I will start with a brief reminder of the "old" stringy nature of the strong interactions. Maldacena's string (gravity)/gauge duality will be reviewed. The construction of gravity "laboratories" of confining pure gauge theories will be described including their manifestation of Wilson lines. Fundamental quarks will be added via flavor probe D-branes. The corresponding spectra of mesons and their decay width will be extracted. The thermal phase diagram of QCD-like theories will be deduced. I will compare the "old" and "modern" stringy nature of mesons and baryons. I will end with the holographic description of certain properties of baryons and of nuclear interaction.