He is director of the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb), a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and a Senior Editor of the APA journal Dreaming. He earned a BA at Stanford University, an MTS at Harvard Divinity School, and a doctorate at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is author and editor of several books, including The Wondering Brain (Routledge, 2005), Dreaming Beyond Death (Beacon, 2006), American Dreamers (Beacon, 2008), Dreaming in the World's Religions (NYU Press, 2008), Lucid Dreaming (ABC-Clio, 2014), Big Dreams (Oxford University Press, 2016), and the forthcoming Lucrecia the Dreamer (Stanford University Press). He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.