S3 Ep12. A Good Man: Craig Simmons on Fathers, Daughters, and Legacy

In this episode of ABWilson’s Heart of the Matter, Aderonke Bademosi Wilson sits down with Bermudian educator and thinker Craig Simmons for a rich, deeply human conversation about joy, responsibility, love and what it means to live a charmed existence. 

Craig begins by describing himself as inquisitive, silly and lucky, bringing listeners into his playful world of adventures with his grandchildren, cloud watching at the bus stop, and declaring independence on Twin Island with no devices in sight. He introduces the very Bermudian concept of micing as a kind of meditative staring into space that lets his mind wander freely from the sound of the Earth’s atmosphere touching space to the migration of longtails and whales. 

From there, Craig opens up about winning what he calls the genetic lottery, reflecting on the profound influence of his parents, especially his mother, Sylvia Marie Musson‑Simmons, and his father, Leroy Fubler Simmons, whose quiet goodness and love for his grandchildren continue to shape Craig’s understanding of what it means to be a good man.

The conversation moves into Craig’s life as a teacher and lifelong learner, where he describes teaching as a calling that, by definition, should change lives. He shares powerful stories of former students who return years later to say that his tutoring helped open doors to universities and careers and he reflects on the humility required to let students become teachers, including a moment when a student challenged his idealized view of Malcolm X and gifted him an unforgettable epiphany. 

Craig also speaks candidly about his evolving relationship with economics, critiquing it as a discipline that lost its moral roots and reminding us that real economies are made of complex, imperfect humans rather than tidy equations. Along the way, he weaves in his love of history and books, from bell hooks to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Atul Gawande, Michael Jarvis and Richard Reeves, using their work to illuminate issues of morality, mortality, masculinity and uncertainty in our modern world.
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One of the most moving threads in this episode is Craig’s honesty about caregiving, guilt and love. He shares the hard, holy work of parenting daughters with sickle cell disease, including moments in the ICU when he felt so overwhelmed he wanted to run away and how the presence and wisdom of family helped him stay. 

He then describes the nine‑year journey of caring for his mother in his home, from changing her, bandaging her fragile skin and bathing her, to the bittersweet honor of closing her eyes on the day she died. Craig calls that day a happy day because it marked the end of her suffering and a sense of completeness for the family as they watched the sunset together after her passing. 

He talks openly about guilt when caregiving leads to unintended harm, the strange joy he felt after cleaning and comforting his mother when she was humiliated and how those experiences taught him empathy, humility and the courage to stay present even when it is hard.

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Transcript

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:01.302) Welcome to another edition of ABWilson's Heart of the Matter, a podcast that uses overwhelmingly positive questions to learn about our guests, where every episode uncovers extraordinary stories of triumph, growth, and empowerment. Hi, I'm Aderonke Bademosi Wilson, and my guest on today's show is Craig Simmons. He is inquisitive, silly, lucky. Craig, welcome to the show.

Craig Simmons (00:33.974) Thank you for having me on.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (00:37.058) So Craig, I want to start with your descriptors, right? And I want to start with silly. Tell me what being silly looks like and why you chose that as a descriptor.

Craig Simmons (00:50.72) What does silly look like? So silly, I suppose, is the opposite of serious.

Craig Simmons (01:01.814) I don't really like serious conversations. I like the light stuff. I prefer — I remember one day the family comes over, the grandchildren, children. And my granddaughter asked me a question. She says, Papa, why aren't you inside with the adults? Why are you outside with us? And I said, well, it just seems like we can do stuff. We can get down in the grass and find ant trails. We can go on adventures. They can ask me to open my mouth and they'll sort of try to stick their head down my throat. I don't know, it's simple things, maybe, you know, silly, simple.

Yeah.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:53.678) It sounds like you go for joy as well.

Craig Simmons (01:57.753) Yeah, yeah, well, they bring a lot of that. Yeah, children, they bring a lot of joy. They brought metamorphosis. Grandchildren, not so much metamorphosis — in fact, strictly joy. Because I think changes happened having daughters. I didn't have sons. And I didn't have sisters coming up. Having three daughters was transformative.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (02:31.714) Hmm, thank you. And another word you used was inquisitive. Tell me about being inquisitive.

Craig Simmons (02:40.67) Yeah, that's — jeesh, that gets me in a lot of trouble. I tend to do a lot of mysin'. Inquisitive. Okay. Here's one for you. If your listeners can answer this question. We live on this thing called planet Earth. It's a rock that's rotating around the North and South poles. And the Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere. And at some point in time, the Earth makes contact with outer space. So my question is: what is the noise? Because I'm guessing there's some friction between the outer atmosphere and outer space. I just wondered one day, I wonder what that sounds like, if you could be on the cusp of our atmosphere and outer space. Because there's got to be some friction, normally in both sound.

What does that sound like? And now that the longtails are back, I wonder — so where do the longtails go? They leave, what, the end of August, and they come back the end of February? Like, where do they go? How do they find nests? You know, so they finally made their way to the western end of the island.

Yes, it's just a mystery to me as to how they know. And then the whales — I know they're heading north now. I understand they're coming up the Gulf Stream, but they seem to find a way to find Bermuda.

I just don't get it.

Craig Simmons (04:36.522) I just have a bunch of questions that there are probably no good answers to. I think that's the silliness, the child in me — because kids are inquisitive. My grandchildren, I love spending time with them because it's really easy. The other day we were standing at the bus stop and I just asked them to look up, and we were looking at cloud formations, and getting them to tell me what they saw in those cloud formations. Well, of course, once they started, they couldn't stop because they wanted to let me know what they saw and how what they saw was legitimate. And I would say, well, I don't really see that. And they'd look at me incredulously and say, well, I'll catch you — I already see that that's a dragon being chased by a horse. And I'm like, I quite get that, but you know, that kind of thing. And going on adventures with them. Yeah, simple, simple, simple, silly things. Just, yeah, and getting them in. So basically I'm a mischievous kind of person as well. My daughters understand that, which is why when I bring them back from an adventure and they're soaking wet — I mean, this could be like in January where —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (05:31.822) You —

Craig Simmons (06:00.97) We ended up going swimming. They come back sandy, or in fact we come back maybe five hours after the fact when my daughter's only planned on spending maybe an hour. And I take them on an adventure and the parents have waited so long that they ended up going home. That's, you know, I tend not to be so — what's the word — responsible. So I think silly is sort of the opposite of responsible.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (06:30.317) Mm-hmm.

Craig Simmons (06:30.41) And when I go with my grandkids, I try and be as irresponsible as possible, which is why when they come over, they sit for a while, but then invariably one of them is going to come up and say, Papa, can we go on an adventure?

Yeah, so there is no TV watching — not that I have a television. There is no — what are those devices? They don't bring devices to my house.

Yeah, because they know that we're going to do crazy stuff. We're going to, you know, we have this island. It's called — well, they have the island. It's called Twin Island. Why it's called that — it's like two rocks that are right on the shore. And they've named it Twin Island. And we go down there and we act like it's our country. You know, it's pretty silly, isn't it? To think that we can declare independence and have our own rules and —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (07:41.134) Craig, thank you. Thank you. You mentioned a term that I truly believe is a Bermudian term. So I'd like for you to describe the term and what it means for you. You said mysin'. What is mysin'?

Craig Simmons (07:41.224) Yeah, it's —

Craig Simmons (07:58.947) Mysin' is — well, you see, I have Simmons and Musson blood in me, and Mussons are known to be like great mysers. So mysin' is staring into space. Like, some people might call it meditating, but it's not really meditating. The definition of mysin' —

Craig Simmons (08:26.518) It's like a meditative state. The mind is just — and I go there like, my gracious, especially when I'm eating. And I got that from my mother. When my mother would be eating, she just liked to stare — you know, she would close her eyes. And oftentimes when I'm at the table with my partner, she wonders like, why are you closing your eyes? I mean, you're eating food, but you close your eyes — like, what's going on there? That's a kind of mysin' as well. You're focused on the food. But when I travel by bus, I tend to go into a mysin' state, especially if I've read something and then I want to recall it. So the mysin' can be like a rehash of a concept I'm wrestling with. Or it could just be the mind set free — take all the shackles off and just let it go wherever it goes. And the worst question, the question I hate, is when I'm in a mysin' and someone says, what are you thinking about? And the mysin' could involve me thinking about a dozen different things in quick succession. So I might be thinking about — I don't know — the sound that the Earth's atmosphere makes without outer space, that might last five seconds. And then I'm on to, well, where do longtails go when they leave Bermuda? And I wonder what I'd look like if I had this out-of-body experience, if someone were to sort of put a camera on me. I wonder what that looks like. Yeah.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (10:25.666) So —

Craig Simmons (10:26.422) There's a lot of weird things that happen up in here. And so one of the things — one of the words I think I use — perverse. In a world, especially living in Bermuda, I don't think I have a lot of privacy. You know, I've become like an almost public figure. So I'm walking down the street and people call me by name. And it's like, oh, okay. And then my partner reminds me why she's amazed that I think that I'm not a public person, that I'm invisible. She teases me all the time. But yeah, I can't even remember the question because I'm pretty sure I have ADHD, where I can't focus on one thing. I just go from A to B to Z to W to 64 to —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (11:23.694) So Craig, I really want to finish our first question and I'm going to take you back to your three words. And the third word was lucky. Tell me about being lucky.

Craig Simmons (11:31.754) Thank you.

Craig Simmons (11:37.494) I won the genetic lottery.

Yeah, and it's more than a genetic lottery, because it would also have to do with the exact moment that conception occurred. Because maybe if conception had occurred — I don't know the date of conception, I know the date of my birth — but let's say the nine months before my birthday, that must have been a really, really, really special moment in existence.

Craig Simmons (12:17.506) In existence, because I think what would happen if —

Craig Simmons (12:24.776) — that event had taken place 24 hours before, a month later — you know, I would be a totally different person, and maybe I wouldn't be sitting here thinking that I've won the genetic lottery. You know, I had this woman in my life — my first love, my mother. Yeah, absolutely amazing woman. Yeah.

And then my father — I —

For a long time, I felt that my father got lucky. He married up like 50 or 60 steps because he got this amazing woman. And he wasn't all of that. He was just a regular dude, average. And my mother was absolutely outstanding. But as I've gotten older, I've had to reassess.

And it's gotten to the point where whenever I go with my grandchildren on an adventure, or I'm with them, the person that comes to mind is my father. And my father comes to mind because he was so good with my daughters. My daughters think that my father could walk on water. I'm not sure of the reasons, but it doesn't matter. They just think that my father, Leroy Fabbler Simmons, was just such a great human being. And I was like, he's all right. I mean, he was an honest man. And I will always remember when he was at his funeral — when he was being buried, as they're lowering the coffin into the ground, my mother uttered these words: he was a good man. And I'm thinking, that's something that I'm hoping —

Craig Simmons (14:25.546) — someone will say about me when I'm being sort of lowered in the ground, or whatever — my ashes are being thrown up into the air — that someone would be able to say, you know, he was a good man. And so that, since that moment, through time, I've come to realize that he did the best he could with the resources that he had at his disposal. And that's something that I've decided, you know, that's what I need to work toward. Because, you know, the fact that I've said to you that I've won the genetic lottery — that means that I should be able to stop the — what's that war going on in the Middle East?

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (15:17.422) Mm, any round?

Craig Simmons (15:18.026) I should be able to stop that. I should be able to solve the issues of global warming, hunger. I should be able to solve all the world's problems, given what I said to you about winning the genetic lottery. Because I feel like —

Yeah, I was given everything. Like, I couldn't ask for better parents, a better upbringing. And that's just my parents. Then you go to the board of family — think about my grandparents and the stories I've heard about my grandfathers, my grandmothers, my aunts and uncles. The sense of security that I felt when I would leave home —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (15:39.726) And —

Craig Simmons (16:05.174) — on San View Road and walking to West End School, knowing that I'm going by this uncle's house and this auntie's house. You felt totally secure. You felt — I don't want to use the word invincible, but you didn't feel vulnerable. You didn't feel like a second-class citizen. You know, at that point in time, and still even today, you know, we have this sort of racially segregated society. We have a class-segregated society, you know — some bell hooks.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (16:24.398) Thank —

Craig Simmons (16:34.454) We live in a sexist, racist, classist society. Coming up, I think my parents did a very, very good job of protecting me from all of that stuff, where I just felt like, you know, the world is a nice place. Yeah, I had a loving mother, loving father, aunts, uncles, cousins. That's why I say genetic lottery. It was the perfect world. And even today, I can say to you that I live a charmed existence.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (17:17.176) So on that note, I'm going to ask you for three interesting things about yourself that our listeners may not know and your friends will be surprised to learn.

Craig Simmons (17:29.524) Well, yeah, there's some physical stuff and then there's some psychological stuff. The physical, because it's more objective — I can actually prove it. I've got evidence of it.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (17:39.223) Okay.

Craig Simmons (17:45.236) I've kayaked around Bermuda twice — not in succession, I mean at different points in time. That was very, very cool.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (17:47.555) Okay.

Craig Simmons (17:57.399) You know, doing it in a motorboat, I think, is cheating. It's like — people ask me, I cycle, I don't have a car. When people say, oh, when are you going to get an electric bike? My retort is, well, electric bikes — that's for sissies. You know, like electric bike. What's that about? Who the heck rides an electric bike? But anyway, sorry, I'm offending your audience for sure. But similarly, kayaking —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (18:11.256) Phew.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (18:24.27) Thank —

Craig Simmons (18:27.424) There's just you and the kayak. And I have one memory of coming out of John Smith's Bay, because we made the decision — I was doing this with Travis Gilbert and his now wife, Angela. We left John Smith's Bay and the decision was that we're going to go outside the reef. So I was doing this round-the-island first trip in what I'll call a bathtub. It was a sit-on-top kayak. And if you know anything about a sit-on-top kayak, it sits on top of the water. It's very stable, but it's not very fast. Knowing that — and Angela and Travis had this super-fast kayak — so I got up and I was racing to get a head start on them. Anyway, I got to a point off of John Smith's Bay where I must have been paddling for about 15 minutes and might have moved 10 feet. And I mean, I was paddling my heart out. And there's something — it wasn't frustrating. There was a degree of it. It's real, you know — it's like it's just you and the world, you up against the world. And you can't make any excuses. A related thing would be when I was involved in a summer program — a venture-grotto summer program for boys. Parents would say to me about their sons that they have ADHD, you've got to be careful. Well, taking these young men scuba diving, all the ADHD goes away. When they put on the equipment and we're going down — if you hit 30 feet, there is no ADHD. There is no misbehaving. Everything becomes abundantly clear. If you mess up, you're going to die. You know, yeah, I mean, you're at 30 feet. You've got the regulator in your mouth, and you're just thinking about surviving, breathing. You don't have any time to think about anything other than: I need to breathe and get through this exercise. Similarly, when I'm off of John Smith's Bay paddling —

Craig Simmons (20:53.48) — nothing else matters. Similar thing happens in the gym if you've got 225 pounds over your head. You don't have time to think about, man, what am I making for supper today? I wonder how my daughter's doing. The only thing you can think about is: I've got to keep this thing from crushing my skull. And there's something beautiful about that degree of focus. And so that's — yeah, kayaking without any help — it's all you up against the world, and you're either going to do it or you're not going to do it.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (21:33.13) And so Craig, what would be your second thing that your friends may be surprised to learn?

Craig Simmons (21:42.529) It has to do with guilt. So I said I had daughters and two of them had sickle cell. And the only way you get sickle cell is if somebody gives it to you. And so I did that twice. It's pretty dumb, isn't it?

You know, when they get ill — yeah, it's like the fingers are all pointing at me. Now, if they ever listen to this podcast, and I've said this before, and they look at me — they're saying, you know, I think there's a degree of anger on their part when I say it. But I can't help it, you know?

A feeling — yeah, that's the word — guilt. That I'm really, really messed up. But then if that's the head of the coin, then I look at the tail of the coin, and then I think about the joy that they brought me, the transformation that I've undergone as a result of having these daughters. And then, you know, with sons and boys and now grandchildren — it's like, so I said to you a little while ago, I live a charmed existence. Charmed existence — is that a function of the guilt? Is that all sort of mixed in with this sort of soup, with this gumbo, if you will? I don't know. Again —

Craig Simmons (23:26.932) — curiosity, like what makes me me? I got lucky. That's the only way to describe it. It was none of my doing.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (23:37.666) And so thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing your thoughts around your daughters. And I just want to go to your third thing. Sorry, your third thing that people might not know about you.

Craig Simmons (23:57.789) Yeah, I was trying to figure out what that was. I made a note to myself about privacy — how I really, really —

Think people see me as being like a public kind of person, but —

Where I'm sitting right now in my study — this is — there are often three days that will go by and I won't leave. I mean, I'll leave here to get supper ready, to go to the laundry, to go outside, but I won't sort of go very far. And I have no desire to go very far. But having said that, I'm also a wanderer. Maybe that's related to the mysin'. I can wander abroad real, real, real easy. But for some reason — maybe it's a function of age — being in my study, having access to the resources that I have in my study, this is my sanctuary.

Craig Simmons (25:12.564) Yeah, so I don't know what you would call that — how — yeah, I don't always like the idea of being out in the public. It's not something that — being around humans — I say sometimes that, you know, you go to a restaurant, people say, do you have any allergies? And the one allergy that I like to mention is humans.

I have —

Craig Simmons (25:42.484) I'm sorry.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (25:47.726) I need to get to the next question.

Craig Simmons (25:49.662) Okay, please, please, let's move on.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (25:54.286) All right, can you tell us about a recent accomplishment or success that you're particularly proud of?

Craig Simmons (26:01.824) Yeah, yeah, and I —

Craig Simmons (26:07.29) And this is an event that happened in the, you know, fairly recent past. And it had to do with caring for my mother. My cousin who did the same thing — he describes it as delivering your mother to her God. So my study — this is my study. Up until August the 21st, 2023 —

Craig Simmons (26:40.214) — but dress back nine years: this was my mother's room. She actually slept just back there for nine years. And on August the 21st at around — well, that day, August the 21st, maybe around four o'clock in the afternoon, she passed away. And I had the distinct honor of closing her eyes for the last time. And that was like —

This may sound odd, but it was a happy day. The happiness came from the fact that I watched her in her transitioning fall apart. And I'll never forget the cousin — because I went to sort of see my therapist and I shared with him that I just felt like I'm failing this woman in the days that led up to August the 21st. Like I was failing her because every time I moved her, her skin became paper thin. And so I couldn't even — bathing her was totally out of the question. Yeah. So just lifting her up from the bed and putting her on the potty and getting her off the potty back into bed — invariably she would sort of knock her elbow or her arm on the handle of the potty. And that slight knock was enough to break her skin. And she started bleeding. And so I would have to wrap her. You know, I had the gauze. I've still got the box of all the gauze and stuff sitting here. And so my mommy — my M-O-M-M-Y — by the time the 21st came around, she looked like a mummy, M-U-M-M-Y, because she was just wrapped in gauze from every little knock that she received. She was — as my cousin, my senior cousin, described to me — she was falling apart. And so to see the falling apart come to an end and to see her pass away was like, oof, what a relief. Yeah. I remember calling the doctor and saying, you know, sharing with her what I was experiencing. And she was the one that said, Craig, your mother is transitioning. I was like, okay. Because I wasn't really prepared. I mean —

Craig Simmons (29:03.284) The month before I was getting ready for her 97th birthday — November the 7th. She was born in 1926. And I was like, yeah, let me get ready. And then things sort of happened. But it was a wonderful day. The grandkids came over, the kids came over. By that time, of course, the hospital folks had come and taken her away. We — you know — the grandkids, kids came over, we went for a walk. And because she passed around four, sunset was coming up. And by the time they came, it was sunset time. We were down on the field and we just stopped and we looked at the sunset and sort of — there was a feeling of completeness, because of course they were well aware that she was in transition — that this was a beautiful day.

Yeah, it wasn't sadness, because I think they saw that this woman who used to care for them — it was time. We all have to deal with that. And for me, that was a great accomplishment because you don't know when it's going to come. And the fact that I actually made it across the finish line — because there were times when it was clear —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (30:15.042) Hmm.

Craig Simmons (30:33.696) — that I would be able to deliver her to her God. Yeah, because caring for someone — it's not easy.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (30:38.99) And —

Craig Simmons (30:47.286) One of the — and it took me back to when my daughters would have a sickle cell crisis, caring for them in those situations. You know, you think — but at least you could see the end, the light at the end of the tunnel. With my mother, it was different. But again, in terms of accomplishment — I mean, I wake up in the middle of the night now and I think about her. One of the things she would say to me in the morning when I would come down — she would say, I'm not dead.

Yeah. Yeah, I smile. You know, you wake her up and yeah, for someone to say to you with such amazement: I'm not dead.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (31:32.482) Mmm.

Craig Simmons (31:33.91) And then I think, well, Mom, can I say that now? And I just reflect on — I don't know — the charmed existence that I had, you know, as being her son, the things she taught me.

Craig Simmons (31:52.106) Yeah.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (31:53.644) What was your mom's name?

Craig Simmons (31:55.775) Sylvia Marie Musson-Simmons.

Craig Simmons (32:04.054) But I got quite comfortable calling her Sylvia Marie, you know, in her old age. And of course, when she was younger, it was Mommy. When I became the adult and she became the child, it was like, Sylvia Marie — and you're going to get a bath. No, I don't want to get a bath. Come on. Grab her and take her in. Throw her in the tub and do what needed to be done.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (32:29.742) So Craig, I want to ask you this next question. Please tell us about a time when you made a difference in another's life. What were the circumstances? Paint a picture for me.

Craig Simmons (32:47.104) Yeah, I thought about that question, but it's like — you know what I did for a living, right? I'm a teacher.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (32:53.134) So tell us, what did you do for a living? For those that don't know you.

Craig Simmons (32:57.141) I'm a teacher.

Yeah, a teacher, and that's what we do.

Craig Simmons (33:12.79) It's like a mason — you know, a mason builds houses. A carpenter makes furniture. That's just what you do. You don't go into teaching with the expectation that you're not going to have a profound impact on people's lives. That's why you're doing it in the first place. I mean, if you didn't have that kind of impact, it must be frustrating as heck.

So for me, every year there are like handfuls of those moments, and I get reminded of it. This week — this last week — was wild. I mean, you saw me at the Future Leaders Conference on Wednesday. The day before that, I was on a lunch-and-learn with my students at a reinsurance company. And I get there early and I'm all in the moment, waiting for my students to come. And one of the presenters comes in, and she didn't know that I was going to be there. And this young lady looked at me and her eyes just lit up. I don't know who this woman is. She says, are you Craig Simmons? She says, boy, about 20 years ago, you helped me — you tutored me in economics for my A levels. And she's saying that, you know, I needed to get a certain grade. The first time I did it, I didn't do so well. So I came back. She told me she came home the following year. And her mother set us up — set me up with her to do some tutoring. And when she went back and she got the grade that she needed, that allowed her to get to the university where she went. And that, you know, on and on it went. And now she's the chief actuary for a company. So those — I think, wow. She was just so, so grateful. Talk about making a difference. It's like, you know, I got a big head. The head just gets — you can't get it outdoors. It happened — walking down the street and somebody will stop you and just tell you a story and you're like, whoa. So again, I think that's what teachers do. I think that's what parents do. You know, they want their — my daughters come over and they talk to me about —

Craig Simmons (35:44.737) — growing up in this household, and they say things like, yeah, I really want to recreate what they had coming up. And I'm thinking, but I was such a screw-up. Yeah, but it sort of tells me that maybe I wasn't that bad a parent, that they want to replicate what they felt coming up in this home. It's a relief, to be honest with you. It's a great relief.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (36:19.447) And so what were the key strengths and qualities you relied on as a teacher to make a difference for your students?

Craig Simmons (36:29.462) Oof, strength. I suppose, you know, as a teacher —

As a human being, you hear a lot of stuff. So you might ask a question in class and someone will give you an answer that, you know, it's not exactly the answer that you were looking for. And so as a teacher — it's sort of my job, as a parent and even as a person now — it's my job to find the nugget in whatever it is someone might say.

So I don't know whether I have a propensity to do that, which brings up one of the words — one of the negative ones. I think I use the word patronizing, but I think the correct word, according to my partner, is that I pander. And pandering is an extreme version of finding good in the things that people say and do. You're always looking for the good. But my partner tells me that sometimes I do a little bit too much — too much of a good thing. Be honest with me. I do have a problem being honest — I'm going to tell you. I'm going to pander before. Because it's in the distinction between being right and being nice. I don't really care about being right. It's gotten so bad — about being right — where when people ask me my opinion, I spend so much of my time trying to see the nuggets in what other people tell me, that nowadays I'm having difficulty figuring out what I believe and what I don't believe. Because you're always trying to sort of accommodate someone else's views. You're always looking for the gold nuggets in what other people are telling you.

Craig Simmons (38:20.426) I don't know if that makes sense. One day in class — ooh, this young lady, I'm going to have coffee with her later this week. She — I think to be a good teacher, you need to be a better student. One day in class, it must have been around Black History Month time, and Malcolm X came up. And for me, Malcolm X — the book, the autobiography of Malcolm X — was a book, it was the first book I actually read cover to cover, and it had a profound impact on my life. And so Malcolm X became this role model, and that's why I don't like when people say, you know, you should be a role model, or you are a role model. Nah, I eschew that concept. I'm nobody's role model. This young lady drove that home to me, and I have to thank her for educating me — for a pivot. It was an epiphany, because she said something. She had been an extremely smart young lady. She had done some research and she said something about Malcolm that rubbed me the wrong way. But I had the presence of mind from my training as a teacher to look for the gold nugget in what she was saying. And what she was saying was the truth, but it was a truth that was difficult for me to handle. And so — you talk about being proud — I was so proud of the fact that I didn't lose it, that I didn't demean, ridicule, or say anything. I just sort of caught myself. And we had this discussion. And she laid out her argument and gave me the references. And I thought, this is success. The student — yeah — is giving the teacher something that, wow, again, epiphany. And when I meet with her and I bring that up, she just smiles at me. I'm sure it's because she doesn't understand the impact that she had on me.

Craig Simmons (40:47.146) That particular day. I remember the room. I remember the time of month. And this wasn't yesterday.

Yeah, I'm probably not answering the question. I don't know what the question was. My ADHD has taken over again.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (41:02.063) Craig, thank you. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for giving voice to what it means to be a teacher — right? That you must have an impact, that if that's your calling, if that's what you are put on earth to do, then by definition a teacher should have an impact on their students. Because in my mind, you're training the next generation. You're preparing the next generation to go out, discover, to be, to do, to think. And good teachers have significant impacts on their students.

Craig Simmons (41:51.095) I'm pleasantly reminded because — I mean, I teach — I'm almost ashamed to say this, but I taught economics for a long time. And economics as a subject matter — when you teach something and you realize the limits of what it is you're teaching, or how you were taught the subject, you feel sort of fraudulent. And economics as a subject has lost its way. It is, to a large degree, a fraudulent discipline.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (42:28.527) So why? Tell me why. I'm assuming the rules of economics change over time because we know more, we learn more. But why would you say it's a fraudulent subject?

Craig Simmons (42:44.842) No, I don't think it's gotten better. It's gotten worse. And it got worse because, you know, economists suffer from what I call physics envy. So people in physics, they build systems. If you think about our solar system, you can predict with a fair degree of accuracy where Mars is going to be at any particular point in time. And so you view the solar system as a system. Well, economists want to view the economy as a system. It's not. It's made up of people like you — humans. I'm putting the mirror up to myself. I don't understand myself. How the heck can I understand other people with all of their irrational behaviors, with their foibles, and how they relate to one another? The complexity of human interaction cannot be mimicked with science. Economics is not a science. So we soften that a little bit and we say, well, economics is a social science. Okay. Maybe that's an improvement. But if you think about where economics came from — at least in the Western world, because of course there was economics before, there was economy before Europeans thought about it, right? I mean, the first sort of Western person to articulate a detailed economic thought would have been Adam Smith. He published two works — I mean, the most famous one was in 1776, An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations. But people think that's an economics text — it's not an economics text, it's moral philosophy.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (44:24.249) Thank —

Craig Simmons (44:42.87) It's a philosophical text. Adam Smith published two works. The first was A Theory of Moral Sentiments. A theory of moral — where's the economics in that? Moral sentiments? Okay. An inquiry into, you know, the wealth of nations — okay, yeah, yeah, that sounds more like economics. But if you actually go into the text, it's not economics, it's moral philosophy.

He's dealing with the issues that we deal with today. Adam Smith had views on slavery. He didn't believe in slavery. He didn't believe in the concept of a limited liability company — that you could just be able to set up a company that becomes a person. In today's world, we have companies that are persons — a legal person. And now we're reaping the downsides associated with that, because the company is now responsible, not the people in the company. And because the company has infinite life — you know, because most people die, but a company doesn't have to die — it can go on and on and on. And so I think Adam Smith understood — again, economics sits on two pillars: history and philosophy.

Then in the 20th century, someone decided, you know what, let's introduce mathematics into it. And so when I went off to university — if anybody's doing economics, they have to do microeconomics. And we come up with these things called utility functions. And inside the utility function is the assumption that as a consumer, if I'm going to buy some coffee, I understand everything about the coffee, the purchase of the coffee, how it's going to affect me in a positive and negative way — making rational economic decisions. Here's the truth. You rarely make rational economic decisions. I do a lot of stupid things. Sheesh, the other day you caught me doing something really, really stupid. I mean, I went, I got my two brownies and a cookie. I ate them. I sat down and then — the look that you gave me when you saw me with two more brownies. You gave me the look.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (47:07.926) You saw me? You saw me?

Craig Simmons (47:09.172) I saw you.

You gave me the look and I'm like — I was caught with my pants down.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (47:17.359) Okay, we've got to go back. We've got to go back. Because, so let's set the scene. We were at a youth conference. I was the moderator for the panel discussion, and you and I had a discussion about sugar and your love for all things sweet. And I saw you with your plate. We started the conversation because I saw you with your plate. Sorry?

Craig Simmons (47:38.23) It's more than a love.

It's more than love.

It's not love, it's addiction.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (47:47.681) Okay, so, and we talked about addiction in detail while I was waiting to go on stage. And I will admit, I was on stage focused on the panelists, which I was there for, but I did see — I saw your plate empty and you were at the front. I will say you were at the front. So you were within my immediate gaze as I looked around at the audience, and there were quite maybe a hundred young people there, maybe about 100. And so I'm supposed to be moderating, focused on making sure the audience is engaged, making sure I'm listening to the panelists, I can ask intelligent questions. But I see your plate because we had already had the discussion, and I saw it was empty. And then again, I saw it was full and I thought — honestly, I thought to myself: you ate all of that?

Craig Simmons (48:18.761) Easily.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (48:44.761) That was the thought that was going through my mind as I was listening to the panelists, trying to be focused. I honestly thought to myself: you ate all of that? That was quick. No judgment, though.

Craig Simmons (48:58.578) No, no, I need the judgment. I need to believe that I'm being watched, because otherwise I would have gone back for a third and maybe a fourth.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:04.62) You —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (49:14.637) So, Craig, I've got to move on. Let's go on to the next question. Because otherwise you and I will sit here and continue the discussion around sugar addiction and then we'll go back through that conversation. So I want to ask you my next question. Can you recall a situation where you overcame a challenge that led to personal growth? What did you learn from that experience?

Craig Simmons (49:33.642) Peace.

Craig Simmons (49:44.298) About the — the challenges seem to all revolve around caring either for my mother or daughters.

Craig Simmons (49:57.281) Yeah, with my daughters, that was a serious challenge because I'd never been a father before. And then I'm a father of kids that, once they have a crisis — pain, and you can't do anything for them. My daughter had to have her gallbladder removed and she developed a secondary infection in the OR. And so she was in ICU for a couple of weeks on a respirator. And I spent a lot of time with her. And one of those days I left there, I left her room and I got to the lobby of the hospital and I was like, I can't do this anymore. I've got to run, I've got to leave. It almost reminds me of an interview I saw of Mike Tyson when his daughter passed. The interviewer is asking him about the whole process. And Mike Tyson says, yeah, once she passed, I did a lot of coke for a couple of weeks. And he paused. And then he said to the interviewer, you have to leave. And the interviewer said that was like one of the scariest moments in his entire life — where Mike Tyson is saying, you have to leave. The interview wasn't over, but when Mike Tyson says to you in that tone, you have to leave — you know you have to leave. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because he was at wit's end. And there haven't been many times in my life where I felt that I'm at wit's end. Like I felt, yeah, I've got to go to the airport, jump on a plane. I've got to disappear. I just can't do this any longer. And fortunately, I met my cousin, my sweet cousin, and we were able to — I was able to sort of share with her. And she sort of brought me back. Same thing with my mother once. I was trying to get her in the tub —

Craig Simmons (52:16.018) — and she slipped and I gripped her by her wrist, and I mean, holding her by her wrist because her skin was paper thin, I ripped the skin off of her wrist, and her hand went into shock. And so her hand swelled up like a balloon.

Yeah. So here I am trying to do a good deed — getting my mother bathed — and I end up ripping the skin off of her wrist. Hand goes into shock, swells up like a balloon. And now I've got to go to her physician and explain —

— what the heck happened. And I'm thinking, I'm guilty as charged. You could really get the gallows ready and hang me by the highest tree. Fortunately, her doctor, my doctor, sort of could see that I was, you know, feeling the guilt. And she, just like my cousin when I was leaving the hospital after dealing with my daughter being in ICU —

Craig Simmons (53:27.872) — comforted me and says, look, Craig, take it easy, man. It's all right. This was an accident. It's not your fault. So those challenges — it's —

Did I benefit from it? I survived. I don't know if I necessarily benefited, but those are really hard things to deal with. When you're trying to help someone and you end up doing harm — but it comes with the job. Those are the risks, because I could have put my mom in a home and let someone else do that hard work. But I decided to do it myself.

So — yeah, those kinds of challenges and personal growth. You learn empathy. You learn humility. That the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And stuff's going to happen that you can't control. You just have to — pardon the expression — man up and get on with it, which is a problem that I have with masculinity. I don't know whether I'm to talk about that, but that's another challenge that I don't know if I'll be able to deal with in this life — masculinity, what it means, what it shouldn't mean, maybe what it should mean. You know, bell hooks helps a little bit with that. But, you know, as a woman, I can't expect bell hooks to sort of solve that problem. I don't know if anybody can solve that problem about masculinity and sort of the 21st-century of masculinity, period. But anyway —

Craig Simmons (55:12.342) My ADHD is kicking in again.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (55:15.343) Craig, thank you. Thank you for sharing your story about your daughter, about your mother, and the lessons that you learned. And more importantly, that even though you had emotions and maybe guilt around what was happening, you stayed, right? And that is the important thing, I think — the lesson that we have to hear — that even though things are tough, even though things are maybe dire at the moment, you stayed.

Craig Simmons (56:03.67) Yeah, and it sort of got to the point where — and this is rather graphic — there would be times when my mother would mess herself. And you've got to clean her up. Weird, weird, weird feelings of — I don't know — not panic, feelings of — what do you want to call it — love? Feelings of energy. Yeah, because when I would finish the job, the task of getting all cleaned up and the sheets off the bed and into the laundry and all that stuff — the process was an edifying one. Once the job is done, you feel good. You never sort of feel, God, I've got to clean this damn thing. And again, the out-of-body experience — I'm thinking, what? What's going on? Who the heck are you? Why should you be feeling good about this horrible process? Because my mother's humiliated by the fact that she's messed herself again, maybe the second or third time for the day.

It's okay. And it wasn't about, oh, well, she did this for me. It wasn't that. It was just in that particular moment — those feelings of — well, maybe I should talk about the feelings that I didn't have. There were no feelings of disgust or, what the hell am I doing here? It was exactly the opposite. And I still, to this day, do not understand what was going on between my ears in those moments, which is probably why I wake up in the middle of the night and smile.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (57:59.491) Thank you, Craig. Thank you. Thank you for sharing.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (58:06.652) And being a good human, being just an all-around good human.

Craig Simmons (58:12.874) Well, hold up a second. Remember I told you that I won the genetic lottery? That's lottery. That's the charmed existence stuff. Yeah, it just is. When you ask me about, what is it, some situations of helping people grow — but that's just what we do.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (58:18.935) Mm-hmm.

Craig Simmons (58:39.328) But —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (58:39.567) I need to qualify that — what some people do.

Craig Simmons (58:45.81) Okay, well, I'm the only person that I know with any sort of serious detail. I think I know other people, but I really know myself pretty deeply and profoundly. And so, yeah, I am we.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (58:56.761) Mm-hmm.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (59:07.533) You are listening to AB Wilson's Heart of the Matter podcast. Welcome back to AB Wilson's Heart of the Matter. My guest today is Craig Simmons. So, Craig, we've talked about you being a father. We've talked about you being a grandfather. We've also talked about you being a son. We have examined your thoughts on economics, what it means to be a good teacher, and your descriptors. What self-care practices or strategies help you to sustain your energy and motivation while navigating your journey?

Craig Simmons (59:59.787) Yeah, funny enough, because my life again is a charmed existence. So I had this discussion with my partner this morning, and she had to describe to me — because I'm a little thick — she had to describe to me what self-care was. Because I said to her about — as a teacher, you know, I go to class and I have a ball. One of the most ego-boosting moments in a teacher's life is when you get to the end of the class, the end of the lecture, and I'm packing up my stuff, and I'm saying to the students, I don't know about you guys, but I've got somewhere else to go. And they're looking at me saying, where are you going? I'm saying, the time is up. Our hour is done. I'm out of here. I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm going.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:00:42.767) You —

Craig Simmons (01:00:56.778) That sort of speaks volumes because they say, what, we're done already?

I'm saying that, to me, is like — because I shared with my partner — that sounds like self-care, but she says, no, no, no, no, no, that's not self-care because you're doing stuff for other people. Okay. Fun. You know, I had a ball. I had difficulty accepting that I got paid to have a ball for 30 years. You know, like an athlete goes on the field and plays football, basketball, and they get paid. Why do they get injured and stuff? That's maybe not so much fun. I never got injured. I just had the opportunity to get better and better at my craft. So anyway, back to self-care. So what do I do? I love kayaking. For the simple reason that it's just me and my kayak and the world. And for that reason, I like cycling. I like working out at the gym, walking, as well as ferry and bus rides.

The ferry especially, and this time of year before the cruise ship passengers come back — because I can go up on the top deck of the ferry and feel like I'm a billionaire. I'm the only one on the top deck. I get my book out and I've got my driver and my deckhands at my beck and call, taking me into the city or bringing me back home.

Craig Simmons (01:02:42.71) Arrived. You've got your own motor yacht. Yeah, this is the life.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:02:53.871) You —

Craig Simmons (01:02:55.944) Or on the bus going down — sometimes, again, before the tourists come back, I'm going down on the bus and maybe between where I live up in the West End until like Whale Bay, I'm the only one on the bus. And I feel like — I call the bus driver my chauffeur. So here I am on an air-conditioned bus. I don't have air conditioning at home. I get on this AC vehicle and I've got my driver and I have my books, and I'm reading and thinking, looking out the window as we go by Scaur Hill, and I can look out the window, see if I see any parrotfish mulling around. It's like, it doesn't really get any better than this — to be chauffeured around Bermuda. And one of the best parts is that it's for free. I just show my seniors pass. Yeah, so that —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:03:47.043) Thank you.

Craig Simmons (01:03:54.432) That's like self-care, isn't it?

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:03:57.103) Absolutely, it is, because you're not under any stress, you're doing what gives you pleasure, and you get to do it as and when you like. I think that's self-care.

Craig Simmons (01:04:11.51) Okay, yeah, so that's my self-care.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:04:16.473) How might sharing your experiences of success and growth create a positive ripple effect in your family, community, the world?

Craig Simmons (01:04:25.866) Yeah, when I read that, sort of — I said, I tend not to share. I don't share. I think everyone has to find their way. My way is riddled with mistakes. And you talked about success — it's like, I don't know. Do I think that I've been successful? Not particularly. I would say that I haven't made as many mistakes as other people. But yeah, that's why I don't like this idea of role model. That's why I told the story about Malcolm X. I could see Malcolm Little, El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was a man. Yeah, just like me — came into this world, left the world, tried to make it a better place. And so when we have these people we call role models and we hold them up, I think that's a mistake, because you cease to see the human. And now when I think about Malcolm X, Malcolm Little — it's even better now that I've gotten the rose-tinted glasses away from my eyes. And that's where I have to thank that young lady for the epiphany. But you don't need to do that. And then — is the reason why we do that because we feel less than, you know?

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:05:50.927) Thank —

Craig Simmons (01:06:10.368) So yeah, giving out advice — that's not my thing. Very uncomfortable. I mean, I do like it when my daughters blow smoke up my butt just talking about the life that they had with me as their father. Yeah, it's okay. I still feel uncomfortable — they know — if I sort of cringe when they talk about it.

You know, but yeah — because basically I think I'm an arrogant person, maybe even narcissistic. And that's why my partner is very important in my life — that she'll make sure that if I get a little bit too big for my britches, she'll bring me back down to planet Earth.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:07:00.963) But is that truly a narcissistic person then? Because if you're open to that level of feedback, my view is narcissistic people veer away from anybody that could potentially criticize them or help them to see a way other than their own.

Craig Simmons (01:07:19.958) Yeah, but I could see myself getting there without — if I did not have honest people in my life, I could very easily see myself — thinking about —

Craig Simmons (01:07:42.551) People can accept bad things happening around them. This is extreme. But in Nazi Germany, the people that lived in the area of the concentration camps — you know, people didn't speak up. No one said, this is bad. You shouldn't be doing this to people. How is it that good people will remain silent when bad things are happening around?

Is that the — what is it now — in psychology there are terms for that, where you just go with the group and feel like I can't speak up. You know, if I see something bad — I used to teach this stuff as well.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:08:34.477) Is it groupthink?

Craig Simmons (01:08:36.086) It's related to it. The example that comes to me is this woman who was raped in Brooklyn in the entranceway, in the vestibule. And she was screaming out for help as she was being raped. And people heard her. But no one would call the police because they felt someone else would call the police. Yeah.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:08:38.767) Hmm.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:09:02.344) Else would do it.

Craig Simmons (01:09:04.97) That kind of thinking.

Yeah, I'm one of those people. I can't say, that was bad, why didn't someone call? I could see myself doing that. Or I see a group of people in Bermuda — the least powerful in Bermuda — being vilified, being exploited. I could see people, especially when it comes to foreigners, because the definition of a foreigner is somebody that's not from here. And so because they're distant, you can treat them as not like us. So if bad things happen to those people, you can rationalize it and say, yeah, well, they're foreigners. They're not really us. They don't belong here anyway. They should be somewhere else. Yeah. We human beings have that ability to be evil. And if you act like, no, not me — you are being dishonest with yourself. And so when I'm honest with myself, I know that I am capable of doing some horrible things.

Craig Simmons (01:10:18.228) And I have to wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and have a conversation with that person and say, hey, you — I'm talking to you, Craig Fabbler Simmons. Yeah? Because we can't be scary, and I can be scary, and I have to confess that to myself otherwise.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:10:41.839) Craig, thank you. Thank you for sharing — I think — and giving voice to what many people may not be able to give voice to for themselves. And just to change the subject —

Craig Simmons (01:10:58.272) Thank you.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:11:03.304) What brings you joy?

Craig Simmons (01:11:06.562) Daughters and grandchildren. So recently — I mean, daughters — I can't — I mean, they're just like — I've already talked about them, the transformative impact they've had on me. And then I found myself bragging the other day about my grandkids.

I'm at the stage where most of my compatriots have grandkids, or maybe they don't. And I would brag about them. I'd go, yeah, two summers ago I took two of my grandkids, we went up to New York, we went to see the Lion King, and OMG. I've been to the Lion King a couple of times, but that visit to the Lion King — what I wanted to see was their eyes come sort of out of the sockets, you know, at the spectacle that is the Lion King. Interestingly enough, I took one of my daughters — the youngest daughter — to the Lion King, and saw it. So when I took my daughter's daughter, my granddaughter, to the thing, I was just waiting for that opportunity. So that ability to sort of share with my daughters — in fact, I was looking for a picture. It's what I call — it's — and my daughter's on this thing. It's my definition of happiness. The photograph — I've got the album. I was trying to find it. The photograph that comes to mind is my youngest daughter. It's summertime. She's butt naked. She's maybe five years old. She's butt naked, sitting at a plastic table on a little chair. And she's got a chocolate cake in front of her, and she's eating this chocolate cake. In the background — you really have to look — is my father. And he's sitting at the table. He's sort of a secondary thing. But I know the story, because it was my mother who baked the cake for my father. My father saw my daughter sitting and he, you know, signaled to her — do you want the cake?

Craig Simmons (01:13:21.47) And she was like, yeah, I'm not going to say no to cake. So he gave her the cake that his wife had just finished baking for him. He got so much joy — more joy, I'm thinking — from watching his granddaughter eat the cake than him eating the cake.

That's why I look at my father and say — great man. And that's what I want to do. That's when I — when I took my grandkids to Lion King, it wasn't about me. I wanted to — the joy came from watching them enjoy that experience.

Yeah, so you know, it's —

Craig Simmons (01:14:11.04) Like, what's left? There's really nothing left for me to do. That was the full stop. I'm ready. I'm ready to go up to the graveyard right now. I'll just open it up and I can crawl in, and I will go with a smile on my face because I've done it. I've been to the mountaintop. Going on adventures with my grandkids. And the other thing is that my daughters actually call me up to say that they love me. I'm thinking, ooh —

Craig Simmons (01:14:51.496) Just chat for like an hour, and I'm thinking, wow.

Yeah, it's —

Craig Simmons (01:15:04.384) Can't see how it gets any better.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:15:06.735) So as we come to the close of this really fascinating conversation and great insight into you — what book recommendation do you have? It can be a book — okay, let's see how many you've got.

Craig Simmons (01:15:24.896) How many books can I give you?

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:15:33.103) It can be a book you've read recently or something that has stayed with you over the years.

Craig Simmons (01:15:38.784) Well, so, okay, this is going to take a while. So let me start with bell hooks.

Gloria Jean Watkins. I call it the bell hooks series. The first bell hooks I read was Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center — one of those. And then there's another one, All About Love. And then there's the one, The Will to Change. You know, it's about masculinity.

So bell hooks, she's had a profound impact on me. Another sort of philosophical one would be The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Nassim Taleb is one of the few people — maybe the only person — in the 21st century to come up with a model of the world where he's able to sort of essentially distill the world into — yeah, a framework. Most people — I mean, Marx would have done that in the 19th century, talking about capitalism in its early stages. But Taleb has given us a way to deal with arguably the greatest problem of the 21st century, and that is the degree of uncertainty that we face in this globalized economy.

Craig Simmons (01:17:18.378) Yeah, it's just a totally different way of thinking about the world. The Black Swan. In the Eye of All Trade by Michael Jarvis. I'm absolutely amazed at the number of people that are familiar with his work. It's almost a Black history book, but it's not a Black history book. There are so many narratives in that book about us as a people. One of my favorites is the story about Negro Bess, who was charged with — Angela Barry wrote a piece in the Bermudian about her. Negro Bess was charged with stealing a white woman's petticoat or napkins or something. And, you know, she went to court and the judge, I think, could see that this white woman — and pardon the descriptor — the judge could see that the white woman was poor white trash, and that Negro Bess came from means. And this goes back to the maritime economy, because Negro Bess's husband would have been a mariner and an entrepreneur. And you have to remember that Black folk — slaves — had the opportunity to travel the Caribbean, to travel to sort of colonial America, almost independently of white people. And that's because there was a law that was passed — I think in the early 1700s — that essentially said that ships going to sea had to have a minimum number. You couldn't have an all-white crew, because an all-white crew meant that all the white guys were at sea. If all the white guys were at sea, that meant that the chance of a slave rebellion went through the roof. And there were slave rebellions. And the reaction by the white folks in Bermuda to slave rebellions — and reducing the probability of them happening — was to pass a law that said, you can't have an all-white crew. You can maybe have one or two. The rest have to be Black.

Craig Simmons (01:19:43.883) And so there was an unintended consequence of that law, which essentially led to Black folks prospering. And it was a brilliant move on the part of white slave owners, because they gave Black slaves skin in the game. Black men were allowed — they would get their women and their cousins to make stuff that they could sell when they got to colonial America or when they went down to the Caribbean. So it was a great way of putting into play skin in the game. You didn't have to worry about these Black men not coming back home. They're coming back home because they're coming back home with money. And so Negro Bess was the product of that kind of household. So when they finally — they actually went to her house and they could see the pewter and the napkins and the stuff that she had amassed — the judge looked at it and thought, this woman had no reason to steal something from this poor white trash. And they dismissed the case immediately. So these are just one story in In the Eye of All Trade that made me just sort of think very differently about a couple of things. But the main thing was maritime slavery versus plantation slavery. Because when you juxtapose the type of slavery that happened in Bermuda versus that which would happen, say, in Haiti or that which happened in the cotton plantations of North America — to a certain degree, it's chalk and cheese. So the average life of a slave in Haiti, I think, was maybe two years. And so you had this continuous influx of slaves from the West Coast of Africa into Haiti. Whereas in Bermuda, there wasn't really much of a trade, because the natural population of Black folks grew. It was unnatural because the human capital that Bermuda slaves possessed was valuable. And so if you're a slave owner, you valued what was between the ears of this slave. It didn't make it any less slave-like. I mean, it was horrible. I'm not trying to suggest that slavery in Bermuda was like, yeah, you know, it's great.

Craig Simmons (01:22:10.486) There were some horrible, horrible things. I mean, you know, just read some — you get an idea of the horrible lives that slaves had to live. What I'm saying is the nuts and bolts of a maritime slave society are fundamentally different from the nuts and bolts of a plantation slave society. And in In the Eye of All Trade, Anne Clarence Maxwell's Prudent Rebels gives you a different view and allows you to see Bermuda for what it is, and helps us to understand ourselves — how to understand white Bermudians, how to understand Black Bermudians. And so it was useful for me to understand my people. And that speaks to a broader problem of us going away to school, going to the United States and getting educated and coming back with ideas — arguably foreign ideas — that you can pick up if you're being educated in the United States, hanging around Black folks in the United States. They're going to give you their view. And if you don't have the presence of mind to have your own foundation — to understand who you are — you will assimilate those views and bring them back to Bermuda. And it's not going to go well, because being the products of maritime slavery means that we view the world differently than folks across the water. Our history is fundamentally different. And that will help explain why we are a different kind of people. Now, there are other maritime people. If you go to Boston, folks in Boston, the folks in the Carolinas, in Charleston, if you go down to Turks and Caicos, you're going to see people who are more similar to us. But if you only focus on what's —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:23:55.096) So —

Craig Simmons (01:24:19.538) — commonly focused on, you're going to miss learning about ourselves and why we are the way we are. Please push back. I want to hear your retort.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:24:33.199) No, there's a lot to unpack in what you've said. And I clearly need to read these books. And so part of me is like, I need to invite you back, right? We need to have a conversation — not necessarily around the questions, but around many of the points that you've brought up, because having grown up for some portion of my childhood here, I know what the school system taught us. And there's a lot to be desired. And I'll speak from my educational experience around history. There were pieces missing. There were many holes in the education that I received here in Bermuda. There were many holes in the education I received in the UK as well. And your comment about being educated in the United States — which is where I did my undergraduate degree and my postgraduate — is telling, because you are taught aspects of US history. And I think I did maybe one class, but I think it might have been world history as opposed to US history, where there were still lots of holes, lots of spaces that I had to think to fill in, but didn't have time because your exam was on what you were taught, not what you thought. And so you don't have necessarily the luxury of examining other aspects of history and challenging the person who's teaching that history. And so I welcome an opportunity to talk to you further, to really go into detail and get the level of detail that many, many, many people —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:26:57.123) — don't have, because we don't have the time to teach ourselves and we definitely didn't have the time to learn it during our formal education. So Craig, I am very, very interested in learning more and having the kind of conversation that I know will enlighten me, but give me opportunity to push back — as you've said — on some of the thoughts that you have shared. Before I go to my next question, were there any other books? Because I am sure that — okay, let's go through your list. Let's hear the list.

Craig Simmons (01:27:34.695) Yeah, well, here's my list.

Craig Simmons (01:27:41.579) Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. So that helped me in my journey with my mother. Atul Gawande, medical practitioner — I think he was a surgeon on faculty at Harvard Medical School. So Atul — he's Indian — A-T-U-L Gawande, G-A-W-A-N-D-E.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:27:51.16) Okay.

Craig Simmons (01:28:10.838) He's basically telling you about the end of life. Like, you know, why my hair grows gray. The simple reason is that I ran out of dye. My natural dye ran out. So here it's apparently naturally white. And if you've got enough dye in your body, it will change it to whatever color your hair naturally is. But I ran out, so that's why it looks like it does right now. And the whole idea of your body falling apart. So Being Mortal, for me — for anyone that's dealing with older people — I would highly recommend Being Mortal. In the realm of psychology, this was a bestseller: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. He was a psychologist that won a Nobel Prize in economics, which — no, I mean, I'm not trying to suggest that economics is anything special. I told you my feelings about economics, but he injected something into economics that was really, really needed — that humans aren't so-called rational, or at least not in the way that economists talk about people being irrational. And so, you know, it brings to the fore our biases and the shortfalls from thinking fast and not slow, and, you know, things that you can do to make better —

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:29:08.175) Yeah.

Craig Simmons (01:29:36.854) — decisions. And then a novel that I've read: Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah. I can't — A-Y-I K-W-E-I A-R-M-A-H. Two Thousand Seasons. That was a historical novel — about 2,000 years of African history, West African history. That — I don't read novels, like fiction I can't handle, but I could handle that because it was history as opposed to just a story. I mean, it is a story. And the most recent — actually it's not the most recent — the one that had a big impact on me: Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves. The reason why that one impacted me so is that, you know — in fact in Bermuda — Bermuda is arguably the only place on planet Earth where the median salary of a woman is bigger than that of a man. So the average woman in Bermuda earns more than the average man. Yeah? And it's been that way since 2013.

You need evidence?

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:30:44.527) So I want to push back, but I know you're an economist. But I want to push back. Is that accurate? And where is that data coming from?

Craig Simmons (01:30:54.56) That's what I'm about to tell you. So put in your search engine, Bermuda — B-E-R-M-U-D-A — and then the words employment briefs — B-R-I-E-F-S. Employment briefs — these are statistics that are released by our Department of Statistics. You can either go to the statistics site — I think that's stats.gov — maybe I shouldn't do that. Use your search engine.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:30:56.216) Okay.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:31:01.121) Uh-huh.

Craig Simmons (01:31:23.862) So Bermuda employment briefs. The most recent one I believe is for 2025, and that would be data for 2024. And I think I'm looking at like table three or table four of that document. It breaks down earnings in Bermuda by sector. So for example, international business — the median salary in international business is north of $170,000. Whereas the median salary in the hospitality sector is only $40,000. But at the top of the table, it breaks it down by Bermudian and non-Bermudian, and male and female. And so what I'm saying to you is that you can go back to 2013. Starting in 2013, coming to the present, the median — which is better than average — salary of a woman exceeds that of males. This is nothing new.

Now, I think this event — if you will, these events — were seeded back in 1992. There was a study performed by —

Craig Simmons (01:32:42.202) The document was Bermuda's Advance into the 21st Century — oh, man, oh, man, oh, man. Ah, here it is. Bermuda's Stride Toward the 21st Century, Dr. Dorothy K. Newman. It's dated — sorry — November 1994. In that document, she noted the qualifications of men, women, Black, white. And I think her data tables are from 1992. And she noted that Black women — way back in 1992 — had more bachelor's degrees and master's degrees than any other group. More than white men, more than white women. Yeah. So Black women have been educating themselves.

Think about it — since 1992, they've been the top dog. And so it's a case of chickens coming home to roost. Wouldn't it be really, really weird for women not to be earning more?

Yeah. I mean, it hasn't happened in other jurisdictions, but let's see what's happened in other jurisdictions. About 40 years ago, the United States passed legislation to even the playing field for women getting into colleges and universities. And they did that because of the imbalance between male versus female enrollment at universities. Now it's reversed. Women make up the majority in most fields at universities. There are very few — maybe data analytics, computers — but for medicine and law, women are dominating those fields. So it's only a matter of time before women start to make more than men in the US, in Canada, in other jurisdictions. For Bermuda, it just happened way —

Craig Simmons (01:34:53.398) — sooner, like I say, 2013. And I will challenge everyone to go back to 2013 to find the data, or let's just start with 2025. You bring that document up — employment briefs put out by the Department of Statistics. And the thing is, the gap between men and women is getting wider and wider. Women continue to earn more and more, and men continue to earn less and less.

So back to Of Boys and Men — the problem is not with men. It's not a Bermudian problem. It is not a Black problem. It is a global problem. And that's why I think Richard Reeves' book Of Boys and Men is so, so, so important. Because he notes that around the planet, around the globe, men are having a hard time. Because we're — men are used to living in a world where women were shackled. Women have been unshackled. And since the shackles came off, we've been in trouble. You guys have been moving at warp speed. And us men haven't adjusted to the fact that women are moving at warp speed. And it's not going to change anytime soon. And so we're basically lost.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:36:15.139) Thank you.

Craig Simmons (01:36:23.914) We don't know what role we have to play. Many of us fall back on traditional rules. So if you look at a country like South Korea — and Richard Reeves talks about the situation in South Korea — no surprise that the population's declining in South Korea, because South Korean women don't want to marry South Korean men. South Korean women are more educated than South Korean men. But yet the South Korean men expect this woman who's bringing home the bacon to also be the primary person to raise children, to clean the house. So they're still expecting the women to have those traditional roles whilst bringing home the bacon. And these South Korean women are saying, hell no. And women around the world are now saying, hell no. Why am I going to play second fiddle to some dude who's not as smart as me, who's not making as much money as me? Why should I get married?

I've noted that trend with my students going back easily 15 years. They're like, why am I going to have children? Because if I have children, I'm going to be saddled with the responsibility of caring for them. Men still haven't figured that part out. And I don't know how long it's going to take.

But that's why I think Of Boys and Men is such an important point, because it's not a Black problem. It is a human problem. Because maybe for the first time in human existence, women have had the shackles taken off, and men weren't ready for the unintended consequence of you people doing well. And so we struggle.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:38:09.496) Hmm.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:38:13.327) Craig, wow. Like I said, you and I are going to have some more conversations and not constrained by the format of this podcast. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your books. Thank you for sharing your perspective on life, on men and women, on our state of being. Do you have any final thoughts?

Craig Simmons (01:38:39.926) I hope not.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:38:42.434) Is there anything else?

Craig Simmons (01:38:46.068) I'm good. What did I say?

I got this for my coffee date on Friday: if you're not living on the edge, then you're taking up too much space.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:39:02.265) What does that mean to you?

Craig Simmons (01:39:04.722) It means that at my age, I only have — for me, life is like a roll of toilet paper. I only have a couple of sheets left. And so I have to use those sheets very, very carefully. And the fact that I've only got a couple of sheets left has me on the edge. I've got to make the most out of every single day. I need to get comfortable feeling uncomfortable. I'm on the edge. And there's another expression: comfort is where dreams go to die. I don't like the idea of just kicking back. I really want to be uncomfortable and enjoying the discomfort. And so I have to be on the edge. Getting ready for this talk with you had me on edge. So now I'm looking forward to the next thing that will put me on edge.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:40:07.406) Craig, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've got to figure out a different way to say thank you, but I've appreciated this space. I've appreciated your thoughts, your philosophies, your perspective. Three of the many, many, many nuggets that I'm taking away are: how the women in your life have shaped you and shaped your perspective; the care that you gave your daughters as they battled the crises that they faced around sickle cell; your mom aging in front of you and the care that you gave her as you prepared her to meet her God; your perspective as a teacher — the sense that I get is that you were there to learn as much as you were there to teach your students, and you gave yourself permission to learn by leaning in to areas of discomfort when — or even just finding nuggets for yourself around the answers that you received to questions that you asked as a teacher. And another thing that I'm taking away, just visually, around you in the little that I can see — your vast love of learning. You've got a lot of books around you. And I think you've probably given me more books than most people give on book recommendations. And I also get the sense that as you have been shaped by the women around you, you are shaped by the narratives of bell hooks and her perspective, together with the other authors that touch a chord and resonate — the words on the page resonated with you. Craig, I have learned a lot from our conversation.

Aderonke Bademosi Wilson (01:42:29.323) I have truly enjoyed listening to your thoughts and perspective. Thank you for joining me on AB Wilson's Heart of the Matter, a podcast dedicated to asking overwhelmingly positive questions as we uncover incredible stories and wisdom of people you may know. Craig Simmons, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Craig Simmons (01:42:58.175) A pleasure.