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High-tech spying with satellites. Intimidation. Price fixing.

Sound like the makings of a Hollywood thriller? These are actually among the allegations being thrown about in a federal court case against America's alleged "Potato Cartel." It's enough to make Mr. Potato Head blush.

A civil lawsuit that shifted into U.S. district court in Idaho – America's potato country — last week alleges that the United Potato Growers of America has become a veritable OPEC of Spuds. The group's members, who produce about 75 percent of the potatoes grown in this country, are accused of illegally conspiring to inflate 'tater prices.

The allegations – which the potato growers deny — are being lobbed by the Associated Wholesale Grocers, which represents more than 1,900 retailers, according to its website. The grocers group is based in Kansas, where the suit was originally filed this spring.

In its lawsuit, the grocers accuse Big Potato of enforcing its pricing schemes through a variety of strong-arm, high-tech means, including using GPS systems and satellite imagery of farmland to make sure farmers aren't planting more spuds than they're supposed to. They were "using Spudnik, if you will, from the sky," AP reporter John Miller, who recently wrote about the case, joked with Robert Siegel on All Things Considered. Growers who violated the production limits, the suit alleges, were fined $100 per acre.

At issue is whether the potato growers were engaging in predatory conduct or merely running a smart cooperative that helped its members avoid the cycle of boom and bust in the potato biz. According to its website, United Potato Growers of America formed in 2005, following the creation a year earlier of an Idaho cooperative with a mission to "manage their potato supply, matching it to demand to help their growers receive a reasonable price for their product."

Mission accomplished, it would seem: In 2004, AP's Miller says, a 10-pound bag of potatoes sold for about $8 or $9; by 2006, that price had shot up to $15 or so.

Now, under a 1922 law known as the Capper-Volstead Act, agricultural producers are allowed to band together to more efficiently market their products. And the potato folks clearly think they're on the right side of the law.

In a statement, UPGA told NPR: "United Potato Grower's goal has been to help growers provide quality potatoes at reasonable prices to American consumers. We have always acted openly and within the bounds of the law. We are confident in our legal position and look forward to a favorable outcome in court."

But in recent years, the Justice Department has been scrutinizing just how far such antitrust exemptions should apply to large modern agricultural operations.

And the current lawsuit is quite similar to another lawsuit filed against the potato co-op back in 2010. The judge in that case, Miller says, rejected a motion to throw the case out of court. Instead, the judge says it remains an open question just how far growers can stretch Capper-Volstead's antitrust protections.

Call Me Kuchu

Director: Katherine Fairfax Wright, Malika Zouhali-Worrall

Genre: Documentary, Drama

Running Time: 87 minutes

With: David Kato, Christopher Senyonjo

(Recommended)

In 2004, Horace Atwater Jr. took in Adrian Hawkins as a foster child. Adrian was a teenager at the time, "this little, skinny kid, about 14," Horace recalls. "You didn't really have any clothes. You had mismatched socks."

Adrian had lived a difficult life as a child. He lived in several group and foster homes before moving in with Horace. "I remember times being hungry, seeing drugs and all kinds of stuff," Adrian tells Horace at StoryCorps in Atlanta. "I mean, some things had to happen for me to be in foster care."

When Adrian asks why Horace, now 61, would "care so much for a stranger," it's clear that Adrian didn't just find a home with Horace; the two found a home in each other. As Adrian describes it, Horace "had it good one time," but then his life took a turn.

"I had a personal experience where I lost everything — a wife, two fine sons — because of drug addiction and anger," Horace explains. "I didn't experience my own sons growing up. I would only see them on visitation periods, but when my wife remarried, she married a man that embraced my sons as though they were his own.

"He has been an excellent father to them," Horace continues. "And I am so grateful that he embraced them the way he did. I'm also grateful for the opportunity that I had to embrace you. So, that's the least that I owe — the least I could do," Horace says.

His foster dad may have made mistakes in his past, Adrian says, "but you're the most influential person in my life," he tells him. "I'm just glad that I met you."

Horace is proud of how well his one-time foster son is doing today. Adrian, now 22, hopes to become a pharmacist. "You know, it makes me look like I'm smart, but you're the one who's smart," Horace laughs. "God, for you to become the man that you are I am so proud of that."

Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jasmyn Belcher.

This text is adapted from Alva's book Out of Our Heads.

The start of almost all reflection on this problem is the idea that our knowledge of how others think and feel, indeed, our knowledge that they think and feel and are not mere automata, is based on what we can see and hear and measure. We observe behavior, or, as in the case of patients with persistent vegetative state or locked-in syndrome, we measure neural activity. It can seem, then, that the closest we can come to knowing other minds, in a theoretically respectable way, is having some account according to which behavior and neural activity provide reliable criteria of a person's psychological state.

But this is really to concede that we don't have knowledge of other minds, at least not in a respectable way. For observations of behavior (what people say and do) and measurements of neural activity, don't yield knowledge of other minds. Surely this is an important lesson from persistent vegetative states and locked-in syndrome. Mere behavior is at best an unreliable guide to how things are for a person. And moreover, we really don't understand the connection between neural activity and experience any way.

Would the results of a brain scan ever convince us that our daughter was no longer a living person, especially when she continues to appear to respond to us, to our words, sounds, touch? If what people say and do, and measurements of what their brain is doing, are the best we have to go on, then it would seem that our commitment to the minds of others is epistemically ungrounded, a mere act of faith.

There is another piece of the puzzle about our knowledge of other minds. It is this: No sane person can take seriously the suggestion that our knowledge of other minds is merely hypothetical. However weak our evidence that others have minds may be, it is plainly outrageous to suggest that we might, for this reason, give up our commitment to the minds of others. That my friends and children and parents are thinking, feeling beings, that a world shows up for them, that they are not mere automata, is something that only insanity could ever allow one to question.

So we face a paradox: Although we lack sufficient reason to believe in the minds of others, it would be plainly unreasonable for us to give up this commitment.

Paradox is a dead giveaway that we've made a mistake in our thinking somewhere along the line. There must be something amiss in the way we have framed the question at the outset.

Our challenge: Where did we go wrong?