Andy and Jo are joined by Jason Tammemagi, Chief Creative Officer of Cartoon Saloon — the Oscar-nominated Irish studio behind The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, and Wolfwalkers — for a conversation that is as much about the philosophy of making things as it is about the business of animation.

Jason traces a career that moved from animator to director to studio founder before landing at Cartoon Saloon, where his brief is essentially to support the creative vision of founders Tom Moore, Paul Young, and Nora Twomey while keeping one eye on strategy and market. The core of the conversation is about what it actually takes to protect brave storytelling inside a risk-averse industry — and Jason is clear that the danger doesn't only come from outside the studio. Fear, he argues, is the story killer, and it operates as much in internal notes as it does in broadcaster development meetings. The instinct to sand off anything uncomfortable or gray-area is precisely what makes safe stories unsafe.

There's also a genuinely interesting thread on Cartoon Saloon's identity as a Kilkenny studio — why its Irish cultural specificity turned out to be a strength rather than a limitation, how the Secret of Kells was an act of creative bravery at a time when the entire industry was pivoting hard to CGI, and why Kilkenny being small enough that everyone walks to work turns out to matter more than it might seem. Jason's closing observation — that the industry has always been good at learning the wrong lessons — is one worth sitting with.