We all know that crypto is hard. It's now a cliché. But thinking about crypto effectively is not hard. Did you pass notes with your friends in elementary school? Keep a secret notebook? Then you have a background appropriate to the task. In this roller coaster of a talk, I'll cover what crypto works, what doesn't work, the basic components and how they're put together. I can't tell you how to build a cryptosystem in fifty minutes, but can give you the basics of how it all works. Think of this as a workshop in high-performance driving, as opposed to mechanical engineering.