expedition interacted with classrooms that helped determine exploration route and findings.

Hamline University's Center for Global Environmental Education created a framework for schools to use the expedition as multi-disciplinary teaching themes.

In 1995, Buettner founded Earthtreks, Inc. to manage his expeditions.

He sold the company to Classroom Connect in 1997 but continued to lead expeditions until 2002.

His team retraced Darwin's route in the Galapagos and followed Marco Polo's trail on the Silk Road, explored the collapse of the Anasazi Civilization and traced the origins of Western Civilization.

When Buettner realized that adults were also following his expeditions, he approached National Geographic with the idea to research longevity hotspots and was given support to move forward.

Around the early 2000s (in order to validate the age of centenarians first reported in the AKEA study, see Deiana et al 1999 ), astrophysicist turned demographer Professor Michel Poulain and his team were investigating areas of extreme longevity in Italy.

Their work eventually led to the introduction of the concept of Blue Zone by Poulain and colleagues as related to population experiencing exceptionally high longevity.

Poulain identified, with Gianni Pes, Luca Deiana and colleagues, the first Blue Zone in Sardinia (with financial support from the US National Institute on Aging, subcontract with Duke University n. 03-SC-NIH-1027, from the MaxPlanck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany, and the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, Italy).

This seminal research work caused a stir globally, when first presented at the 2000 IUSSP Montpellier conference as a short paper by Poulain, and even more when it appeared as a full publication in the journal of Experimental Gerontology in 2004 (Poulain et al 2004).

Given the importance of the discovery, the Blue Zones concept early on in its development, attracted the attention, and support, of Buettner.

In 2003, Buettner began leading trips to these destinations while collaborating with a variety of experts, including anthropologists, historians, dietitians, and geneticists.

His early trips focused on Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Monterrey, Nuevo Leon; and Loma Linda, California.

In 2003, Buettner formed Blue Zones LLC.

Buettner reported on communities with increased longevity, identified as blue zones, in his cover story for National Geographic Magazine's November 2005 edition, "Secrets of Long Life."

In 2006, under aegis of National Geographic, Buettner collaborated with Michel Poulain and Costa Rican demographer Dr. Luis Rosero-Bixby to identify a fourth longevity hotspot in the Nicoya Peninsula.

In 2008, again working with Poulain, he found a fifth longevity hotspot on the Greek Island of Ikaria.

In April 2008, Buettner released a book on his findings, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest, through National Geographic Books.

It resulted in interviews for Buettner on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Dr. Oz Show, and Anderson Cooper 360.

In September 2009, Buettner gave a TED talk on the topic, titled "How to live to be 100+", which, as of this date, has over 4.6 million views.

In October 2010, he released the book Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, largely based on research taking a data-based approach to identify the statistically happiest regions of the happiest countries on Earth.

He argues that creating lasting happiness is only achievable through optimizing the social and physical environments.

In April 2015, Buettner published The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People, which listed Ikaria (in Greece), Okinawa (Japan), Sardinia (Italy), Loma Linda (California), and Costa Rica as the places with top longevity.

It became a New York Times Best Seller.

He then met with Robert Kane, as of 2016 the Director, Center on Aging, at the University of Minnesota, who introduced him to demographers and scientists at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) in Washington, D.C. Buettner was awarded a grant from the National Institute of Aging.

Previous research identified the longevity hotspots of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Loma Linda.