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Pre-order the newest Blue Zones book, The Blue Zones Evolution

The Next Frontier of Longevity: More Healthy Years, Not Just More Birthdays

A Disney+ special premiering New Year’s Day and Dan Buettner’s Blue Zones Evolution, publishing January 5 from National Geographic, explore four regions where people enjoy exceptional healthy longevity—and what their lives can teach us.

The longevity boom has made living to 100 an obsession. Dan Buettner asks a more urgent question: How much of that life will we be healthy enough to enjoy?

In Blue Zones Evolution, publishing January 5, 2027, from National Geographic, the Blue Zones founder shifts his investigation from extraordinary numbers of centenarians to places where people enjoy unusually long lives in good health.

Drawing on global health data and on-the-ground reporting, Buettner explores four regions through the lens of health-adjusted life expectancy, or HALE—a measure that accounts for both years lived and health lost to illness or disability.

The ambition is bigger than extending life. It is preserving the ability to walk, think, participate and remain independent for more of it.

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The original blue zones are changing.

Buettner’s earlier investigations examined communities where people reached 100 at extraordinary rates. Their everyday lives shared protective features: natural movement, mostly whole plant foods, purpose, and strong family and social connections.

But many of those conditions are eroding. Fast food is displacing traditional meals. Cars and conveniences are removing movement from daily routines. Community traditions are weakening.

That change gives Blue Zones Evolution its urgency. If the conditions associated with exceptional longevity can disappear, how can we preserve them—and build their benefits into modern life?

Four regions offer surprising answers.

Their cultures differ, but each challenges familiar assumptions about healthy aging.

The book explores how everyday daily routines, movements, and culture work together. No single food, ritual or policy explains the whole picture; the surrounding way of life matters.

The next frontier may be your neighborhood.

Blue Zones Evolution identifies a sweet spot for extending healthy life: the neighborhood. It is big enough to powerfully shape how much you move, how well and how often you socialize, what you eat, and how safe you feel—yet small enough for you to help shape it. That gives ordinary people a role in a field often dominated by laboratories, medical breakthroughs and expensive treatments.

For policymakers, the book asks what happens when healthy years become a priority in decisions about streets, schools, food and community life. For individuals, it offers a new way to think about a longevity plan: include the conditions outside your front door.

Arriving as audiences reconsider their habits for a new year, Blue Zones Evolution poses a question with implications far beyond another resolution:

What would it take to make your neighborhood a place that produces more healthy years?

More Information

BOOK: Blue Zones Evolution
AUTHOR: Dan Buettner
PUBLISHER: National Geographic
PUBLICATION DATE: January 5, 2027
DISNEY+ SPECIAL: Premieres January 1, 2027

MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES

Dan Buettner is available for interviews on:

Why healthy life expectancy should become the next major longevity conversation.
What the changing original blue zones reveal about modern life.
What traditional diets teach us about bread, pasta and rice.
How communities keep older adults active, connected and needed.
How to build a longevity plan that extends beyond your own body.