The Yanny/Laurel thing was exactly what I said it was. Goddamn I am good.
So the “Yanny” sound is contained in the high frequencies, and the “Laurel,” in the low ones.
I spent thousands of hours decoding song lyrics from bands such as Miranda Sex Garden and Bikini Kill during the early to mid-90s, so I think that’s why the trick didn’t work on me. I tend to hear everything happening in a recording. The first time I listened to that, I knew nothing about it, and I wondered why the hell anyone was talking about hearing one or the other when both were obviously there at different frequencies.
However, as good as I am at these sorts of things, I am terrible at visual hallucinations like the ones where you squint your eyes and a 3-D image appears. I have never seen one of those — and I once spent an entire hour attempting to do so.