How would you explain SSL, certificates, and CAs to a layman?

I just spent 30mins trying to explain it to them in a chat (related to Mpngo driver configs and the sslValidatrle flag), they sorta went silent on me so not sure if I explained it or understood the roles/purposes correctly...

One example I used was it prevents a man in the middle attack where your connection gets rerouted to another server. If the CA didn't recognize the cert the new server replies with then it rejects it and prevents the attack.

Using words like attack isn't very helpful with a layman

@ausername layman = team of devs that are talking SSL certs but I don't think they understand it correctly.

They're like we're not talking about browsers we're talking about mongo connections and servers... And I'm going wtf is the difference?

So I guess what I'm looking for is maybe "a non web dev can understand"

my example isnt the best but i will try:
certificates are like envelopes with seals, you cant read a message without breaking the seal. you wouldnt send an wire transfer for your bank on an postcard. its the same principle with electronic transfers, we replaced the sealed envelope with certificates, the only difference is that certificates are better, because there are two keys, ine that can be shared with the world and one private that lies on the server. the clou is that you need only the public key to start the communication with the server.
but how i know that a certificate for an site is real? every certificate can be signed. every browser has some public certificates saved which are trusted. when you open google, google sends a signed public certificate to the browser. the browser checks the signatures on the certificate and if any of those is trusted. if this test passed goigle can send your page.

@stop but all certificates are real. they are just a file that conforms to some technical spec.

So CA just says "you trust us and based on the signature of the certificate, you can trust them?"

I know SSH/server-server also needs SSL certs. The purpose of that is to just encrypt communications and establish that both machines know each other?

CA is mostly for public service like a DNS? and I guess they're supposed to do their due diligence before issuing someone certificate?

@oneinazillion13 thanks so this is the SSL part I understand. But where does the CA come in, in terms of verification?

TLS*

@oneinazillion13
That is a great example of CA trust!
Anyway, what of everyone could get a passport only because they said that their name is **** **** and that is enough? Would you trust it?