*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).
The backlash from President Trump's meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin continued well into Tuesday, with politicians from both sides of the aisle condemning Trump. During his meeting with Putin on Monday, Trump seemed to side with the Russian President over U.S. intelligence officials on the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Shares of Netflix tumbled after the company reported lower-than-expected subscriber growth in its quarterly earnings report on Monday. The streaming giant also missed Wall Street estimates on revenue and earnings per share.
And Jonathan Trager, CEO of Group Elephant, joins Cheddar to talk about his organization's mission to stop the poaching of elephants and rhinos in South Africa.
The home rental company partnered with the nonprofit to provide website knowledge and expertise, and to help the organization grow. "We started to touch on what I call 21st-century philanthropy, which is companies not only giving checks to help organizations but actually giving their time and their resources and their talents to go out and solve for problems in the world," says Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia.
The online travel company announced on Tuesday it will invest $500 million in the Chinese ride-hailing company, in a bid to get in on the country's booming tourism industry. "When you see the number of airports that China's building, that's another sign that the tourist area in China is going to continue to grow very strong. That's why we're invested there," says Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel. The two companies have also entered a partnership to offer their services on the other's apps.
A big priority for the company when introducing delivery was retaining quality. "We spent a year engineering proprietary packaging specifically designed just to protect the pancakes themselves, to make sure that they would transport well," says the chain's president Darren Rebelez in an interview with Cheddar. IHOP announced its partnership with DoorDash on Tuesday, coinciding with its 60th anniversary.
Shares of the streaming giant fell a day after the company announced it missed estimates for user growth and revenue in the second quarter. "I think Netflix is approaching a ceiling of subscriber growth, especially here in the U.S.," says Paul Verna, principal analyst of video at eMarketer. "They're going to have to do something bold and different."
The streaming player company introduced a set of wireless speakers to be integrated into the Roku system. “We know that when users sit down, and they stream their favorite shows or listen to music, if they’ve got great sound as a part of that, it’s just a more immersive experience,” says Mark Ely, vice president of product management for Roku.
In an era where many production companies are bringing back old TV hits, the "How I Met Your Mother" actor doesn't think there's a real future for Doogie Howser. "The whole conceit of that show was that he was a child who was a super smart doctor," Neil Patrick Harris tells Cheddar's Tim Stenovec.
The show, which features political figures like Bernie Sanders and Trent Lott, premiered last night on Showtime. While it taps into political and social issues like gun control, popular.info’s Editor in Chief Judd Legum doesn’t know if it will significantly affect the public’s attitudes. “I don’t think this is a complete game changer, but I do think that things like this can contribute into some of the changes and attitudes on guns."
These are the headlines you Need2Know:
*President Trump meets with Russian President Putin in Helsinki, Finland, days after the indictment of 12 Russian operatives for trying to disrupt the 2016 election.
*A federal judge blasts the HHS giving them one more week to reunite 2,000 families at the border after the administration missed the initial deadline.
*Protests erupted in Chicago over the weekend after a popular barber was shot and killed by the police.
*Novak Djokovic and Angelique Kerber won Wimbledon titles over the weekend. And France took home the World Cup.
Cheddar's Hope King gives us the details.
Despite last year's devastating box office summer and the growth of streaming, box office sales rebounded this summer. "Sometimes you actually want to go outside of the home," says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
