National Book Festival

CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta will be in Washington, DC this weekend at the 2007 National Book Festival. On Saturday September 29, 2007, he will be discussing his book Chasing Life: New Discoveries in the Search for Immortality to Help You Age Less Today at 12pm ET and will be signing books from 1pm - 2pm ET.

The 2007 National Book Festival is on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 7th and 14th streets from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The festival is free and open to the public.

Can't make it to DC? Shortly after his appearance, a webcast will be posted to the Book Festival's website at: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/authors/Gupta.html.

Did you know that he was a White House fellow? Did you know that he's working on a sequel to Chasing Life called Cheating Death? Matt Raymond, Director of Communications at the Library of Congress, interviewed Dr. Gupta last month for the an audio podcast that has been posted to the Book Fair's website. You can listen to it online here or download it from http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/podcasts/mp3/gupta.mp3.

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Earlier this week, Dr. Gupta participated in a Washington Post online discussion. The full transcript is available here. Below is an excerpt:

Washington, D.C.: Is there a direct relationship between the aging process and amount of sleep I get each night ?

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: We know that sleep has more purposes that we previously thought. Our cells are constantly going through various states of rest and replication. Sleep allows those cells to remain in states that keeps the cells' machinery working more efficiently. As a result, it can help all the cells in our body and the tissues that they comprise stay younger.

Here's an interesting fact: Sleeping only six hours a night for a week in a row will make you feel on that eighth day as if you'd gotten no sleep at all. Seven and a half to eight hours remains the sweet spot.

Fairfax, Va.: How is the book festival going? How do you find time to write a book and be on TV?

Dr. Sanjay Gupta: I'm looking forward to attending the book festival. Today will be the first day for me. As far as finding time, I try and synergize a lot of the things that I do. So in addition to writing the book I used a lot of the research that I'd done to also produce a documentary (CNN) on the same topic. Subsequently my Time magazine column also evolved around this interest of mine. So while I stay very busy I try to be as efficient as possible.

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Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Unfortunately I have to leave to attend a cancer awareness luncheon at the Capitol. Cancer prevention has been a passion of mine on a personal and professional for a long time. I'm staying in Washington this weekend and I hope to see you at the festival. Thanks for your great questions. Sorry we couldn't answer them all.

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Mystery Journalist

Friday brings us another Mystery Journalist clue. Do you recognize this smile?

Can you name this CNN journalist?

Let us know who you think it is and we'll reveal this journalist's identity in Sunday's post.