Laurel is the new blue (dress)

We just listened to the “Yanny vs. Laurel” sound clip for the first time. With all the social media buzz about it, we figured we would write down what we heard and then compare.

Without any context, what I heard was incoherent and resembled something like “Yehme” or “Jimmy” so I wrote that down on the paper. We flipped it over at the same time, and I was absolutely shocked to read “Laurel” on the other page. How could we hear such drastically different sounds? I did not hear anything remotely close to Laurel! Then I heard a version that accentuated the frequencies to highlight Yanny (high) and Laurel (low). Either way, why was I originally hearing neither? It really makes me think how many things in our everyday life are believed to be objective but yet interpreted so differently. Our senses challenge our sense of the world.

History of Yanny vs. Laurel