Today we’d like to introduce you to Ricky Seaman.
Hi Ricky, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’m a filmmaker and polyglot originally from Orlando, FL and have been traveling since I was 12 years old (3rd trip ever was Botswana. Zambia & South Africa). I just reached my 99th and 100th countries of Syria and Qatar and plan to be the first Orlando native to travel to every country in the world.
I have a Bachelors degree in documentary film and a Masters degree in International Affairs and I’ve spent the last 10 years producing travel vlogs and documentaries on my YouTube channel (growning my total following to ~25k). Recent documentaries include filming with forest firefighters on the front lines in Bolivia, embedded with the anti-poaching rangers in northern Kenya, and filming with a famous photographer in Afghanistan weeks before the Taliban takeover of the country. Currently I have stepped away from YouTube production to build a professional team and we are working on a new travel series that we hope to sell to a streaming platform. We are filming our pilot episode in a remote region of the Brazilian amazon rainforest this summer.
I began learning languages my junior year of college (have spoken only English before that), and currently I have studied 9 languages, both formally at several universities in the US and Lebanon and informally living in 9 countries. I’ve conducted interviews in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Arabic and continue to add new languages to my repertoire that fascinate me. Alongside language learning I am creating a language learning app that I hope will revolutionize language acquisition as we know it.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There have been so many ups and downs. I started YouTube in 2016 and in 2017 my dad became suddenly ill and was given less than 2 weeks to live. This rocked my world and shook me to my very core. While traumatic and unimaginably heartbreaking, that experience taught me the gift that we are presented with every day, every morning just to be able to wake up and live another day. If that is our reality, the fact is, as much as we’d like to not believe it, that tomorrow is not guaranteed. We need to stop passively living life and go out and pursue what we love and chase dreams, embrace every moment that challenges us. It’s all part of this wonderful gift and grand adventure called life.
As with any art form, there are trials and error, algorithms and public comment sections, that will rip you and your art into pieces if you let them. Don’t let them. Stay true to your art and what you want to create and you will find success. Unoriginality is the ultimate sin.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’d say I’m known for traveling to “off the beaten” path places around the world and using language to comfortably traverse those lands. After my dad passed in 2017 I quit my comfortable 6 figure 9-5 job and demolished by cushy life in NYC to travel the world for 2 years to make YouTube videos. My goal was to live in 8 countries, learn 8 languages and film every day of my journey. After the first year I realized that daily vlogging and vlogging in general were not what I wanted to do. I wanted to share peoples stories and connect with extraordinary individuals making an impact in their communities and their countries.
After living in Brazil, Lebanon, Jordan and Italy, I moved to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire (west Africa) to learn Ivorian French. There I abandoned the daily vlog and started filming mini documentaries about those extraordinary individuals making an impact in their communities and their countries. I worked on that new project for the next several years and I filmed with individuals, groups and organizations in Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Panama, Bolivia, Kenta, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Guyana and Suriname.
But my heart was never in YouTube. I grew up idolizing people like Anthony Bourdain and Ian Wright, always dreaming of making television and traveling around the world. That is what my film crew and I are creating now.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I only spoke English my entire life until about 20 years old. I’d taken Spanish classes in High School and college and barely passed.
It wasn’t until I was in my junior year of college that something transformative happened. I was sitting in my dorm room late at night on a Friday night, scrolling through my recommended videos on YouTube when I came across a guy named Stu Jay Raj who appeared on a Thai talk show running through the 16+ languages that he spoke. I watched Stu effortlessly flow from Thai to Mandarin to Spanish to Hindi and could not believe what I was witnessing; something changed inside of me and I thought that was the coolest thing I’d every seen in my short 20 something lifetime. It was at that moment I declared that I was going to do what Stu does, I was going to be a polyglot (someone who speaks multiple languages). And that is the story of how I became obsessed with learning languages.
Now I use language to help connect with those individuals I’m filming with. There is a lot of trust that has to happen when you’re in front of a stranger in another country and responsible for capturing their life story and doing it justice. Language helps me gain and build that trust. There is nothing else in this world – no amount of university degrees, no amount of time spent in a country, no personal connection deep enough, etc that will get you into their “little club” like knowing the language. I’m excited to show the power of this in this next project of mine that, hopefully, you’ll be able to watch on your local streaming provider.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ricky.seaman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RickySeamanOfficial
- Twitter: https://x.com/SoyRickySeaman
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/rickyseaman
