Five with Fry
Five with Fry is your go-to podcast for understanding conflict—where it comes from, why it shows up, and how to handle it with clarity and intention. On each episode, Dr. Jen Fry breaks down the moments we avoid, the reactions we default to, and the skills it takes to move through conflict without blowing things up or shutting down.
Five with Fry
Season 2: New Year, New Focus
Fresh starts are overrated. What actually changes us are the layers we’re willing to look at honestly.
This season, Five with Fry is narrowing its focus to one thing: conflict. Not the dramatic kind—the everyday moments where things get tense, words get awkward, and most of us either push through or shut down. After experimenting with different formats, the answer was clear: depth matters more than variety. Five minutes is enough if we use them well.
I’m working with a simple image to guide this shift: the palimpsest. Nothing starts from zero. Every argument you’ve had, every apology you rushed, every conversation you avoided leaves a trace. Those traces aren’t mistakes—they’re data. If you’re willing to read them, they tell you exactly where your patterns live and what needs to change.
Each season will run 11–12 short episodes, all built around practical conflict skills you can use immediately: how to start a hard conversation without cushioning it to death, how to separate impact from intent, how to set a boundary that actually holds, and how to repair when things go sideways. We’ll also talk about power and identity, because conflict never happens in a vacuum—and pretending it does makes things worse.
Some episodes will include guests answering one question: What’s a conflict that changed you for the better? Not to perform vulnerability, but to name the choices that mattered.
Take what you hear. Sit with it. Try it.
Growth lives on the other side of the conversation.
Don’t waste the conflict.
Welcome to Five with Fry. I'm Dr. Jen Fry, and this is a five-minute space dedicated to conflict because avoiding it hasn't worked. Some episodes are just me naming a conflict we need to talk about. Others feature a guest answering one simple question. What is one conflict that changed you for the better? No matter the format, the focus is simple. Understand conflict, learn from it, and lead better with it. Hey friends, welcome back to Five with Fry. Happy New Year. I'm so glad to have you here. I'm Dr. Jen Fry, and we're actually going to be changing things up a bit. And there's a reason for it. When I started, I didn't know what I was doing with the podcast. I knew I just wanted to chat about stuff. And so we started out with three broad areas. We started out with travel, conflict, and tech. And we were just trying out, kind of like going to the fitting room and trying on a few different pairs of jeans. We weren't sure what was going to hit with people, what they were going to enjoy. We just knew we wanted to do this. And after doing it for a year, we realized that we really want to stay in the lane of conflict. Because in reality, when I'm talking about everything, I'm not able to get into depth consistently the way I want to. So we're only going to be focusing on one thing, which is conflict. And you know, a lot of times people will say, new me, clean slate, this is a fresh year. We're going to start ground zero. And the reality is you don't. You never can. And it makes me think about the newsletter that a great friend of mine puts out. His name is Dan Mickle. And his word of the year for this year is Paul MSet. And I literally had to practice it eight million times and even Google, do the Google recording to see what it sounded like. But I thought it was a very fascinating word because what it is is a manuscript that's been written on, erased, and written over again, but never completely wiped clean. Traces of old text remain visible beneath the new. Nothing is pristine, nothing is gone. Layers exist together. And I really like that idea because so many times when we say we're starting new, we have this idea that it's a clean slate and everything is going to be different. But that's impossible. You've had so much learning and experiences and skill building that now when you start that next thing, it's never going to go back to ground zero. Hell, you don't want it to. Can you imagine? And this next level is going to be fascinating. The first thing that's going to happen is that we're going to have seasons. The seasons are going to be about 11 or 12 episodes. And when I'm hitting on a topical area, it's still only going to be five minutes. However, I am going to be bring guests on because I really enjoy talking to awesome people. And the one question I'm going to ask them is what is one conflict that changed you for the better? Eek! That's a scary, hard, vulnerable, everything built into a question. But that's the type of depth we want to have. So you can expect that we're only going to be talking about conflict and the different ways we're going to show up in it. You can expect that when guests come on, they're going to answer the one simple question. What is one conflict that changed you for the better? So you can know exactly what you're going to get from us. That in five minutes with me on topical area, you're leaving with skills and knowledge of what you can do next. When you hear a guest on, you're going to hear them be beautifully vulnerable about a conflict that impacted them and changed them for the better. My goal is to help you be better at conflict. And to do that, baby, I'm narrowing in on it. So be prepared for this next evolution of Five with Fry. We can never go back to a clean slate or a new foundation. We're going to build on all the wonderful knowledge that we had in 2025 and make this podcast in 2026 even better. So thank you for sticking along for the ride. Well, that's this episode of Five with Fry. Y'all take what you heard, sit with it, and use it. Remember, growth lives on the other side of that conversation. Don't waste the conflict, and thanks for listening.