We believe things can’t be both true and false, it can’t be both raining and not raining at the same time. Philosopher Graham Priest, however, thinks differently. In this interview, he argues true contradictions are an intrinsic part of reality.

Join Priest alongside other speakers such as Slavoj Zizek, Roger Penrose, and Phillipa Gregory at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival on September 21st-22nd debating topics from consciousness, to quantum mechanics, politics to beauty. Learn more here.

Most of us think in binaries: either it’s raining or it’s not, things are black or white, true or false. The philosophies of Frege and Russell in the 20^th century formalised these binaries into the very logic of our thinking. Graham Priest pushes back against this. There is a huge variety of paradoxes which have puzzled philosophers throughout the ages, and that old view that contradictions are always false has yet to be justified. In this interview with the leading theorist of dialetheism we discover how it can be raining and not raining at the same time.