I have no idea how they work
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Bonds are a type of loan, typically issues by a large company or government. They function basically as a legally binding IOU note.
The most basic form of bond says “we will pay you $X in Y time”, so something like “we will pay you $100 in 24 months”. Other forms might say “we will pay you $10 per month for 24 months”. The most common form will combine these like “we will pay you $1 per month for 24 months, plus $100 after 24 months”. There are a lot more variations with different payment rules as well, but they get beyond the ELI5 level.
Once the company writes this, they sell them to other people, typically at auction but sometimes at a fixed price that will almost always be less than the total payments they will pay out per the terms. If they auctioned that bond that says “we will pay you $100 in 24 months” they might get $90 for it, which would be roughly a 5% APR.
In almost all cases, the bond itself can be sold to other people, and whoever owns the bond at the time a payment was promised gets the money.
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