*By Alisha Haridasani*
It’s the most divisive question since the blue and black dress (or was it white and gold?!): Do you hear Yanny or Laurel?
Technically, the answer is "Laurel." But some people swear it's "Yanny."
The question, which is ripping the internet apart, revolves around an audio clip [reportedly](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/science/yanny-laurel.html) posted on Reddit by a student who found it on a vocabulary website when researching a school project under the word "laurel." The clip went viral, leaving many listeners questioning what they heard ー and maybe their sanity.
The discrepancy in what people hear could be due to circumstance, said Brad Story, professor of speech, language, and hearing at the University of Arizona.
“It really is going to depend on the information that you have in terms of your bias toward listening to it at that moment in time," said Story. "That’s what we call ‘top-down information’ ー trying to make sense of any kind of pattern that's present.”
The two words share very similar acoustic characteristics that your brain could selectively hear it one way or the other, he said.
The bass, frequency, and volume of the audio clip can also influence what someone hears. Some people posted videos on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/JFLivesay/status/996585941241401346) where the audio levels were adjusted, changing how the clip could be heard.
So, whatever the *technical* answer to the question is, in reality, it can be both.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/yanny-vs-laurel).
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2018.
Since 2017, the third floor of the iconic Cleveland, Ohio, house that was the fictional home to the bespectacled hero of "A Christmas Story" has been rentable to fans of the classic movie. And this year, the neighboring "Bumpus" house is also available to the more cantankerous among us for overnight stays.
Caliva, a Silicon Valley-based marijuana company, is waging an extensive recruitment campaign to hire drivers from popular ride-hailing and delivery companies, including Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash. "What we've found is that a lot of the drivers who normally drive for Uber, Lyft, or DoorDash are really looking to have not just a full-time or part-time job with benefits, but they're looking to be part of something," said Caliva CEO Dennis O'Malley in an interview on Cheddar Monday.
In 2019, 10 minutes out of every hour of media engagement will be spent streaming video on mobile, app market data provider App Annie told Cheddar. In 2018, app downloads hit 113 billion, Levitas said, while spending on Google ($GOOGL) Play and the Apple ($AAPL) app store hit $76 billion. On average, Americans spent three hours per day on apps.
New video-sharing platform Portal wants to help online video creators cash in on their content, says company founder Jonathan Swerdlin. "Portal is the first video sharing platform that everyone can use that completely skips the ad model and introduces really easy ways for users to pay each other," Swerdlin said in an interview on Cheddar. "Everyone can be their own mini HBO."
Christmas is on Tuesday, which means Panic Saturday is upon us. Dec. 22 is expected to be the second-busiest shopping day at stores this year, falling short in foot traffic only to Black Friday. Bill Simon, the former CEO of Walmart U.S., told Cheddar Friday that brick-and-mortar retailers are about to have their moment, since "the online guys are done, they can't get it there in time now."
Fair Financial is riding high on its recent $385 million round of funding. Founder and CEO Scott Painter is even willing to bet the used-car-subscription startup will go public down the line. "In most cases, I think it is really foolish to set a target that says, 'we are going to be a public company,' but in Fair's case, there is quite literally just so much money involved," Painter told Cheddar on Friday. "It will have to be a public company sooner than later."
With just a few days left in the year, Cheddar decided to take a look at the best and worst of what 2018 had to offer in entertainment.
Rather than flee to Neverland, Peter Pan might have enrolled in "adulting" school. And so too can stunted millennials ー daunted by bill-paying, cooking, cleaning, and the like ー if they take a class in adult skills at a new institution in Portland, Maine.
Sixty percent of millennials would have to beg, borrow, or steal if confronted with a mere $1,000 in emergency expenses, according to a new survey from LendingTree, which defines the generation as those between 22 and 37 in age. Brian Karimzad, vice president of research at LendingTree, told Cheddar that millennials were least prepared in part due to the combined $1.5 trillion in student loan debt they are carrying.
