When you have an American mother from the Midwest and an Egyptian father, you travel back and forth and see such completely different stories in the news about the exact same events. It makes you think, 'How is anybody able to understand or even have a dialogue when the basis of information is just so completely different?'

If you are a fan of my BBC series 'Great Continental Railway Journeys,' you'll probably not be surprised to learn that one of my great aspirations is to travel on Egypt's railways.

I'm an Egyptologist. I'm a remote sensing specialist, and I'm a space archaeologist.

If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing moves people as much as religion.

I left my husband a year after 9/11. Not because he was an American and I an Egyptian, nothing to do with culture or religion, nothing to do with 9/11. We brought out the worst in each other. But before we separated, we visited N.Y.C. one more time together for a friend's engagement, and we went to pay our respects at the site of the attacks.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

While the 2011 revolution did not remove the regime, it has shortened the seemingly endless patience that many Egyptians once had for military rule.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I'd listen to Italian music.

I always wish the hotels were like they are in movies and TV shows, where if you're in Paris, right outside your window is the Eiffel Tower. In Egypt, the pyramids are right there. In the movies, every hotel has a monument right outside your window. My hotel rooms overlook the garbage dumpster in the back alley.

As a vibrant force in civil society, women continue to press for their rights, equal participation in decision-making, and the upholding of the principles of the revolution by the highest levels of leadership in Egypt.

Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing. And Egypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.

I'd rather have the influence than the power, and the influence to me is to build institutions of independence and democracy, to regain for Egypt prestige in education and science and technology.

We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children.

I remember when we were in Egypt as refugees. It was tough, but there was always hope - hope that there's light at the end of the tunnel.

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

I want to travel the world - like Egypt. I love history. That's my favorite subject at school. From the building of the pyramids to... King Tut. Their way of working without technology. I find all that fascinating.

If Reagan had intelligence information that showed that the upheaval in Egypt is actually Democratic in spirit, then he would have, I believe, turned his back on Mubarak, even though there's a long friendship between the United States and Egypt.

The most important thing for me is to have real friendship between Egyptians and Americans.

The Arab Spring is a true phenomenon. Embrace Arab Spring; embrace the aspiration for freedom of the people of Egypt, Syria, and Yemen.

Every effort should be made to help build the new democratic nation with reconciliation and forgiveness, for the sake of Egypt and not for the benefit of a party or a group.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.

Despite differences of faith or even the occasional collisions between them, Egypt is united.

I shocked my parents with a lot of things, whether it was becoming an actor or when I was dating someone outside the Egyptian community or when I moved away from home before getting married.

Smallpox, which spreads by respiration and kills roughly one in three of those infected, took hundreds of millions of lives during a recorded history dating to Pharaonic Egypt. The last case was in 1978, and the disease was declared eradicated on May 8, 1980.