mgrego2,
I'll give it a try. I listened to the learning tricks today. I think it was the second time I listened to it because the first time through, I must have just totally spaced out and/or fallen asleep. 
This whole new learning system has been at times overwhelming, but it's settling down in me.
Anyway, I'll try to give an example. I've been studying specific bone fractures as part of my learning in my profession. You have to know the names and where the fracture is. In medicine, I've always had a harder time memorizing orthopedic material because it's one of the more uninteresting topics for me. Therefore, I find myself having fewer threads compared to other topics in medicine.
The other day, I was trying to memorize what a massoneuve fracture is. Hard word for me and I don't know french, which is what it sounds like. Anyway, instead of being like Star-Trek Geek boy (as you so astutely pointed out), I remembered my own episode of life. I thought to myself, what does massoneuve most sound like to me. I thought of mayonnaise. I knew that the massoneuve fracture involved a fracture of the proximal fibula in your leg, but I needed to remember it. So I associated mayonnaise with eggs (I have an allergy to them). Then immediately, I saw myself in the third grade with Mrs. DiNonno (who I didn't like) wanting us to tell her what we had for breakfast as part of an exercise to eat healthy. Whatever. Anyway, I imagined myself "fibbing" (for fibula) to her that I had eggs (associated with mayonnaise and therefore massoneuve fracture) because I didn't want to get a failing grade. In honesty, I had NOTHING for breakfast that day. So that was my auxiliary thread of an episode in my own life. If I were a Deep Space Nine fan, I might remember a particular episode with certain details in it, like in my own life as a 3rd grader, to help me remember what a massoneuve fracture it.
Another example. I wanted to remember Ranson's criteria for pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas). Firstly, I had difficulty remembering the name Ranson. Then I thought of Mel Gibson in Ransom (at least I think that was the name of the movie, but it works anyway) who's kid was kidnapped. He was naturally upset and in my version, after he's all emotional and yelling, he started to have bad belly pains. Now I cannot forget the name Ranson. Without going into details, I also devised a way to remember all the numbers associated with Ranson's criteria for prognosis of pancreatitis. Before, I was always so dumbfounded when another person was able to rattle it off so easily. Now I can too.
It's great that once you start building new threads, you can use those new threads to hook on newer stuff instead of only using auxiliary threads from other topics you know like your autobiography or your own ABC/Anchorman PEG lists. I think that's how the exponential learning takes place. We don't always need to rely on the Pegs once our learning curve starts to take off exponentially. When we combine it with asking questions about material which is so key, we make more and more associations and our reconstructions become easier and easier.
