Amara Mokwe

Convenience stores have become so ironically cool that early aughts band the All-American Rejects recently performed a pop-up concert at a Sheetz store in Pittsburgh.

The internet has even coined the aesthetic gas station core.

Fashion featuring trucker hats and those visor-like sunglasses in chrome colors.

At Mitsuki Japanese Market in Brooklyn, owner Jay Kao says blind boxes are super popular right now.

They're affordable little figurines.

You don't know which toy you're going to get until you open up the box.

Accessible retail that's a little curious, a little quirky.

Something more than just convenience.

In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace.

Coming up.

You literally get paid more than we do to go travel to different cities and move around.

And that obviously puts downward pressure on oil prices, especially compared to 2026, where we have a major undersupply due to the Strait of Hormuz closure.

And that's a number of factors, but one of them has certainly been increasing electrification and EV penetration.

So how the world responds to the Middle East conflict will help define the energy transition moving forward.

And absolutely, that has major implications for oil demand as well.

My name is Emma Larson, and I'm a pediatric ICU travel nurse.

I graduated nursing school in May of 2022.

When I was a baby nurse, there were travel nurses at the facility I was working at, and I would kind of just pick their ear.

And I quickly realized if my lifestyle did allow for it, it could be like the coolest thing ever.

I was like, you literally get paid more than we do to go travel to different cities and move around and not be tied down to one place.