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There’s a good amount of bullshitting in The Last Days of August, despite Welsh journalist Jon Ronson’s best efforts to cut to the truth. Ronson is known for his investigative but extremely readable books So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and The Psychopath Test. Last year saw him breaking into the podcast world with the Audible original series The Butterfly Effect, which explores how free porn streaming sites like PornHub have cut into the profits of the previously well-monied porn industry. August feels like a sequel to Butterfly Effect due to Ronson’s continued attempts to objectively cover the lives of porn actors, humanize them, and this time, get at the true-crime-y story of August Ames, a porn actress who killed herself in December 2017.

Suzette Smith is the arts & culture editor of the Portland Mercury. Go ahead and tell her about all your food, art, and culture gripes: suzette@portlandmercury.com. Follow her on Twitter, Bluesky,...