I clicked on the recording in the article and it is definitely "Laurel", obviously. I think someone messed with the audio and there are two or more recordings floating around.
The White House video remains a winner!!
New York Actor Who Voiced the Yanny Vs. Laurel Clip Spills Story Behind the Viral Recording
By Jessy Edwards | NBCDFW | May 23, 2018 Last Wednesday, Jay Aubrey Jones, 64, was getting ready to go to his temp job when a story caught his eye on the "Today" show.
A viral audio recording was making headlines worldwide: some swore it said "Yanny," others insisted it said "Laurel." Jones thought nothing of it, until his phone started blowing up later that day. The voice in the recording was him, he realized. And — shock horror — he was saying laurel.
"Oddly enough I had not regonized my own voice when I heard it on television," he told NBC 4 Tuesday. "I'm completely and utterly floored by this, I'm really amused...every so often I'm laughing."
It turns out Jones, a New York-based Broadway and television actor, recorded the word "laurel" more than a decade ago for Vocabulary.com. The 64-year-old said he was in between acting jobs at the time, working at JPMorgan Chase, when a friend came to him with the opportunity. He auditioned and got the job.
"I wound up recording about 36,000 words and phrases, the whole process took about two or three months. The one that sticks out the most to me was Ethel Merman ... typical for a Broadway kid, right?" Jones said.
More at link:
https://www.nbcdfw.com/entertainment/en ... -Clip.html