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Dan Buettner
Author & Explorer
Dan Buettner
Author & Explorer
Biography
Dan Buettner is an explorer, National Geographic Fellow, award-winning journalist and producer, and New York Times bestselling author. He discovered the five places in the world – dubbed Blue Zones™ Hostpots – where people live the longest, healthiest lives. His articles about these places in The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic are two of the most popular for both publications.
Buettner now works in partnership with municipal governments, large employers, and health insurance companies to implement Blue Zones Projects in communities, workplaces, and universities. Blue Zones Projects are well-being initiatives that apply lessons from the Blue Zones to entire communities by focusing on changes to the local environment, public policy, and social networks. The program has dramatically improved the health of more than 5 million Americans to date.
His books, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World’s Healthiest People, and The Blue Zones of Happiness were all national bestsellers. Buettner has appeared on The Today Show, Oprah, NBC Nightly News, and Good Morning America, and has keynoted speeches at TEDMED, Bill Clinton’s Health Matters Initiative, and Google Zeitgeist. His speech in January 2018 at the World Economic Forum in Davos was chosen as “one of the best of Davos.”
Buettner also holds three Guinness World Records in distance cycling.
Speech Topics
The Blue Zones of Happiness
What makes us happy? Most people are misguided or just plain wrong. Living our best life involves optimizing how we evaluate our life, how we experience it from day to day and how to live out our purpose. Following the model he pioneered with Blue Zones of Longevity, Buettner worked with Gallup to identify the happiest regions of the happiest countries in the world and distilled their lessons. He also drew from data that represents 95% of the world’s population and a consensus of the world’s top experts to debunk some commonly believed myths. Using stunning National Geographic photography, Dan brings the stories and concepts to life, offering an evidenced-based, long-lasting strategy to set up your life to live your happiest life.
The Making of a Healthy City
In 2009, Albert Lea, Minnesota, a statistically average American city, completed a one-year community health experiment that raised life expectancy by three years, trimmed a collective 12,000 pounds off waistlines, and dropped healthcare costs of city workers by some 40%. USA Today, Good Morning America, AARP, ABC Nightline, CNN, and US News & World Report all covered the story. Harvard's Dr. Walter Willett, writing in Newsweek magazine, called the results “stunning.” Dan Buettner, founder and director of the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project, created a “perfect storm” of health that transformed a city. He tells the fascinating story of how one typically obese American city of 18,000 reversed the trend and also got happier. Workplaces were an integral part of building enthusiasm and support. Dan's presentation takes audiences on the yearlong journey as this town adopts 28 evidence-based ways to change their environment to live longer and better. They got healthier without thinking about it.
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