Is there such a thing as a common playground for virtually all areas of mathematics? This short talk will answer positively and present the corresponding framework, namely that of matrix models. Naturally introduced a little less than a century ago in statistical sciences, it was later on propelled to the front of the stage by its applications in nuclear physics and string theory. Fairly simple to define, its many explicit properties turned it into a central object in topics in combinatorics, topology, representation theory, dynamical systems, and beyond.