What's the easiest way to call a function every 5 seconds in jQuery?

You don't need jquery for this, in plain javascript, the following will work!

var intervalId = window.setInterval(function(){
  /// call your function here
}, 5000);

To stop the loop you can use

clearInterval(intervalId) 

you could register an interval on the page using setInterval, ie:

setInterval(function(){ 
    //code goes here that will be run every 5 seconds.    
}, 5000);

A good example where to subscribe a setInterval(), and use a clearInterval() to stop the forever loop:

function myTimer() {
    console.log(' each 1 second...');
}

var myVar = setInterval(myTimer, 1000);

call this line to stop the loop:

 clearInterval(myVar);