This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
In the 1997 drama life is beautiful, Roberto Benigni plays an italian bookshop owner.
He is jewish, and during the holocaust, the Nazis deport him and his small son to a concentration camp surrounded by squalor and fear.
The father has a choice.
He can tell his young son the truth, that they have been captured by evil people and are likely facing death.
Or he can make up a fantastic story to cover up the horrors of the concentration camp.
As the guards bark instructions in German and go over the punishments that await the prisoners, the former bookshop owner explains to his son that they are only playing an elaborate game.
It's designed to put players through a series of difficult challenges.
Painfully little food, cramped quarters, even violence.
The goal is to survive these challenges, ideally without crying or making a fuss.
The winner gets a prize.
That sounds amazing to the little boy.
He gets to ride a tank.
Life is beautiful went on to win a raft of awards, including a best actor Oscar for Roberto Benigni.
Millions laughed and wept as they heard the story of the brave father who reinvented reality to help his son survive the holocaust.
Today on hidden brain, we continue our exploration of when and how much our perceptions of reality shape how we think and what we feel.
This is part two of our story.
If you haven't heard the first episode, I strongly recommend you go back and start there.
In that episode, we saw how mindsets affect our minds today, the effect that mindsets have on our bodies.