Â鶹ԼÅÄ

The humble pallet may not look like much, but Slate magazine has described it as ‘the single most important object in the global economy’.

Pile of wooden pallets

As pallet-enthusiast Liam Shaw explains in episode 4, these heroic load-bearing objects are used to transport goods thousands of miles around the world, and it’s estimated there are almost 10 billion of them in circulation.

The Euro pallet – one of six designs worldwide – weighs just 25kg but can carry up to 1,500kg.

You can spot a Euro pallet from the logos it carries, while a ‘HT’ marking means the wood has been heat treated to kill off pathogens, so plant diseases can’t travel between countries.

This reduces the need for customs checks and fumigation at borders, speeding up global trade.

However, the rigid standards that control pallet quality make it hard for some countries to get in on international trade, and so counterfeit pallets are a growing global problem.

Listen now: hear about the dramatic(ish) fall-out caused by counterfeit pallets

In episode 24, self-confessed 'collectaholic' Anne Griffiths explains how she’s turned categorisation into an art form with her tongue-in-cheek work, 'The taxonomy of the Cornflake'.

Chosen by Grayson Perry for the , the piece features 84 meticulously selected cornflakes mounted in a glass case, each with its own serial number.

These eight-character codes start with a letter representing the brand of cornflake, followed by seven numbers relating to size, colour, texture, shape, edge style, contortion and conjoinment. In this way, F7.212100 describes a Tesco Free From cornflake that’s bigger than average, dark in colour, with holes, shaped like a teardrop, with a frilly edge, flat and not joined to any other flakes.

This system, Anne says, makes it possible to categorize up to 2,352,240 completely unique cornflakes.

Listen now: you’ll never look at your breakfast cereal the same way again

Listen now: learn why there may be some sounds you simply can’t pronounce

Tim Dunn, a passionate expert on Britain’s model villages, explains his interest in these ‘little works of art’ in episode five.

Bekonscot Model Village, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

He believes Britain’s love for handcrafted tiny towns owes its origins to 16th-century Japanese bonzai gardens. The earliest example, he says, is probably the village and landscape at Friar’s Court in Henley, which was bought and restored by George Harrison of the Beatles.

The country’s largest model village, Bekonscot in Buckinghamshire, was created by Roland Callingham after his wife demanded he get his model train set out of the house.

In response, Callingham commissioned Britain’s biggest mini railway to be built in a neighbouring field, and enlisted local people to help him build a scaled-down town to go with it. Their creation was incredibly popular, especially with the Queen, who visited Bekonscot four times as a child.

Listen now: get lost amidst mini empires, tiny people and pun-packed shop names