Why is a nucleon bound ?

In the style of a popular article, we discuss models of hadronic structure and their relation to models of the QCD vacuum and lattice simulations. Borrowing two main characters from G. Gamow, Mr. Thompson and the Professor, we make a journey in QCD vacuum. Instanton-generated interaction between quarks appears to be the major player, it alone creates the quark condensate, constituent quark masses and their bound states with properties very close to those observed. Direct removal of perturbative and confining forces (possible on the lattice by "cooling") results in a very small modification of hadrons.