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 T ...