I've heard the explanation that men just tend to prefer to think in more concrete terms. "What happened" is sometimes met with a detailed social analysis filled with motivations and states-of-mind about the story that unfolded and sometimes met with some cold facts about precisely what events occurred without any speculation as to why or what impact it had on people, and this tends to split along gender lines. The classic "what are you thinking about" works the same way. Women tend to be thinking about conceptual things like their ambitions or happiness or relationships, whereas men tend to be thinking about concrete things like that one cabinet with the loose hinges in the bathroom.

This is, of course, not a universal rule. It's just an observation about tendencies.