Why be ethical?

Dan Fincke totally nailed it in this new podcast. Click to get the download.]
Ryan, the interviewer, jokingly asks him to summarize ethics, about a half hour in. Dan says he’ll do it 10 minutes. He takes 12. Some questions are left open, but those are the questions that no one has an answer for. I have some notes on it, but I’ll let the thread get going a bit.

I listened to the 1st hour. It is an EXTRAORDINARY encapsulation of positive and clear ideas. (It, also, gave me a greater appreciation of philosophy.) Even before and after the 12 min. summarization of ethics, there are so many points made that, I think, are critical to the establishment of a coherent positive paradigm for us humans to follow if we hope to continue to thrive together and individually.
The first important point that I heard, that I hope all people could understand is that empiricism and rationalism are BOTH important in the development and maintenance of a coherent life view.
But there were so many other critically important points made, after that.

No one else seems to have listened to this podcast. If the length of the podcast is too daunting, I suggest forwarding to the 19 minute mark and listening for 30 minutes.

Not that I’m some respected expert, but if someone who I was even slightly acquainted with said they found a 12 minute summary of something the entire world has been arguing about for 10,000 years, I’d probably try to find some time in my busy schedule. Is this a sign of the times that we are so bombarded with offers of great news that we can’t recognize an actual great offer? Or is it that this forum is populated by people who are pretty much up to date on this stuff? It’d be interesting for someone to try to give us their summary THEN listen and see how they match up.
Either way, it’s great to be alive in a time when biology has given answers about how our minds work and physics has told us about where we are in the universe. Plus, we are on the brink of something so big, we’ll need a new word for “universe”.