I've been reading up on the relationship between private keys and public keys (as well as hashing), watched a few videos, but I am still a bit confused.

I don't have a programming background and trying to understand it in a way so that I am able to explain it to an "everyday person".

What I found is that before a message is "encrypted" with a "public key" that key FIRST must be shared with the receiver.

How is that the public key being shared?

Thanks for your help, Arthur