• You grew up in a household full of diagrams of the human brain.

Yes, that's very funny. We used to have pictures of the human brain on our dining room table as my father was making anatomy diagrams. As children we also saw jars with brains that were going to be dissected.

• But that did not drive you into medicine or biology.

Maybe it scared me. I am not sure. I have mentioned before that I really wanted to be a veterinarian. I love animals.

• I thought I'd talk to you about your dogs. Tell me about your dogs. How many do you have? Different websites give different figures.

I used to have two Labradors, a black one named Turbo and a brown one named Chocolate Chip, and they passed away a couple of years ago. I wanted a dog I could travel with, knowing that I would be going to Russia for training and would be coming back to the U.S. So I ended up with a Jack Russell terrier and his name is Gorby, after Mikhail Gorbachev. He's small, but a little too big to travel with me, so my parents ended up taking care of him when I'm on my trips. I'll get him when I'm back.

• So you didn't become a vet and became a pilot instead.

When I talk to kids about my life, the message I give is that I've had a lot of things I wanted to do and I kept getting my second choice.

... contd.