Frontline: Biden’s Decision provides the inside story behind President Joe Biden’s shocking decision to drop out of the 2024 Presidential Election.

Frontline: Biden’s Decision airs Tuesday, August 6 at 10 p.m. on WXXI-TV

Behind President Joe Biden’s fateful decision are decades of challenges, controversies, triumphs, and tragedies within his long-run political career. FRONTLINE tells the inside story of Biden’s rise to the presidency, and the personal and political forces that shaped him and led to his dramatic decision to step aside.

A long-standing annual event, Great Performances presents the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s summer night concert from Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace Gardens

Great Performances: Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2024 airs Tuesday, August 23 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

Focusing on popular works from the 19th and 20th centuries that highlight Europe’s rich musical heritage, the concert celebrates the bicentennial of distinguished Czech composer Bedřich Smetana with three musical compositions. 

The orchestra is led for the second time by Andris Nelsons, Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, with internationally acclaimed soprano Lise Davidsen as guest soloist, who performs arias from Richard Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” and Giuseppe Verdi’s “La forza del destino.”

This six-part series weaves Europe’s greatest masterpieces into an entertaining and inspiring story.

Rick Steves Art of Europe airs Saturdays, July 20 through August 24 at 3 p.m. on WXXI-TV

From prehistoric cave paintings to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome; through a thousand years of Middle Ages to the Renaissance; and from extravagant Baroque to the tumultuous 20th century, we’ll see how Europe’s art both connects us to the past and points the way forward.

Episodes + descriptions

Stone Age to Ancient Greece airs Saturday, July 20
As the Ice Age glaciers melted, European civilization was born—and with it, so was art. From the Stone Age came prehistoric art: mysterious tombs, mighty megaliths, and vivid cave paintings. Then the Egyptians and the Greeks laid the foundations of Western art—creating a world of magical gods, massive pyramids, sun-splashed temples, and ever-more-lifelike statues.

Ancient Rome airs Saturday, July 27
The Romans gave Europe its first taste of a common culture—and awe-inspiring art. From its groundbreaking architecture to its statues, mosaics, and frescos, Rome engineered bigger and better than anyone before. At its peak, the Roman Empire was a society of unprecedented luxury, with colossal arenas for entertaining the masses and giant monuments to egotistical emperors. And then it fell.

The Middle Ages airs Saturday, August 3
After Rome fell, Europe spent a thousand years in its Middle Ages. Its art shows how the light of civilization flickered in monasteries and on Europe’s fringes: Christian Byzantium, Moorish Spain, and pagan Vikings. Then, around A.D. 1000, Europe rebounded. The High Middle Ages brought majestic castles, radiant Gothic cathedrals, and exquisite art that dazzled the faithful and the secular alike.

The Renaissance airs Saturday, August 10
Around 1400, Europe rediscovered the aesthetics of ancient Greece and Rome. This rebirth of classical culture showed itself in the statues, paintings, and architecture of Florence, then spread to Spain, Holland, Germany, and beyond. The Renaissance—from art-loving popes to Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Michelangelo’s David—celebrated humanism and revolutionized how we think about our world.

Baroque airs Saturday, August 17
In the 1600s and 1700s, the art of “divine” kings and popes—and of revolutionaries and Reformers—tells the story of a Europe in transition. In the Catholic south, Baroque bubbled over with fanciful decoration and exuberant emotion. In the Protestant north, art was more sober and austere. And in France, the excesses of godlike kings gave way to revolution, Napoleon, and cerebral Neoclassicism.

The Modern Age airs Saturday, August 24
In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution spawned new artistic styles: idealized Romanticism, light-chasing Impressionism, sensuous Art Nouveau. Then Europe’s tumultuous 20th century inspired rule-breaking art as exciting as the times: from Expressionism and Cubism to Surrealism to Abstract. The genius of artists like Van Gogh, Picasso, and Dalí express the complexity of our modern world.

The true story of William Randolph Hearst. The man who controlled the largest media empire in the country with 28 newspapers, a movie studio, a syndicated wire service, radio stations, and 13 magazines.

Citizen Hearst: An American Experience Special, Part One airs Thursday, August 8 at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV. Part two airs August 15.

Citizen Hearst follows how William Heart used his communications stronghold to achieve political power unprecedented in the industry, then ran for office himself. A man of prodigious appetites and the model for Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, his castle, San Simeon, was a monument to his extravagance. While married to his wife Millicent, with whom he had five sons, he also conducted a decades-long affair with actress Marion Davies, his companion until death. By the time Hearst died in 1951 at the age of 88, he had forever transformed the role of media in American life and politics. Based on The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, David Nasaw’s critically acclaimed biography.