Our understanding of how science is consumed by society is limited, yet it is crucial for informed decisions in science, innovation, and economic growth. In this talk, I will focus on three related but distinct studies to elucidate the role and impact of science beyond academia—in government, public perceptions, marketplace applications, and more. Specifically, we examine public use and funding of science by linking tens of millions of scientific publications from various fields to their funding sources and downstream public uses across three domains, highlighting three key insights: (1) Different public domains draw from various scientific fields in specialized ways, showing diverse patterns of use; (2) Beyond these differences, there is a widespread alignment between what the public consumes, what is impactful within science, and what is publicly funded; (3) Despite growing interest in science, the public increasingly relies on older scientific work rather than newer findings, an empirical puzzle that can be later resolved through a simple model of network growth. Through these examples, I hope to illustrate how a combination of canonical social science theories, large-scale empirical datasets, and complex system models can enhance our understanding of the dynamics, predictability, and uncertainty of knowledge production and impact.