What’s Happening: The Studio Ghibli auteur’s final film The Boy and the Heron shines an autobiographical light into his childhood traumas and the spirited dream worlds he lovingly creates.

The Download: In 1944, when Hayao Miyazaki was three years old, World War II was gripping Japan. His family fled Tokyo for the Japanese countryside and his father worked in a fighter plane factory while his mother was hospitalized with tuberculosis. Many of the Studio Ghibli mastermind’s earliest childhood memories are tinged with war, fear, and “bombed-out cities,” as he recalled in interviews. Such imagery also permeates his films: In The Wind Rises, the protagonist designs fighter planes, and in Porco Rosso, the titular pig pilots one; the mother in My Neighbor Totoro is sick and bedridden. Miyazaki tempers grim realities with a spirited quietude that stares into the subconscious. Though they’re inextricably linked with his lived experience, he’d rarely described his films as “semi-autobiographical.”

That’s not the case for The Boy and the Heron, purported to be Miyazaki’s final film and a dark outlier in his oeuvre that hit theaters in the United States last week after enjoying a summertime release in Japan. The film’s harrowing opening sequence depicts a firebombed Tokyo hospital; a young boy, Mahito, wakes up and dashes there after realizing his mother is on a shift, but it’s too late. Flames subsume her, and he spends the next few years overcome by grief. Though he moves to a quiet estate in the countryside, he struggles to adapt and encounters a mendacious heron that beckons him to a derelict tower—and claims his mother’s spirit is inside. It’s a portal to one of the alternate universes teeming with life and the “weird little guys” that Miyazaki lovingly renders across his films in Studio Ghibli’s gorgeous animation style.

Equal parts graceful and grotesque (the titular bird tends to shit everywhere), The Boy and the Heron is a fittingly solemn denouement to the career of one of animation’s most beloved auteurs. It also offers a glimpse of Miyazaki’s own story, beyond his persona as the meticulous creature of habit who pours so much mental, spiritual, and emotional stamina into conjuring his hand-drawn dreamworlds that he repeatedly threatens to retire upon completion. (Something tells us that, at age 82, he’s serious this time.) As a boy, Miyazaki struggled with communication and preferred to express himself by drawing pictures. Those morphed into his ornate animated films, many with fiery female leads whose internal conflicts and inner desires are externalized through lovably menacing creatures. With Mahito as a rare male protagonist, comparisons to Miyazaki’s own upbringing are inevitable; perhaps it’s a window into his true self.

In Their Own Words: “I noticed that with this film, where he portrayed himself as a protagonist, he included a lot of humorous moments in order to cover up that the boy, based on himself, is very sensitive and pessimistic,” Toshio Suzuki, a co-founder of Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki’s right-hand for the past four decades, told the New York Times. “That was interesting to see.”

Surface Says: Only time will tell if Miyazaki’s latest is truly his last.

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The minds behind Vera Wang and the Saint Regis have collaborated with the Los Angeles tea importer Art of Tea to bring its offerings to their discerning clientele. It’s easy to see why, considering that its customizable, wellness-oriented blends are informed by its founder’s global travels. Recently, the brand landed at Spring for a breathwork session to mark the debut of Lauren S. Thompson’s Tetrastella Collection. Over the course of the designer’s three-day pop-up, its Manifest and Bright Eyed blends, along with its Chaga Chai Mushroom Tea, imbued this corner of the City that Never Sleeps with some much-needed zen.

While working in Marcel Wanders’ graphic design department more than a decade ago, Ruben de la Rive Box and Golnar Roshan sparked a creative kinship marked by an experimental vision and desire to build a progressive future through design. The work-and-life partners now find themselves in Amsterdam helming a forward-thinking artistic practice whose skill at melding light, space, and material beautifully captures feelings of transience, sparks reflection, and explores visual wonder as a means to emotional well-being.

When: Until April 7

Where: High Desert Art Museum, Oregon

What: The Pop Art Icon was commissioned by art dealers Ronald and Frayda Feldman to create a series of screenprints to raise the profile of endangered animals in 1983, the tenth anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. Four decades later, seven of those ten species Warhol highlighted remain at risk of extinction. The collection asks us to reflect on the need for actionable conservation—and leverages the same style Warhol used for celebrities like Marilyn Monroe to share that animals deserve the same level of attention.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

Everything We Know About the Bull That Was on the Loose in Newark [Intelligencer]

Scalding Takeout Tea Lands London Woman in ER “On All Fours…Having My Buttocks Syringed” [The Guardian]

Iowa Pilot Flying Again After Waterfowl Crashed Through Windshield of His Helicopter [AP]

Man With No Ticket or Passport Flew from Copenhagen to Los Angeles, FBI Says [New York Times]

Jingle Hell! NYC Braces for SantaCon’s Booze-Fueled Anarchy as 30,000 “Obnoxious” Mr. Clauses Force Bars to Lock Their Doors Before the Streets are Plagued by Brawls, Urine, and Vomit [The Daily Mail]

Streaker at Disneyland Lays Bare (Literally) Why Theme Parks Have Rules [USA Today]

On Dec. 5, the Queens museum teamed up with athletic footwear brand On to kick off art week in the Magic City with a “Night in Miami” at the SLS South Beach. The evening featured MoMA PS1 artists, and visuals made by Diane Severin Nguyen, a new performance by Marie Karlberg, DJ sets by Ariel Zetina and Memphy, and a headlining performance by Eartheater. Guests took in the scene poolside, mingling in cabanas over champagne and Provençal rose.

When was it? Dec. 5

Where was it? SLS, South Beach

Who was there? David Allemann, Connie Butler, Dale Moss, Ethan Diaz, DeVonn Francis, Kimberly Drew, Kouros Maghsoudi, and more.

During this past summer, Thomas Hayes Studio made waves with the launch of Objects by Lady Hayes, a collection of hand-crafted tabletop accessories created in collaboration with business and life partner Jonelle Hayes. Of the collection’s assortment of trinket dishes, mirrors, and jewelry stands, the Make-Up Tray is a sleek embodiment of the creative couple’s appreciation for natural materials.

Perched upon an oiled slab of Claro walnut is a speckled ceramic catch-all dish by L.A.-based artist Caroline Blackburn. Patinated brass, which frequently appears in the studio’s furniture, makes an appearance in the form of sculptural ring holders and makeup brush vessels. A leather-wrapped mirror puts the finishing touch on the vanity-ready set.

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Hacin is a multidisciplinary architecture firm dedicated to design excellence and client service. Working at all scales, the firm’s services include architecture and interior design, graphic design and branding, and adaptive reuse.

Surface Says: Hacin imbues its work with a strong sense of place, especially in Boston. Just look at the award-winning Whitney Hotel in Beacon Hill for proof: its thoughtfully expressive design has a pinch of New England flair and exudes a casual sophistication that impeccably matches the Beantown vibe.

This Subreddit was created to help bakers figure out their strange cookie cutters.

A living cover of biocrusts is protecting the Great Wall of China from erosion.

This crime podcast is capturing the “grubby underbelly” of the art trade.

Wind turbine service technicians emerge as the country’s fastest-growing job.