Nets, loops, geodesics and minimal surfaces

I will talk about upper bounds for the smallest length of minimal geodesic nets, geodesic loops and closed geodesics on a closed Riemannian manifold. These estimates will be in terms of the volume or the diameter of a manifold. I will also discuss some curvature-free upper bounds for the smallest area of a minimal surface in a closed Riemannian manifold, and, more generally, for the smallest volume of a minimal submanifold.