The first episode of the new Guardian podcast series Cotton Capital explores the revelations that the Guardian’s founding editor, John Edward Taylor, and at least nine of his 11 backers, had links to slavery, principally through the textile industry.

Our second episode follows journalist Maya Wolfe-Robinson as she travels to Jamaica in search of the site of the former sugar plantation Success, once co-owned by the Guardian funder Sir George Philips.

Journalist DeNeen L Brown travels to the Sea Islands in the US and meets the Gullah Geechee people – direct descendants of enslaved Africans who picked the distinctive Sea Island cotton prized by traders in Manchester.

During the transatlantic slave trade, more enslaved African people were taken to Brazil than any other country. Today, more than half of Brazil’s population identify as Black and there are more Black people in Brazil than any other country except Nigeria. But the country is still grappling with deep structural racism.

Guardian journalist and Cotton Capital special correspondent Lanre Bakare examines Black Mancunian history, beginning with the 1945 Pan-African Congress that took place in the city and shaped independence movements across Africa The Guardian journalist Lanre Bakare travels to Manchester, the city where the Guardian newspaper was founded, to learn more about Black Mancunian history. He hears from Hakim Adi, a professor of history at the University of Chichester, about the 1945 Pan-African Congr

In the final episode of the series, Cotton Capital editor and Guardian journalist Maya Wolfe-Robinson looks at the subject of reparations. What do reparations mean for the communities and descendants of transatlantic enslavement – and what is the Guardian planning to do in its own programme of measures? In the final episode of the series, Cotton Capital editor and Guardian journalist Maya Wolfe-Robinson looks at the subject of reparations. She talks to the Guardian editor-in-chief, Katharine V