This short review is the result of a minicourse at the Sapienza University of Rome the author gave about the proof of the $g$-theorem. We review the hard Lefschetz theorem for simplicial spheres, as well as the theory at its core: perturbations of maps, biased Poincaré pairings and a cobordism argument that relates the Lefschetz property of a manifold to the Lefschetz property on its boundary. We also sketch an alternative argument based on edge-contractions.