The award for spiciest Bohemian Grove drama goes to … Ken Burns? 39%
By Emily Dreyfuss57%
7/25/2026, 6:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 10 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Anecdotal, and Appeal to Authority, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 33.6% saturation with 299 hits. Analysis detected 803 faulty-reasoning hits from 890 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 44.5% and a BS Rank of 39% (13,406 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 61.20% of the article peer group.
Tongues are always wagging in San Francisco — and The Waggle is always listening.
Got some tea to spill in our weekly gossip column?
Email us at waggle@sfstandard.com.
What if you threw a fancy-writers conference and the fanciest of them all — the guy due to receive the conference’s biggest honor, complete with a $20,000 prize — failed to show up?
That’s what the conveners of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference — which takes place two weeks after Allen & Co.’s famed billionaire summer camp at the same Idaho resort — faced this week when they were jilted by the historian and filmmaker Ken Burns.
Burns was billed by the SVWC as one of the conference’s featured speakers and was presented with this year’s “Writer in the World” Award.
Last year’s winner was Salman Rushdie, and before that, it was Margaret Atwood.
Both of them showed up in person — but Burns did not.
Instead, miffed volunteers at the conference told The Waggle, he Zoomed in to give a short acceptance speech.
Where was he, you might ask?
Turns out that Burns was bro-ing down at Bohemian Grove, the annual two-week Illuminati “encampment” on the Russian River that wraps up this weekend.
According to two current members of the ultra-secretive, men-only club, Burns had a good reason for skipping out on Sun Valley: He’d been asked to deliver a prestigious “Lakeside Talk,” which he purportedly did last weekend on the topic of the American Revolution.
“Once you have been asked to give one of these talks, it’s not something you would say no to,” said one insider.
“Lakeside Talks are one of the highest honors in all of Bohemia.”
They are reserved for heads of state, titans of industry, and the most powerful figure.
There are other kinds of talks at the Grove, too, but these are less prestigious.
Sam Altman once gave a “Museum Talk,” the source said, but those are more technical and lower profile.
Burns did not respond to a request for comment.
Kate Elgee Haase of the SVWC confirmed that Burns was scheduled to accept the award in person but backed out for “personal reasons.”
A representative from the Bohemian Club declined to comment.
It’s too bad Burns missed out on SVWC because the two-day festival, held July 18-20, was star-studded, featuring Berkeley’s Michael Pollan, new Stanford grad Theo Baker ( a recent guest of The Standard’s PST podcast ), Harvard professor Jill Lepore, former U.S.
Poet Laureate Ada Limon, surgeon and writer Atul Guwande, and essayist Susan Orlean.
Instead, Burns chose to hang out at a club whose roster members (a leaked list of whom was published by The Standard in February) include such luminaries as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the late GOP megadonor David Koch.
( A photo of that illustrious trio at the Grove surfaced a few years back.)
Sorry, Sun Valley.
Apparently, you can’t compete!
K-Pop’s homegrown star
Krystal Jung — one of Korea’s biggest crossover stars, best known as a member of the girl group f(x) — is visiting her hometown of San Francisco at the moment and documenting the trip on Instagram to her 10 million followers.
So far, The Waggle heartily approves of her stops.
She went to everyone’s favorite red-meat emporium, House of Prime Rib.
She picked up treats from B.
Patisserie.
She had a glass of wine and what looks like the pain perdu at Verjus.
And she took a trip to Marin Country Mart in Larkspur for some Johnny doughnuts.
Jung’s parents emigrated to the U.S. from Korea but later relocated back to Seoul so she and older sister Jessica Jung of Girls’ Generation could train under SM Entertainment.
Jessica made her own hometown visit back in the spring, browsing Fillmore Street’s Browser Books.
Come home anytime, Jungs!
A new leading lady in town
Ayesha Curry is trading in her cookbooks for a leading role.
Roku just announced she’s the star of “Second Chance Holiday,” a new rom-com in which she plays a dating expert who can’t seem to make it past New Year’s without getting dumped, opposite Matthew Daddario.
It’s her biggest onscreen role yet — a long way from her teenage stints on “Hannah Montana” and “Good Luck Charlie,” before Sweet July and four kids took over her schedule.
And though she’ll likely have a lot of on-screen kissing time with other men, we know husband Steph is mature enough not to get jealous.
Zendaya’s husband politely throws up
The pride of Oakland, Zendaya, has been everywhere the past few weeks promoting her many films, inspiring hair trends, and just general fashion awe.
But it was her husband whom people couldn’t stop talking about this week.
Tom Holland, who Zendaya confirmed is her official hubby now, went on Hot Ones with his Odyssey co-star Jon Bernthal and uh … well, as New York Magazine put it, “Tom?
He Frew Up.”
(Get it?
Cuz he’s British.)
Holland made it through all 10 hot wings but got an upset tummy, he explained on The Dish podcast, after chugging milk to make the burn go away.
Next time the newlyweds are in The Town, Zendaya should take him straight to World Famous HotBoys Chicken in Uptown.
Let’s see how Spider-Man handles Level 5.
Speakers
3speakers6.1%attributed speech836writer words
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0%flagged-word coverageTom Holland
28 attributed words52% of attributed speech56% writer coverage
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