In 1972 St. Louis dynamited the Pruitt-Igoe housing project, and some cultural historians mark that moment as the beginning of the end for objective truth. This deep dive untangles postmodernism, a word applied to confusing films, asymmetrical couches, and the feeling that the news is no longer real. We start with what modernism was, why less is more gave way to less is a bore, and how architects began mashing up history in buildings like London’s MI6 headquarters.

From there we move into the French theorists: Lyotard’s death of the grand narrative, Derrida’s deconstruction of unstable language, and Baudrillard’s hyperreality, illustrated through social media face filters. We cover the science wars and the Sokal hoax, Fredric Jameson’s critique of postmodernism as a symptom of late capitalism, pastiche in Blade Runner and the Judson Dance Theater, and the debate over whether we have entered a more sincere metamodern era or simply live inside postmodernism every time we open our phones.

• Why the utopian modernist design of Pruitt-Igoe failed the people living in it
• Metanarratives, little t truths, and the 20th-century horrors that discredited grand stories
• Deconstruction and hyperreality explained through everyday examples
• The Sokal hoax and the question of how to build a bridge without universal truth
• Parody versus pastiche, and the Madonna to Taylor Swift shift toward sincerity