"...women have about 20,000 "communication events" (I love these terms the psycho-babblers conjure up) a day, versus about 7,000 for men... ."
That's because women communicate in a verbal manner, and men communicate in a physical manner.
How does being physical work over the phone? I can talk to a buddy, giving or receiving information, and it takes about 10~15 seconds. When the same subject with my girlfriend takes about 5 minutes.
It gets mind numbing sometimes all the prattle us guys have to put up with just to get a simple answer to a simple question.
It's a survival mechanism from the Ice Age. Since half of what you could kill for lunch could kill us, and God and nature wanted men out there in crappy weather to kill that lunch, the women were equipped with the Yak Yak gene. It worked.