I thought this was really good.
It was nice to hear someone to say unequivaocally in a media appearance "I studied this for years, and ETH doesn't work. Period. Stop." As D. Biedny notes, Vallee is diplomatic, but I think with some authors in the various spooky fields, there is that desire not to publically discard the most commonly known explanation (UFO = ET, Bigfoot = surviving homind, ghost = dead soul, etc.) for fear of losing attention and sales, even when your data or less well-known writings suggest that you should discard those ideas.
My favorite parts of the interview were when he discussed, in a careful manner, patterns from data, and made it clear that he and others actually work with data, rather than just presenting collections of anecdotes with mysterious framing. And I appreciated more insight into Hynek.
I have only two criticisms, one of a general meme that Vallee brought up, and one of the interview that I think was unavoidable.
The first is of the meme that quantum physics explains or approaches paranormal experiences and ideas. I'm no expert in quantum. I remember some from chemistry and physics classes, and I read the same stuff in the media others do. But it seems to me that because it isn't entirely well understood, because it allows people to do endless navel-gazing cosmology, because it acts in non-common sense ways, and because Heisenberg used the word "uncertainty" to talk about electron jumping, it is all too tempting to point at it and say "There, that's the answer!" To me, that is very similar to the late 1940s, and early 1950s, when space science was just getting off the ground and was all the rage pointing and saying "There, that's the answer!" resulting in the ETH. I don't fault the people in either age for applying the new scientific awesomeness of their time to mysterious things, because that's really all we can do, so long as we're cool with discarding that answer down the road.
The other criticism, of the interview is that I think Vallee's reputation sort of star-struck the interview, which is why it centered around the most basic issues rather than some of the more detailed stuff that Vallee has specifically done, such as the deception stuff and South America. But I think almost any competent people would have had the same problem (vs. say the incompetency of Norry and his angels, which I've only heard about, even Vallee can't make me listen to that show anymore), and as suggested at the end, in order to really get into that level of discussion, one would need to do a longer multi-session series, ala Bill Moyers' conversations with Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth.
And thank you for not mentioning the movie, other than getting it out of your system before the interview began. Every article I see on him notes that "he is the real-life inspiration ..." So what? That's what interests you most?
Again, good interview, and I hope you are successful in getting him back to talk about the specifics of his research.
