A student recounts a device a professor used where the prof would slip one lie into every lecture (including the first, where the lie was ‘every lecture contains a lie’). He would leave it to his students to catch his falsehoods. An ingenious idea for keeping the mind sharp and skeptical.

My favorite professor used a similar technique, which I call “The Whitmore Statement”, named for him. In this case, Dr. Whitmore would say something totally outrageous or blatantly untrue that he could spark literally a whole sessions’ worth of discussion related to the topic.