Happy Friyay Sebastian,

In this edition: an 11-metre Trojan Horse parked in Trafalgar Square, a hearing aid rethought around the hijab, and why your brain is at its most persuadable at 4pm on a Friday.

So find some shade, pour something cold and enjoy today's Weekend Reads.

As always, big love,

Chris and the 42courses team x

An 11 Metre Trojan Horse Lands In Trafalgar Square · To launch Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, Universal wheeled a four-tonne wooden horse into the square overnight. Six weeks of work by 45 craftspeople, in service of the oldest marketing trick in the book.

A Hearing Aid Rethought Around The Hijab · Most hearing aids assume an uncovered ear. Dentsu Indonesia and beauty brand Wardah started from how millions of women actually dress, and built one worn as a 12 gram brooch instead. Wonderful design thinking.

Why Staring At Something Enormous Makes You Happier · Fresh from our blog this week. The science of awe, and why standing in front of a mountain, a cathedral or a night sky quietly shrinks your problems down to a manageable size.

An Opinionated Guide To Which AI To Use · Ethan Mollick's freshly updated guide to using AI. Learn which model to use for what and why the real shift is agents that quietly do hours of work in one go. It's practical and, as always, easy to understand.

10 Effectiveness Trends From Cannes Lions 2026 · WARC's wrap of what actually works, straight from this year's festival. The big theme is coherence: now that creators and algorithms carry your brand into places no media plan can reach, the strongest brands are the ones built to hold together on their own.

Why 4pm On A Friday Is The Worst Time To Shop · New research finds that just 30 seconds of scrolling fogs the brain, and a foggy brain falls for pushy ads. Best read this morning, while your defences are still up.

Writing Isn't About Writing · Dave Trott on the journalism lesson that made Nora Ephron a writer. A class writes up a school announcement, and every single student misses the real story. The lead, it turns out, was upstream all along.

1701 · French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac paddles up a river locals call "le détroit" and founds a small fort that becomes Detroit. Two centuries later, a car company borrows his name and puts it on a million bonnets 🚗

1802 · Alexandre Dumas is born in Picardy. The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo and enough other novels to fill a small library follow 📚

1897 · Amelia Earhart is born in Kansas. Thirty five years later she becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic ✈️

1911 · Tipped off by a local farmer, Yale lecturer Hiram Bingham scrambles up a ridge in Peru and comes face to face with Machu Picchu, hidden under centuries of jungle 🏔️

1936 · Britain's speaking clock takes its first call. Telephonist Ethel Cain won the job, and 10 guineas, for her "golden voice", which went on to tell the nation the time for 27 years ⏰

1950 · A two-stage rocket called Bumper 8 lifts off from a scrubby stretch of Florida coastline, the very first launch from a place the world would come to know as Cape Canaveral 🚀

1969 · Apollo 11 splashes down in the Pacific, eight days after leaving for the Moon. The crew go straight into three weeks of quarantine, greeted by the President through the window of a converted caravan 🌊

1976 · Don't Go Breaking My Heart, his duet with Kiki Dee, gives Elton John his very first UK number one, after 15 albums of trying 🎶

1987 · Hulda Crooks, a 91 year old great-grandmother who took up mountaineering at 54, becomes the oldest woman ever to stand on top of Mount Fuji 🗻