One hundred and fifty-six—
That's the number of episodes run by CBS during Rod Serling's original run of The Twilight Zone. The show premiered on the evening of October 2nd, 1959, and ran for 5 seasons up until it's cancellation in 1964. However, the show has been airing in some form or another pretty much ever since; Re-runs on various networks, a full-length film, a TV movie, as well as 3 separate attempts from different producers to revive the show and recapture some of the magic from it's glory days.

Sadly, Rod Serling now rests in peace. However his legacy lives on in the form of CBS's newest reincarnation of the show; produced and hosted by Jordan Peele. That show recently released it's second season 60 years after the airing of the original pilot.

The show has also brought valuable life lessons to a multitude of generations. Serling was so notably adept at sneaking morality into entertainment that a TV critic named Mark Dawidziak even wrote an entire book on how watching all 156 episodes will actually make you a better person.

Throughout it's lifetime the show covered just about every fear, scruple, or problem that humanity could have imagined at that time. In many ways it was far ahead of it's time. It covered topics (like racism, gender roles, etc.) that are still talked about and argued over today. Serling was forced to mask many of these ideas in fantasy and science fiction in order to avoid being censored over them.

Serling was extremely passionate about many of these topics. Even under fire from management at the network, who believed the subjects were too nuanced and complex for the average viewer, he would argue vehemently that that was not the case and was always willing to fight for his creative vision.

The Twilight Zone also featured, and was a tremendous help to the careers of many beloved actors and actresses, including the likes of Burgess Meredith, Don Rickles, Elizabeth Montgomery, George Takei, Dennis Hopper, William Shatner, and Carol Burnett; to name just a few.

Of course, like any project, it was not without it's struggles...

Often, due to budgeting issues, they would have to spend the majority of a budget meant for 3 episodes all on one really excellent episode that they wanted to make. Then, they would have to make up for that by shooting two single room episodes with only one or two actors, and would have to try to atone for that by getting more creative with their writing. Admittedly, Rod had stated in interviews that not all of them were so successful. He also attributed some of the poorer quality episodes simply to the high demand for a certain number of shows within a given season's time.