In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, acclaimed journalist and New Yorker staff writer John Seabrook joins hosts Scoop Sweeney, Wendy Grossman, and Jon Lebkowsky to discuss his deeply personal and provocative new book, The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. Drawing from a trove of family documents inherited after his father’s death, Seabrook uncovers the complex, and often dark, legacy of Seabrook Farms — his family’s frozen food empire that once dominated agriculture in southern New Jersey. The conversation explores themes of power, exploitation, family dysfunction, capitalism, and historical memory, as Seabrook reflects on uncovering painful truths, reconciling with his past, and telling the long-silenced stories of exploited workers whose labor built his family’s fortune.
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John Seabrook:
I felt that I was fulfilling some kind of from the grave wish of my father, to achieve, not just revenge, but also justice in some way for what he endured and what he tried to do and and why the company failed. And so that’s kind of what I did. And it motivated me while I was writing to feel like I was doing this for my father. And it also brought me into a better understanding with my father, who was kind of a chilly and remote person. But now I understood why, because he had to survive this sociopath. It was pretty clear that this man who created this company was a sociopath, and that probably helped him in many ways in creating and controlling the company, but it brought the family down.