Probably lazy, but I figured this might be faster than googling them:
Why are protons stable and neutrons not? What factors broadly affect stability of hadrons?
How does pion exchange work between nucleons? What causes the nucleon to give off a pion (interpret the word 'cause' loosely).
Edit: to clarify this question the specific things I'm having trouble finding an explanation for are: how does the strong force (which acts on colour) cause an attraction between colour-neutral nucleons, by the exchange of colour neutral pions? Also, it would be really nice if someone could present a step by step version of what happens, although if that's impossible then it would be good to know that as well.
Why do pretty much all nuclides have more neutrons than protons?
Edit: I can't find a good answer for this online. My guess is that more neutrons bring an extra bit of stability to a nuclide by increasing the separation between positively charged protons. But I can't find anything to back that up, or suggest otherwise. Simple confirmation/negation would be nice.
Thanks, would be interesting to know a bit more about this topic.