Dan Buettner

Dan Buettner is the New York Times Bestselling author of THE BLUE ZONE: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, to be published by National Geographic Books on March 25, 2008. He is also the founder and president of Blue Zones™, an organization that creates lifestyle management tools to help people live longer, better lives. Buettner has set three Guinness World Records in long-distance cycling. Americastrek (1986-87) took a team of four Americans on a 15,500-mile ride from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. On Sovietrek (1990), two Russians, Buettner and his brother biked 12,888 miles around the world. Buettner’s ensuing book, Sovietrek, won a Minnesota Book Award. Africatrek, a 12,172-mile ride across Africa, took Buettner and his multiracial team across the Sahara, through equatorial Congo, and to the continent’s southern tip. In conjunction with the expedition, Buettner initiated a program that sent 1,000 bicycles to Africa and an education program that reached over 1 million students. Buettner co-produced an Africatrek segment on National Geographic and an Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary. The Africatrek Trail CD-ROM, allowing players to relive the expedition, had sales of more than $2 million. Buettner’s book, Africatrek, won the Scientific American’s “Young Reader Award.” As a writer and photographer, Buettner’s work has appeared in National Geographic, LIFE, Sports Illustrated, Outside, Popular Mechanics and Chicago Tribune. He’s been a regular guest on Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360 and Fox and Friends. In 1996, Buettner created one of the nation’s premier adventure learning programs. His interactive expeditions—“Quests”-- enabled online explorers to direct a team of experts as they unravel archaeological — and now longevity-related — mysteries. Over this past 11 years these Quests have help solve 13 ancient mysteries. Some 20 million people, including 30,000 classrooms, participated. The Washington Post has called this “the most successful experiment in interactive education to date.” He is currently leading Blues Zones (www.bluezones.com), a project that, in partnership with the National Institute on Aging and the University of Minnesota, is exploring the world’s longest-lived regions to distill a cross-cultural longevity formula for American audiences. Born in 1960, Buettner graduated cum laude from the University of St. Thomas in 1983. He’s most proud of having gotten a speeding ticket, while riding his bicycle near his home in Minneapolis.