Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

President Donald Trump walks down the stairs of Air Force One after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on May 13, 2017.

For national security adviser H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s first overseas trip is about proclaiming the return of America’s global leadership.

The president’s nine-day, five-country trip to the Middle East and Europe, which begins Friday, will “reverse a trend of America’s disengagement from the world and from the world’s biggest problems,” Lt. Gen. McMaster said recently.

The challenge Mr. Trump faces, however, is that the leaders he will meet with and the publics he’ll address in the two regions he’ll visit are looking for different things from America and will have very different aspirations for US leadership.

On part one, which begins Saturday in Saudi Arabia, security will be front and center, and Middle Eastern leaders from Saudi Arabia and the small Gulf states to Israel will be looking for security assurances and pledges of American hard power.

For the second half, in Europe, security (and counterterrorism) issues will also be on the agenda – but hovering in the background will be questions about common values and to what degree Trump’s America will continue to champion those values around the world, including democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

“This will be President Trump’s inaugural stride across the global stage, so the leaders and the publics in the regions he’ll visit are going to try to get a read on what he stands for and what he doesn’t stand for,” says Charles Kupchan, who was a Europe specialist on President Obama’s National Security Council.

“In the Gulf monarchies in particular there will be relief that they are welcoming a president who appears to be exclusively focused on strategic cooperation and not on issues like human rights and how countries run their domestic affairs,” says Dr. Kupchan, now at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

But in Europe, even if the conversations are focused on issues like NATO burden-sharing, North Korea, and Ukraine, he adds, “behind those granular issues du jour will be the overarching question, ‘If the US no longer assumes the role of zealously promoting democracy and human rights, who will?’”

Part one likely the easiest

It would be a complicated dichotomy for any president to maneuver through, experts say, let alone one with still very little diplomatic experience. But given Trump’s evident comfort with more authoritarian leaders, the little emphasis he has placed so far on America’s traditional role as promoter of Western values, and his recourse to displays of American military might, some wonder if he might fare better on part one of the trip than on part two.

“This would be a tremendously complex trip for any president, but I think there are good reasons to assume President Trump will be more comfortable and will be better received on the first part of it in the Middle East,” says Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

“In the Gulf, President Trump is tremendously popular – they are comfortable with family-run businesses, that’s how they run their countries,” he says. “They are used to being lectured by the US, and they like that Trump doesn’t seem to care – that values and human rights are just not vital to his approach to the world,” says Mr. Goldenberg, who just returned from the Gulf.

The Sunni Arab leaders Trump will meet with, as well as Israel where Trump will stop after Saudi Arabia, are more interested in the new president’s more aggressive turn on Iran after Mr. Obama’s diplomatic overtures to Tehran. Indeed the region’s leaders are broadly more comfortable with the US focusing on strategic challenges and downplaying Western conceptions of issues like human rights and democratization, others say.

“Frankly, the Saudi reaction toward the end of the Obama administration was they were dealing with a US ally that they felt focused far more on trying to change Saudi Arabia internally than on providing credible guarantees of its security,” says Anthony Cordesman, a US and Middle East security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Reestablishing confidence is going to be a security goal,” he adds, though it may “come at the potential expense of pressure on human rights.”

Statement on Islam

Israel, too, is relieved by Trump’s harder line on regional security, Dr. Cordesman says – though there may be some qualms about Trump’s interest in pressing aggressively for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

“I think what Israel wants to see [is] that there is this commitment to preserving its edge in security, that they do have a strong ally that will not push them constantly on the peace process, that we will stay in the Gulf, and we will keep our forces in a posture where they will deter Iran,” he says.

It’s not as though Trump will steer clear of values statements while in the Middle East. Indeed, he will deliver a speech on Islam in Saudi Arabia, as part of what the White House says is an effort to correct perceptions of the president’s views on one of the world’s great religions.

Yet as Trump turns from the Middle East to Europe, he will find that the same qualities that make him popular in the trip’s first leg are what may give him trouble in the second.

“Trump is more like leaders [in the Middle East], he sees the world very much in black and white – he admires strong leaders, he focuses on individuals over institutions, he is less focused on ‘values’ like democracy and human rights,” says Goldenberg. “But those are precisely the things that make him unpopular with Europeans.”

As Trump attends a NATO meeting in Brussels and takes in a Group of Seven summit in Sicily, Europe’s dismay over signs of America’s retreat from championing traditional Western values may remain much more in the background than Gulf leaders’ enthusiasm for a strategically rebounding US.

Eyes on Vatican City

But Kupchan says there are two European arenas in which Trump’s perceived retreat from those values are likely to be “front and center” – the president’s stop in Vatican City to meet with Pope Francis, and in any discussions with European leaders on Turkey’s slide to authoritarian rule.

“I’d be watching for any public display by the pope of his differences with President Trump on several key issues that touch on the values question,” says Kupchan, who cites climate change, refugees and immigration, and “the responsibilities of wealthier nations towards the most vulnerable,” as the three topics most likely to reveal stark differences between the two leaders.

“This is a pope who has dedicated his life to those most in need, whereas Trump has focused on cutting budgets, cutting assistance, and generally taking a very different line on those three issues than the pope.”

Yet while the regions Trump will visit may have different key issues on their agendas – and different hopes for how the president inserts questions of values into his first global tour – what they will have in common will be one basic question: Will America, under Trump, still lead?

On that basic question, Kupchan says, the hope-for answers are probably not that different.

The Europeans, he says, “will be watching for indications as to whether Trump is an Atlanticist or not. Does he invest in the relationship with the Atlantic partners in the same way that every president has done since Pearl Harbor?” he says. “He came into office suggesting not. He has since said and done things suggesting maybe,” he adds. “But I think everyone will be watching for that.”

Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, flanked by Sen. Cory Gardner (R) of Colorado, Sen. John Barrasso (R) of Wyoming, and Sen. John Thune (R) of South Dakota, speaks to reporters after the weekly policy luncheons on Capitol Hill.

The window for Republicans in Congress to make significant progress on their agenda is closing fast, and a disorganized and crisis-riddled White House is not helping. At all.

The past two weeks in particular underscore the distraction factor. They started with President Trump’s surprise May 9 firing of FBI Director James Comey over “this Russia thing” and culminated in the May 17 appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller, to investigate possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Republicans on the Hill are “putting out fires,” said a chagrined Sen. John Thune (R) of South Dakota, adding that “most of the damage is self-inflicted.” The senator, the No. 3 in the chamber’s GOP leadership, told reporters that his colleagues “want to move on to the agenda.”

Doing so is actually not that complicated say those in and out of Congress. But it requires discipline to stay focused on legislating and to resist getting sucked into the crisis of the day. It also requires a willingness for Republicans to cast off their moorings from the White House and go it alone if necessary.

“I know that the White House is in a complete shambles right now, but that does not stop the machinery of a separate branch of government from going forward,” says Ray Smock, director of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

He points out that President Bill Clinton was under investigation for much of his presidency, but that did not stop Congress from working or legislation from being passed.

Running short on time

It may sound odd that only four months into the Trump presidency, Republicans are worried about time running out. But they want to put some points on the scoreboard before the 2018 midterm elections – traditionally punishing for the party in the White House.

So far, they’ve got only one big score, the confirmation of US Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, and a series of smaller ones in the form of regulation rollbacks.

But the year is disappearing fast, eaten up by floor time to confirm the president’s cabinet (a new FBI director will add to that) and (belatedly), budget season as the president sends his spending plan to the Hill next week. Meanwhile, health care, tax reform, and an infrastructure package are not even close to being done.

“They don’t have a lot of time to prove they can govern,” says John Feehery, former spokesman for Dennis Hastert, the longest serving Republican speaker of the House.

Now is the moment of decision, he says, to either work with Democrats on big items such as health care and tax reform, or to scale back their ambitions to more bite-sized pieces that their fractured caucus can swallow.

He points to the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s failure to launch health-care reform at the start of her husband’s presidency. “It was too big of a thing to chew.”

These four months remind Mr. Feehery of the 1994 “Gingrich Revolution,” when Republicans swept Congress under the leadership of Rep. Newt Gingrich (R) of Georgia just two years into the Clinton presidency.

“There were a lot of controversies, a lot of stupidity, a lot of ethics stuff, a lot of polarization, a lot of dysfunction, a lot of dumbness from the top guy, but they still got stuff done,” says Feehery, including some big-ticket bipartisan items like welfare reform.

The secret?

“Just keep plugging away,” he says. Don’t get caught up in the media swirl. “Some members, they can’t help themselves, all they want to do is become pundits. Their job is not to become pundits. They need to get their work done. Keep it focused.”

That is easier said than done. Lawmakers, particularly prominent ones, feel they have to prep themselves on the latest controversies so they can respond intelligently to reporters’ questions. That’s time consuming, and in an era when the 24-hour news cycle has morphed into the 24-second one, it can also be futile. Some find they simply can’t keep up.

Isolate the scandal

White House crises, however, can take on a life of their own, says Patrick Griffin, former director of legislative affairs for Mr. Clinton, who was the first president since 1868 to be impeached.

Lawmakers need to build support for their policies, but if all anyone wants to talk about is scandal, policies can’t get the oxygen they need to move forward. “They’re competing for air,” says Mr. Griffin, who recalls trying to talk education on the Hill while being pummeled with questions about the Clintons’ “Whitewater” real estate investments.

The lesson from the Clinton era, he said, is to isolate scandal and contain it. He and others say the appointment of Mr. Mueller as special counsel can now be a huge aid to Congress, helping to deflect attention away from them to his probe – though congressional committees will still conduct their own Russia investigations.

Griffin described the independent prosecutor of the Clinton era as “an atom,” very intense and dense and holding a huge amount of energy. “But it gave us room to act.”

Operate independently

Lawmakers, however, must decide to act, and not use White House dysfunction or scandal as an excuse, says Mr. Smock, who is also the former House historian. This is Congress’s moment to rediscover its historical independence from the White House as a co-equal branch of government and do its work. It’s only the modern era that has made the presidency so all-important, he says.

In this light, Congress doesn’t have to wait for the White House to flesh out its tax reform talking points; it can come up with its own plan. Neither does it have to tap its toes while the administration gets its ducks in a row on infrastructure – or any other GOP goal.

Indeed, Republicans look like they’re trying to move ahead regardless, kicking off hearings this week on tax reform and trying to fashion their own health-care bill in the Senate.

“It’s always nice to have less drama,” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin told reporters Thursday. “I realize there’s a lot in the media these days. That doesn’t seize up Congress. That doesn’t stop us from doing our jobs.”

The proof of that, however, is not in a press conference. It’s on the scoreboard.

An Atlanta-based company is building the kind of trade case that should make “America Firsters” salivate.

Chinese-owned competitors are flooding the global market with cheap, subsidized products. Manufacturers in the United States, which invented the technology, are so battered by imports that they’re on their last legs.

There are just two problems in the Suniva trade case that might give the Trump administration pause:

1. The industry in trouble is solar energy – not a favorite of the fossil-fuel-loving president.
2. To save US solar manufacturers, President Trump would likely kill more jobs than he preserves.

That’s right. US production of the dominant solar-cell technology is sharply eroded, while the job-rich side of the industry is the installation of foreign-made solar panels. They’re so cheap that even the Chinese are losing money making them. As a result, US homeowners and businesses are snapping them up like hotcakes.

Last year, a record, the industry installed so many new photovoltaic (PV) panels that the United States added more electric-generating capacity from solar than any other source, even natural gas. Since 2012, employment has more than doubled, to more than 250,000.

That is why the industry, by and large, wants the White House to ignore the Suniva case. But the case is also a window on the tricky economics of trade. Where some experts say this case counters the notion that “made in the USA” means more US jobs, others see a question of fair play that goes beyond this one firm, because subsidies for current technologies may stifle the next wave of solar innovation.

“In any of these cases, you are going to have winners and losers,” says Matthew West, a partner at the law firm Baker Botts, who follows legal actions on trade. “This is definitely a case where Suniva is going to have an uphill climb.”

Ball not in Trump’s court yet

The industry, for one thing, has rallied around the installers rather than Suniva.

“There is no job worth saving that [should put] the other 250,000 at risk,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, told reporters May 15 in a conference call.

Mr. Trump might not get his chance to intervene. Suniva has filed a rarely used provision of the 1974 Trade Act for relief. Section 201, as it’s known, was last used successfully in 2001 to protect the US steel industry and would allow the US to levy tariffs on solar imports for up to four years.

But to reach the president, the case must first go through the fiercely independent International Trade Commission. And the ITC must not only find that exports were a leading culprit in injuring the industry but also that Suniva represents the industry.

So far, the bankrupt company looks very isolated. Its majority owner is actually Chinese, and has told the ITC it opposes the tariffs. Suniva’s more natural ally, SolarWorld, America’s largest manufacturer of crystalline-silicon solar cells, has also been battered by foreign imports. Its German parent company last week announced it would file for bankruptcy. Yet, the US-based company said it’s leery of a solution that would hurt all those US jobs downstream that rely on cheap imports.

Suniva has asked that tariffs be raised so that the cost of imported cells and panels would roughly double.

Even if the company gets the green light from the ITC, it’s not at all clear what the president would do. Even if he acts, a US move might not pass muster at the World Trade Organization. (The WTO nixed the steel tariffs emerging from that US case in 2001.)

Cheap solar, but at a long-term cost?

Free-trade supporters wonder what all the fuss is about. The US is getting cheap solar panels, employing hundreds of thousands of people to install them, and improving the environment by replacing fossil fuels.

But those who study Chinese industrial strategy see a familiar and disturbing pattern. China is not winning through better technology or cheaper labor. It’s winning because of loans and other trade-distorting subsidies that have allowed its manufacturers to scale up while everyone else is cutting back because of the glut in PV panels.

The US, which invented photovoltaic cells, was the dominant player through the 1990s, points out Paula Mints, founder and chief market research analyst with SPV Market Research in San Francisco. In 1996, the US accounted for 35 percent of global shipments; two decades later, it accounted for 1 percent. China, by contrast, had less than 1 percent of the world market in 2001; by 2016, it had 50 percent.

US companies with more advanced technologies can’t hope to compete in the face of such price competition. They don’t have enough sales to support the research and development that might make their product competitive, says Stephen Ezell, vice president of global innovation policy at The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a Washington think tank. “The world gets locked into a lower level of technical competency.”

What the world may gain in the short term with dirt-cheap solar panels, it may lose in long-term technological innovation, says Ms. Mints.

Cooperation with China possible?

Even if the Trump administration wanted to save the industry, there’s no easy solution. Tariffs imposed in 2012 didn’t save manufacturers. And at this point, not much US manufacturing capacity remains.

But others suggest that US companies have a future if they stop trying to compete in large-scale manufacturing. Even with bargain-basement prices, the best Chinese manufacturers are making money by wringing more efficiencies out of their production process, says Jonas Nahm, a Johns Hopkins energy professor who has studied Chinese solar manufacturing. By marrying Chinese process innovation with US design know-how, the industry could continue making technological strides, he says.

“There's this obsession with manufacturing” in the US, he says. With strong agreements that don’t allow the theft of US technology, “we might think about how we link up with [the Chinese] rather than competing with them.”

In his view, government’s role would shift from saving manufacturing jobs to figuring out how cutting-edge university research can get into the hands of US entrepreneurs.

Many say something needs to change.

“We need a concerted policy, and I don't think the Trump administration is really providing one,” says Usha Haley, a management professor at West Virginia University who has spent 20 years studying Chinese manufacturing and investment.

If we don’t have one, the Chinese will eventually gain enough market share that they will be able to raise prices, making solar power less competitive.

“Consumers will be the losers,” she adds. And because of less technological innovation, “we're all losers.”

It’s the end of an era. Or is it? 

On May 21 the circus long promoted as “The Greatest Show on Earth” is closing down with a final performance in Uniondale, N.Y. – attended by no small dose of bittersweet nostalgia from fans and the media.

Richard Bukowski can tell you. He and his wife attended the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus as kids – half a century before attending a recent show by the same circus in Worcester, Mass.

“Oh, I remember they used to have those side shows,” Mr. Bukowski says, his mind recovering childhood memories such as seeing a sword eater.

To many, the demise of Ringling – a circus that defined the word for a century and half – seems unfathomable. Yet the real story here is less the death of the circus than its evolution. True, old standbys such as exotic animals or “freak” human performers have fallen out of favor. But the age-old yearning for dazzlement and virtuosity is alive and well. And although those desires are increasingly being met by other forms of entertainment, circuses remain part of the act.

“So many times in history there’s been the death knell of the circus conversation,”  says Scott O’Donnell, executive director of Circus World, a museum and performing circus in Baraboo, Wis. “When they stopped traveling from town to town on horse-drawn wagons and they moved to this new form of transportation called trains – oh my goodness, that was the end of the circus as we know it.”

Yet it wasn’t. The circus survived many other challenges along the way. Ringling’s exit signals how rising public concern for animal rights has altered the business, but there is strong evidence that the circus arts continue to flourish even without animals.

Mr. O’Donnell , a former Ringling clown, estimates that at least 50 circus companies operate in the United States. Youth circuses are also a burgeoning phenomenon. And Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil, which recognized a cultural shift 30 years ago when it dared to launch a modernized circus without animals, has become one of the largest entertainment companies in the world. It produces shows not only under the traditional, big-top tent, but also in theaters on Broadway and in Las Vegas.

Circuses just have a lot more competition than they used to – in part from the proliferation of digital media.

“When the circus came to town, it was like the antecedent to the internet,” says Preston Scott, organizer of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival which this summer – coincidentally – will feature the circus arts on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

“It’s where you saw colors, shapes, forms, heard languages, tasted foods, smelled things, saw animals,” Mr. Scott says.

As those experiences became more widely available, the circus’s role in society evolved, and its endurance was challenged.

Ringling did not keep up. In January, Kenneth Feld, the chief executive of Feld Entertainment, which owns Ringling, announced that the show would not go on, citing high operating costs and declining ticket sales after the company succumbed to public pressure in 2016 to retire its elephants.

Meanwhile, other American circus performances in recent decades have been evolving away from spectacles centered around exotic animals and toward the theatrical style of European circuses. Even in America, circuses have their roots in small troupes that featured equestrians, tightrope walkers, acrobats, and clowns, says Janet M. Davis, a history professor at the University of Texas in Austin and author of the 2002 book, “The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top.”

“The future of circus in America is really in the direction of these more intimate experiences: one-ring shows focused on individual performances instead of on the entirety of spectacle,” Dr. Davis says.

Among the many varieties today are shows such as Quixotic based in Kansas City, Mo. It features ethereal acrobatic performances illuminated by electrifying light shows and accompanied by ambient, electronic music. The Australian-based Circus 1903, which is touring the US for the first time this year, is a revival of a turn-of-the-century circus, complete with elephants – though theirs are giant puppets.

The circus also is attracting more young people, and not the traditional, circus-family children, but outsiders. Youth circuses, including schools and troupes, have proliferated to 250 across the country, most of those founded only in the past couple of decades. Circus supporters hope more newcomers will keep the art form fresh and popular for many more generations.

“When you get more people involved, creativity flourishes,” says Scott of the Smithsonian.

Back in 1793 Philadelphia, British equestrian John Bill Ricketts launched the circus in America as he performed tricks on horseback in front of an American audience that included George Washington. It was about a century later, in 1884, that five Ringling Brothers (out of seven total) from the Wisconsin town of Baraboo launched their circus.

Today, troupes are busy defining what it will mean to be a circus in the 21st century. And now, with Ringling’s shadow lifted, these shows could attract more attention, says Scott.

“It’s almost like ... a big tree with all of its bark falling off and then there’s this sliver of life that’s really vibrant and growing quickly underneath all that crust,” he says.

Niall Carson/PA Wire/AP

File photo of a tape cassette.

Like the original, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is endearingly retro. The hero Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) cherishes a vintage Sony Walkman and his mixtape of 1970s pop gems such as “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” from the band Looking Glass.

The cassette is part of writer-director James Gunn's homage to the Analog Era. But tapes are hardly obsolete or even passé. While they may have disappeared from many record store shelves, tapes haven’t gone away. In fact, they’re back in a big way. Cassette sales are up by 82 percent for the year, and even Top 40 hitmaker Justin Bieber is releasing albums on tape. The “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise is aiding the revival, too. When the original soundtrack dropped in 2014, the tape edition became the best-selling cassette record since 1984.

Sure, there’s a certain amount of nostalgia at play here and Millennial curiosity for what music sounds like without earbuds. But for the growing number of fans, labels, and musicians who are driving a cassette boomlet – and the much larger vinyl revival – there seems to be a yearning for music that offers a much fuller and more tactile experience, something that goes beyond the digital bits that feed nonstop streams from services such as Spotify and Apple Music.

“I think it’s a desire for more,” says Damon Krukowski, author of the new book “The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World.” This renewed musical interest is about seeking out “fuller communication,” he says. Since digital streams can’t carry complete album artwork, liner notes, lyrics, or back cover credits, listeners are looking for parts of that music experience that extends beyond individual tracks on digital playlists.

“There’s a whole layer of meaning that also disappeared with the disappearance of the physical form,” he says. “It’s only when you have the full picture that you have full meaning.”

In many ways, it's the generation raised on an everything-digital media diet that's heralding the revival of the tangible. And it's not just music, either. Some recent studies have shown that 20-somethings prefer reading books on paper instead of on tablets, a trend that's helping keep many small booksellers alive. There's a renewed interest in the thing, as Mr. Krukowski points out, because the medium can be as valuable as the media itself.

Charles Krupa/AP

A collection of hip-hop cassette tapes from the 1980's are displayed at the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Nov. 17, 2016.

Indeed, packaging and design is a premium in the new vinyl and cassette wave. For instance, the deluxe edition of Radiohead’s 2016 “A Moon Shaped Pool” includes a bound, 32-page art book. Indie cassette releases often contain limited edition posters and bonus tracks. 

But there’s more to the analog format than album art, says Krukowski. In his book, he also argues that there’s just too much sterility in today’s digital music. While new recording technology can eliminate much of the noise that was once commonplace (and even cherished by audiophiles) in analog records, it's that kind of distortion – from the recordings as well as from record players and tape decks – that creates more memorable and meaningful listening experiences.

“Analog sound reproduction is tactile,” wrote Krukowski, who is one half of the musical duo Damon & Naomi and drummer for the influential 1980s indie rock band Galaxie 500. “It is, in part, a function of friction: the needle bounces in the grooves, the tape drags across the magnetic head. Friction dissipates energy in the form of sound. Meaning: you hear these media being played. Surface noise and tape hiss are not flaws in the analog media but artifacts of their use.”

For anyone who remembers when cassettes were commonplace, and every car had a tape deck, you'll know their characteristic hiss and squeak from dirty tape heads. And beware the cassette jam, and the tangle of tape. The medium wasn't known for superior sound. But the quality of new cassettes has improved since their heyday, largely because of better mastering equipment, says Steve Stepp, president of National Audio Company, the world’s largest producer of professional audio cassettes.

The company expects to turn out some 24 million tapes this year, a 20 percent jump from last year. “We’ve seen an amazing resurgence,” says Mr. Stepp. “Downloading from the cloud may be convenient, but it doesn’t give you anything to hold in your hand or trade with your friends,” he says. “There’s a yearning to have something in your hand.” And, he says, “you are listening to true analog sound.”

Many audiophiles still shun the cassette as the lesser music format, and not offering the warmth of vinyl, but on the right equipment (if you can find a good player) the tape still provides a richer and more immersive listening experience than CDs or digital streams.

It's the kind of sound that many recording artists are going to great lengths to capture in their music, whether it's heard over the internet or on a turntable, says Berklee School of Music associate professor Susan Rogers. One example, she says, is the Feist song "Undiscovered First" from her 2011 album "Metals." On that track, Feist uses open microphones in the studio to the capture background and ambient sound. "It evokes an emotional response that’s wonderful," says Ms. Rogers, who teaches analog recording.

Beyond the sound, she says, the physical medium forces listeners to experience music in active ways, as opposed to what she calls "auditory wallpaper," music that flows through commuters' headphones or in the background at home. "An active listening experience is where you commit to listening.... You’d put the vinyl on and you were captive to it."

Sales still tiny

Physical music sales are minuscule when compared with digital music consumption. BuzzAngle, a firm that charts music sales, recorded 83.6 billion music streams so far this year, a 60 percent hike from the same period in 2016. Meanwhile, in the first quarter of 2017, it registered 11,000 cassette sales, a 64 percent jump from the same time last year. During the same period this year, vinyl sales hit 1.8 million (up 22.5 percent) and CD sales came in at 17 million (down 11 percent). All categories of music sales are down except vinyl and cassette.

Much of the cassette trade, however, isn’t happening via major labels or mainstream retailers. Fans are grabbing inexpensive tapes (usually around $5) at merchandise tables at indie rock shows and via obscure online music retailers, places where it's difficult for groups such as BuzzAngle to gauge sales. At the Newbury Street location of Boston record store chain Newbury Comics, the store had just 33 cassettes for sale on an out-of-the-way shelf. The days where the record stores displayed walls of cassettes (and remember those tape suitcases?) are long gone.

“If an album is available on cassette or vinyl, I will always buy the cassette,” says Britt Brown, a Los Angeles musician who also runs the record label Not Not Fun. “It’s just the medium I prefer.” It’s durable and fun, he says. “There’s something that’s less serious about a cassette. If you crack the shell of a cassette, you just get a new one.”

Though Millennials like himself, who grew up buying CDs, may be leading the cassette revival, the medium still appeals to fans raised on tapes, he says. “I think it has more to do with one’s overall passion for music and a bit with enjoying the collectibility of it and the merch.”

There’s also the simple utility of the cassette. The vinyl comeback has the few remaining record-pressing plants struggling to fill orders. That means smaller labels and independent artists can wait as long as a year to get a vinyl record made.

“Cassettes are faster, and cheaper, and easier to get out,” says Sean Byrne of Endless Daze, a cassette devotee who helps run a Philadelphia punk label that hand-prints all of its tape covers. “We put out tapes because you can get a tape done in a month,” he says. And it’s what many concert-goers want to take home after the shows, he says. “Honestly, you couldn’t even sell a CD at this point.”

It's also worth noting that the new crop of tape buyers aren’t just listening to music on one format or medium, says Mr. Brown. “No matter how powerful Spotify and things like that become, and how convenient that is, there will always be people who want physical music. Or, who want both.”

Reuters

Women walk in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

For his first official trip abroad, President Trump will be in Saudi Arabia this weekend, attending a dizzying number of public events. Yet much of his experience, like that of many other visitors, will be staged by the Saudi government – one that still limits basic freedoms for its people. If Mr. Trump were to visit a local bookstore, however, he might take note of a book that has been a top seller among Saudis for weeks, “The Art of Thinking Clearly.”

Written by Swiss entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli with tips for independence in thought, the book’s popularity speaks volumes about what Saudis want in a society long controlled by a monarchy and clerical authorities. Also popular in neighboring Iran, the book affirms a phenomenon that is essential to create a free society: The desire to think for oneself is the first step in removing any mental shackles imposed by an autocracy.

In recent years, Saudis have taken to Twitter to speak out against government – despite the threat of a public lashing if they go too far in criticizing the monarchy. Among Middle Eastern countries, Saudi Arabia has the highest rate of online TV watching. And as might be expected, much of the independent thinking comes from women, one of the most oppressed groups.

“Don’t speak in the name of the people,” wrote Nora Shanar in the Saudi newspaper Elaph about recent government attempts to stage Western-style entertainment for young people. Tamador Alyami, a famous blogger, wrote this about a religious ban on women driving: “I’m calling on men to think for themselves, not to simply follow clerics, and for the government to act.”

Much of what is written in the Western press about change in Saudi Arabia assumes that it comes from the top and is driven by the need to adjust to low prices for Saudi oil exports and to reduce spending. Indeed, a powerful prince, Mohammed bin Salman, issued a plan last year called Vision 2030 that aims to create a non-oil economy and to loosen up on some social restrictions. But his plan is widely seen as a way for Saudi royalty to stay one step ahead of the country’s restless youth. More than 60 percent of the population is under 30 years old.

Societies that encourage people to think for themselves do so because they know truth cannot be imposed. It must be discovered and nurtured in each person’s thinking. When leaders don’t yet understand that, their people will seek out books and other ways to claim their mental autonomy.