Hi, this is Dr. Mark Heimann. Welcome to the Doctors' Pharmacy. Today's guest is Dan

butiner, who's an explorer, a National Geographic Fellow and award winning journalist and producer,

and a New York Times bestselling author. He discovered the five places in the world,

Dub Blue Zones, 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.

Butiner now works in partnership with municipal governments, large employers,

and health insurance companies to implement Blue Zones projects and communities,

workplaces and universities. Blue Zones projects are well-being initiatives that apply lessons

from the Blue Zones to the entire community by focusing on changes to the local environment,

public policy, and social networks. The program has dramatically improved the health

of more than five million Americans to date. Welcome, Dan Butiner.

So welcome, Dan. I'm sorry if I have you here in the Doctors' Pharmacy. I want to just

get into first a little bit about your background. You get into this whole idea of longevity

and wellness. You were a journalist and an adventurer and somehow you kind of came upon

the new career path of being an advocate for health and wellness.

So for years, I led expeditions for National Geographic Science expeditions that tried to

unravel mysteries. And they were mysteries like, why did the Maya civilization collapse?

Did Marco Polo go to China? The human origins? And it sounds like the best job in the world.

It really was. I had a full-time staff of Harvard Archaeologists and MIT scientists and National

Geographic photographers. And our job was to find cool, too cool mysteries every year and solve them.

So you're like the Indiana Jones for National Geographic almost?

Yeah, probably. But I didn't have a whip.

...