Dina Temple-Raston


Dina Temple-Raston is a Belgian-born American journalist and award-winning author. She is the creator, host, and correspondent of the podcast "What Were You Thinking," which Entertainment Weekly named as one of the best new podcasts of 2018 Feb 23 issue, calling it "a provocative series which tells the stories of teenagers who've made the worst kinds of choices -- joining ISIS, planning a school shooting -- before analyzing the impulses behind them." In a review, the Washington Post wrote that it was "the podcast every parent needs to hear."
Temple-Raston has been NPR's counter-terrorism correspondent since 2007 and is the author of four award-winning books of narrative non-fiction including A Death in Texas: A Story of Race, Murder and a Small Town's Struggle for Redemption, about the James Byrd murder in Jasper, Texas; and "The Jihad Next Door: Rough Justice in the Age of Terror," which looks at being Muslim in America post 9-11.

Early life and education

Temple-Raston was born in Brussels, Belgium, on 25 August 1965 or 1964. Her first language was French. She graduated from Redwood High School in Larkspur, California, in 1982. She received her Bachelor of Arts with honors from Northwestern University in 1986. She went on to study at Liaoning University, Shenyang, China, graduating with a degree in Chinese Language in 1989. In 2006, she earned a master's degree in journalism from New York's Columbia University.

Journalistic career

In March 2007, she joined the staff of NPR as Counter-terrorism correspondent and traveled all over the world covering terrorism attacks and trends for more than a decade. She took a book leave in 2017 to create the "What Were You Thinking" podcast, the first season of which was released in 2018. She was chosen for a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard in 2013. These fellowships are given to mid-career journalists. She previously worked as City Hall Bureau Chief for the New York Sun, as a producer for CNNfn and as a White House correspondent for Bloomberg News. One of the news services earliest employees, Temple-Raston was recruited while living in Asia and opened Bloomberg's Shanghai and Hong Kong offices and covered financial markets and economics for both USA Today and CNNfn. She began her professional career as special foreign assistant for the Liaoning Provincial Government, Shenyang, China, followed by a stint with AsiaWeek in Hong Kong.