I'm John Ronson and I'm an invisible enemy.

That changed people psychologically.

Words can be dangerous if you don't know the context.

We were told to stay at home.

We lived with an invisible enemy,

with only the internet for company.

That changed people psychologically.

I'm John Ronson, and I'll be unerthing the roots of the culture

wars that engulfed us then and still do now.

The award-winning podcast, Things Fell Apart, Returns.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service.

We're going back 49 years to the day 90% of all women in Iceland went on strike.

In 2015, Kirstie Brewer spoke to one of them.

It's the 24th of October 1975 and women are crowding onto the streets of Iceland's capital Reykjavik in huge numbers. The number of people there standing on the square in the sunshine and feeling the solidarity. the Iceland's women had decided not to cook, work or look after the children that day.

Iceland's women had decided not to cook, work or look after the children that day.

Instead, they gathered at rallies all over the country

to demonstrate publicly just how important they were.

Vigdis Finn Boa Doty was one of the 25,000 women to congregate at the biggest

rally in Reykjavik downtown square that afternoon, an astonishing gathering for a country

with a population of just 220,000 people. in a Iceland's first female president. But in 1975 she was the artistic director of the Reykjavik Theatre Company.

I was in my office when there was a knock at the door and outside the door were the ladies of the theatre standing there in a group.

...