Imagine a nation with no standing army and a handful of lightly armed patrol boats picking a fight with the mighty British Royal Navy, and winning three times in a row. That is the bizarre, high-stakes reality of the Cod Wars.

This episode unpacks how a dispute over North Atlantic fishing rights, running from 1958 to 1976, turned into a saga of Cold War blackmail, maritime sabotage, and stubborn sailors who literally rewrote the laws of the world’s oceans. It shows how structural leverage and sheer will can defeat overwhelming military power.

• How a British fish embargo backfired when the Soviets and then the US scrambled to buy Iceland’s cod
• Iceland’s trump card: the GIUK Gap and the threat to leave NATO and shut the Keflavik base
• The secret weapon of net cutters that sliced British trawler tow cables clean through
• The single fatality and the 55 ramming incidents that made these far more than a quirky spat
• The irony of Britain adopting the same 200-mile exclusion zone it fought to stop, now global law