On The Media: Transcript of "The Power of Myth" (November 24, 2006) ANA MARIE COX: Well, I think that Joe is a provocative thinker and a great reporter. He was really early out of the gate trying to put a narrative around this election. There was a very unusual mid-term. There were races that came out of no one's playbook. I think people are still kind of struggling with how to make it all make sense. And the best that we can do here at Time Magazine or Time.com is tell you what doesn't make sense.

Making sense of things seems to be very important at all level of human cognition from recognition to social. There are also affective aspects to making sense.

How does this making sense of things work? Narratives (of different levels of schematicity) seem to be one of the primary devices (if not really the only device - meaning that everything can be seen as a narrative of some sort). Journalism presents a particular kind of narrative which is often self-reflective but also has a strong propositional element. Other kinds would be re-enactive - such as drama - where the propositional elements are limited or purely (mostly) propositional narratives (or pseudo-narratives) such as science.