I encountered this a while ago, and it's still astonishing that it's possible to hear such different things.

"Brain" and "green" are so similar that mistaking one for the other is not interesting. The really interesting pair is "storm" and "needle" — they seem wildly different.

I think what's going on is that the "ee" vowel sound and the hissing sound of an "s" both have a lot of high frequencies. It might be that an "ee" from a high-pitched speaker sounds similar to an "s" from a lower-pitched speaker, so the interpretation depends on what you infer the speaker's vocal frequency range to be.

And then when you notice that "needle" and "needo" sound almost the same, the "o" in "storm" is not that much of a stretch. "eedle" ~= "eeto" ~= "sto".

Whichever word I repeated in my head as I heard it was what I heard even if looking at another. I could easily and reliably make it change between brainneedle, brainstorm, greenneedle and greenstorm using this method.

Edit: kind of think this is to do with the n at the start of needle being implicit as you already get the n sound at the end of green and brain. I think if you register another n the remaining sound sounds most like eedle and if you don't the remaining sound sounds most like storm... Or I may have listened to this too many times

I heard "brain needle" with my eyes closed also. I could hear "green needle" but couldn't hear "storm" at all.

I am not a native english speaker... didn't work for me. With closed eyes I heard something like brain-needle :D and while reading both words shown, I still heard "brain-needle".

Exactly my experience, too. I simply cannot hear either of the words shown.

This is insane. Does anyone know where I could read about how this works or how the audio is generated?

I don't and that's a good question, but you may be interested to know that it need not be generated. Look up some YouTube videos relating to the "Paul is dead" conspiracy theories and there are several examples. People swear they can hear "I buried Paul", but you can also make yourself hear "Cranberry sauce" (which is what a Beatle said was actually the line).

I don't get it, all I can hear is some noise followed by 'brain storm'.

The point is that the "brainstorm" bit can also sound like "green needle" if you focus on it.

I started with my eyes closed and heard nothing but noise. With eyes open I caught a glimpse of the brainstorm label and started to hear that and only that. No green needle, as much as I tried to make it flip, it did not.

Woah. Can confirm it works as described for me - I hear both "green needle" and "brainstorm", depending on which word I read, or which word I think of when I close my eyes.

... or at least that was true until now; I've just retried it again, and I've lost the ability to hear the "-storm" ending. I can hear "green needle" or "brain needle", but no "storm.

The comments below are fascinating too. Some claiming that it's two separate recordings even though you can easily see that it's a single six second video, and others even talking about Russian brain washing.

Strange I only hear Brain Storm, eyes closed or open, reading or not reading,

Instead of Green Needle I am hearing a weird backwards sounding sound.

I cannot hear brainstorm, no matter how hard I focus

Whoa. I get the green/brain bit and can kinda tweak my perception to hear both, but needle and storm? When I hear both from the same audio they sound so very different and I can't fathom how they come from the same waves.

This looks like one of the early posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/blackmagicfuckery/comments/8jxzee/y...

Deep in the comments, someone posted this:

> If you slow down the audio/video to about 25% speed, you'll notice that the sound for 'needle' begins a fraction earlier than 'storm'. This is because the 's'-sound (in storm) actually begins in the 'ee'-gap of 'needle'. The 't'-sound of 'storm' atches with the 'dl'-sound of 'needle'. The whooshing sound during the 'ee'-gap of the 'needle' sound is heard by our brains as an 's'-sound and - since the brain is already primed for 'storm' - we hear the rest accordingly.

The toy is supposed to be saying Brainstorm: https://ben10.fandom.com/wiki/Brainstorm

That's exactly what I was trying to understand, and how I was trying to understand it. Thank you

Before a basic sense-percept arrives at conscious awareness it is transformed by various sub-minds. Insight meditation is about investigating this fabrication process. Here is a free resource on that topic for anyone who wants to take it further: https://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wik...