In 1983 Hasbro bought the license of the Diaclone and Micro Change toys from Takara, then commissioned Marvel Comics to come up with a story-line and character names for the toys. The result: Transformers. Despite Tonka releasing the cheaper Gobots line six months earlier, Hasbro's Transformers took the toy market by storm in 1984, raking in US$150 million that year. At the peak of the toy line's popularity, The Transformers: The Movie hit theaters to further capitalize on its success, but the film polarized fans and collectors with the death of Optimus Prime and majority of the original characters. As Hasbro took full control of Transformers from Takara by the late 1980s, sales declined until the toy line was discontinued in 1991. After the failed Generation 2 reboot, Beast Wars rejuvenated the franchise in 1995.
In 2007, the live-action Transformers film solidified Transformers' position as Hasbro's flagship toy line.

Human society is incredibly complex, and the duelling forces pushing us to conform and also to express our individuality are both necessary. Other people can influence us in good ways and in not-so-good ways.
Michael Stevens takes a look into the human urge to conform and just how strong it is against our own beliefs and sense of selves.

Here's a growing trend in artificial intelligence. Dating video games and other applications let users carry on virtual relationships with computerized girlfriends ranging from career women to Japanese schoolgirls. There's even something for the ladies. How soon will there be artificial intelligence of such complexity that protecting its well-being and rights becomes a serious political and social concern? In what year will there be an app or computer program or a device that you not only love but that possibly, within the realm of believability might actually love you ...back?

We're going to see if forcing your facial expression can change the way you feel. If you remove the ability to make facial expressions with botox, will it affect how the people perceive emotions in them?
How do facial expressions affect emotion, and how does emotion affect facial expressions? Michael Stevens finds out when he explores the face.

Today, worldwide, we each eat 27 pounds of chicken a year. Chicken's astonishing growth has been propelled and satisfied by a business that creates lives, and harvests them, at breathtaking speed and volume. But now the massive scale of production has exposed those in the chicken business to dangers large and small.
The ruthlessly efficient world of chicken production pits vulnerable growers against each other and leaves them open to vicious acts of sabotage.

The fourth episode sees host Neil deGrasse Tyson exploring our eternal quest to end hunger and honoring Nikolai Ivanovic Vavilov, pioneer of modern plant breeding, who risked his life for a discovery that would change the history of science. Vavilov's story is marked by both the tenacity and creativity and is particularly tragic. Interwoven into Vavilov's somber narrative are warnings and treatments of science and its ethical implications, especially when science itself comes under attack from political forces.