John Seabrook’s Family Was the Vegetable Version of ‘Succession’

Fail Better with David Duchovny

Grace Cohen-Chen

Society & Culture

4.6 • 534 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John Seabrook is a journalist and author best known for his work at The New Yorker magazine. This means he didn’t go into the family business: large-scale industrial agriculture. During their heyday, Seabrook Farms was a household name in frozen vegetables. But an internal power struggle that lasted for generations ultimately tore the family and the business apart. In his latest book, The Spinach King, John is unpacking his family’s legacy — including hidden stories of exploitation and cruelty. It was great to re-connect with John, someone I hadn’t seen since we were both undergraduates at Princeton in the '80s, particularly to hear him dissect the complex patterns of privilege and patriarchy that echo through not only the halls of Ivy League institutions, but our entire country. Fail Better is now on YouTube! Watch this episode here. Check out John’s latest book The Spinach King, wherever books are sold. Follow me on Instagram at @davidduchovny. Find more video podcasts on our YouTube channel. Stay up to date with Lemonada on X, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our shows and get bonus content. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's morning in New York.
0:02.8	Oh, God.
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0:07.3	I'm Mandy Patinkin.
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1:17.3	I'm David DeCovini. This is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are.
1:22.5	John Seabrook is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where he's worked for over 30 years.
1:27.4	He's also the author of five books, including his most recent release, The Spinnage King. We go through all the
	...

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