Yanny vs. Laurel: What do you hear?

Posted at 8:34 AM, May 16, 2018
and last updated 2018-05-16 10:34:01-04

A short audio clip is completely puzzling the world and pitting friend against friend in the online debate. Some people think they hear the word "Laurel" while others are convinced it says "Yanny."

It’s the most perplexing phenomenon since the great black-and-blue vs. gold-and-white dress debate of 2015.

"Yanny vs. Laurel" took the internet by storm after a Reddit user posted the short clip of a robot reading the word. She asked fellow Reddit users a simple question: What do you hear? The clip was posted just a few days ago, and now hundreds of thousands of people are engaged in a debate over what they hear.


As people took to social media to let the world know what they heard — and argue with those who hear differently — scientists were trying to figure out why this debate even exists. How can some people hear "Yanny" and others the completely different-sounding "Laurel"?



However, this doesn’t explain why someone would hear the lower frequencies and some hear the higher frequencies in the first place. What could alter what you hear are your headphones or audio equipment. Mediocre speakers don’t usually play both quality bass and treble. So if you’re listening on your phone, laptop speakers or through cheap headphones, you might hear something different than with a high-quality sound system, CNET reports.


"If I cut your ears off and put someone else’s on your head, sounds would sound different," Howard Nusbaum, a psychologist who studies speech science at the University of Chicago, told Gizmodo. He explained that differently shaped ears focus sounds differently. You might actually hear sounds differently than the person next to you.

Even with various explanations as to why we are all hearing this recording differently, people are still joining in the debate. "CBS This Morning" co-hosts Norah O’Donell and John Dickerson heard "Laurel" while Gayle King heard "Yanny."

"I don’t know why I’m so personally offended by this," King said during their rousing debate over the recording. "It’s definitely, definitely, definitely ‘Yanny.’"