*“Yesterday, I Went to Mars ♡”*

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*“Yesterday, I Went to Mars ♡”* Makoto Hoshino, CEO of Makoto Co., Ltd. and Galactic Hitchhikers, shares his journey of pursuing heart-moving experiences and embracing the unknown. In 2017, he summited Everest and all Seven Summits and completed the 250km Gobi Desert Ultramarathon. His future goal: to stand atop Olympus Mons on Mars by 2049. Through this podcast, Makoto reflects on his life’s adventures, celebrating family, global friendships, and the joy of trusting intuition and living freely. Join him as he explores the excitement of breaking free from conventions

  1. 5h ago

    A Quote from Takeda Shingen That Still Lands Every Time

    This episode sits with a quote attributed to Takeda Shingen — the sixteenth-century warlord — about what emerges depending on how fully you give yourself to something: wisdom, complaints, or excuses. A specific image appears: climbers above 8,000 meters, where the thought "that's enough for today" causes the body to stop and the mind to fill with reasons. But at the true edge, when not taking the next step might mean dying, something different happens — wisdom appears, sharp and precise. The contrast between that state and ordinary half-heartedness is what the episode turns on. There's a quiet observation that this saying isn't really about effort producing results — it's about giving everything producing wisdom. Whether wisdom appears isn't a question of intelligence, but of attitude. That distinction feels almost consoling. It also touches on a thread that runs through many earlier posts: the idea of living fully in the present moment, drawn from Zen and from the mountains. Giving full attention to the single step in front of you and continuing to produce wisdom may turn out to be the same thing. A reminder that complaints might mostly be awareness of one's own half-heartedness, turned outward — and that noticing when they increase can serve as a signal worth paying attention to.

    3 min

  2. 1d ago

    Removing the "Fiction" from Science Fiction

    This episode looks at SpaceX — not through the lens of its current scale, but through the earlier atmosphere when almost no one believed it would amount to anything. It returns to a session at an International Astronautical Congress around 2006, where a nearly empty room listened to Elon Musk speak, at a time when space startups were seen as companies that formed and collapsed in cycles. Two figures sit at the center of the reflection: Musk, who by his own account genuinely believed the odds of success were under ten percent, and Gwynne Shotwell, who joined in 2002 when there were roughly a dozen employees and no rockets had flown. Her reasoning, as she has described it, wasn't about Mars or grand visions — it was more specific: this team might actually be able to build rockets cheaply. There's also the moment in 2008 when, after three consecutive launch failures and nearly depleted funding, the decision was made to attempt a fourth. That launch succeeded, and the NASA contract that followed shortly after is what kept the company alive. A line from a later speech anchors the closing section: that the whole point of SpaceX was to remove the "fiction" from science fiction — to make the future that people had read about in books actually real. A quiet look at what it means to take the long-shot bet seriously, and at the particular kind of people who were already on board when the room was still empty.

    6 min

  3. 2d ago

    A Crowdfunding Campaign That Has Lasted 144 Years

    This episode looks at the Sagrada Família — currently in its 144th year of construction — and what it means that a building has been continuously built across generations, with full completion not expected until the early 2030s. There's a surprising detail at the center of it: the construction isn't funded by the Spanish government or the city of Barcelona, but by ticket sales, donations, and merchandise. When tourism fell during the pandemic, construction slowed. In that sense, it's a crowdfunding campaign that has been running since 1882. It touches on the contrast between the Apollo program — massive institutional funding, a hard deadline, a goal achieved within a decade — and a cathedral that has outlasted every person who ever worked on it, with contributors for most of its history giving money toward something they knew they'd never see finished. There's also a quiet observation about the LEGO lunar rover sitting nearby, and how both projects, as different as they are, involve building something larger than any single lifetime. A small reflection on whether it's only finished things that move us — or whether there's something particular about the act of continuing, year after year, that pulls at something deeper.

    3 min

  4. 3d ago

    In 2026, a 75-Minute Film Was Made for $2,000

    This episode looks at Dreams of Violets — a 75-minute feature film depicting Iran's 2026 pro-democracy movement, made for $2,000 by two brothers who fled the country in 2009, using generative AI because live-action production would have put everyone involved at risk. It reflects on what that number actually means: a short self-produced film can easily exceed $2,000 on equipment rental and editing alone, and yet this became a feature screened at major festivals. The episode draws a quiet contrast with the previous post about the SpaceX IPO and its $1.8 trillion valuation — not to rank them, but to hold them side by side. One story about overwhelming physical infrastructure, and another about two people in exile finding a way to tell their country's story when no safe way existed to tell it. There's also a question raised about what falls away when the cost barrier drops — not just "things that couldn't be made," but voices that couldn't be heard. How many works trying to depict Iran's democracy movement never made it into the world, quietly accumulating, for want of funding or safety or distribution. A quiet look at a moment when the question shifts — not how to make something, but who gets to speak.

    4 min

  5. 5d ago

    The "50x Seat" Nobody Else Was Sitting In

    This episode looks at the investors who were already sitting in the best seats long before SpaceX became a $1.7 trillion story — specifically, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, which put roughly 30 billion yen into SpaceX in 2019, when most of the world was still skeptical that Starlink could become a real business. It traces how OTPP became the kind of organization capable of making that bet: a cautious pension fund that rebuilt itself from the ground up around 1990, hiring people who had taken serious losses in real markets and understood, at a visceral level, what risk actually feels like. There's a closer look at Olivia Steedman, the civil engineer and finance professional who wrote the check. The episode reflects on how her engineering background — a way of seeing airports, highways, and infrastructure projects — may have been exactly what let her look at Musk's satellite network and see not spectacle, but coherent, next-generation infrastructure that nobody else could replicate. There's also a frank look at the FTX loss: around 10 billion yen, nearly all of it gone. Against estimated SpaceX gains of 1.7 trillion yen, it registers as noise — but the point isn't the math. It's that even a team of this caliber pulls up wreckage sometimes, and what separates them is continuing to show up anyway. A quiet look at what a fifty-times return actually requires: years of waiting, a real tolerance for failure, and a commitment made at the moment when almost no one else believed.

    7 min

  6. 5d ago

    June 12 — One of the Largest IPOs in History: SpaceX Arrives Like a Final Boss. But More Than Anything Else — the Compensation Package Tied to Putting a Million People on Mars

    This episode looks at the SpaceX IPO — one of the largest in history — and why the feverish energy around buying shares on listing night might be worth pausing before joining. It walks through the numbers with some care: at $1.75 trillion, SpaceX enters the market already larger than Tesla, already equivalent to five Toyotas stacked together, already controlling roughly 90% of the commercial rocket launch market. The sweetest growth, the argument goes, happened while the company was still private. There is no reason to rush by even a millimeter. But the more absorbing part of the episode is what came next — the compensation package that a forty-five-year veteran of Wall Street called "the most outrageous deal" of his career. To receive up to 200 million restricted shares, two conditions must be met: the company's valuation reaches $7.5 trillion, and a permanent Mars colony of at least one million people is established. No revenue target. No profit margin. Just those two things — one of them a science-fiction goal that could take decades and lies partly beyond any one person's control. There is also a quiet personal thread running through it all: a nearly finished Lego lunar rover on the desk, a small private ambition involving Olympus Mons, and something about the Beethoven ritual of counting exactly sixty coffee beans each morning before beginning the Ninth. A reflection on what it means to cast a vote — not just financially, but personally — in favor of an idea so large and so unhinged that its very seriousness is what makes it worth believing in.

    10 min

  7. Jun 7

    The Cars We Left on the Moon

    This episode follows the process of building a LEGO NASA lunar rover, and the thoughts that surface while putting it together piece by piece. It looks at the three rovers left behind on the moon after Apollo missions 15, 16, and 17 — vehicles that were never meant to return, still sitting exactly where they were parked in 1971 and 1972. With no atmosphere, no rain, and no rust, they're likely still largely intact. There's a closer look at what the rover actually was: folded up for launch, deployed by pulling a wire, wheels and seats unfolding in sequence — and once open, impossible to fold back. A machine designed entirely for a one-way trip. There's also a brief reflection on what the rover made possible — how Apollo 11 and 12 astronauts were limited to wherever their feet could take them, and how the rover's arrival marked the first time humans could move through and explore somewhere beyond Earth without walking. A quiet look at what it means to build a replica of something still out there — and the thought that when someone eventually returns to the moon, they may find those rovers waiting, a record of a challenge from more than fifty years ago.

    3 min

  8. Jun 7

    Maybe Displays Aren’t Necessary After All.

    After spending time with several AI glasses, including Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, Rokid, and Even G2, an interesting realization emerged: displays may not be the most important feature. While much of the conversation around smart glasses focuses on augmented reality and visual overlays, the day-to-day experience suggests something different. What matters most is often how quickly and naturally a device fits into everyday life. Devices that respond immediately and require little thought to operate tend to feel more useful than those with more advanced features but greater friction. Even small delays, extra steps, or moments of hesitation can affect whether a product becomes part of a daily routine. This doesn’t mean displays have no future. As display technology becomes more seamless and less intrusive, visual information will likely play an important role. But today, ease of use appears to matter more than the amount of information a device can show. The broader takeaway is that technology may be moving away from adding more capabilities and toward reducing the effort required to access them. Increasingly, the best products are the ones that feel natural enough to disappear into the background of daily life.

    3 min
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About

*“Yesterday, I Went to Mars ♡”* Makoto Hoshino, CEO of Makoto Co., Ltd. and Galactic Hitchhikers, shares his journey of pursuing heart-moving experiences and embracing the unknown. In 2017, he summited Everest and all Seven Summits and completed the 250km Gobi Desert Ultramarathon. His future goal: to stand atop Olympus Mons on Mars by 2049. Through this podcast, Makoto reflects on his life’s adventures, celebrating family, global friendships, and the joy of trusting intuition and living freely. Join him as he explores the excitement of breaking free from conventions

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