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Long before NASCAR's rampant commercialism lurks a distant history of dark secrets that have been carefully hidden from view until now.

Here to tell the true story behind NASCAR's hardscrabble, moonshine-fueled origins,

is Neil Thompson, author of Driving with the Devil, Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels,

and the birth of NASCAR. Let's take a listen.

The idea for the story of driving with the devil started pretty soon after the attacks of 9-11.

My wife and I were living in Baltimore at that time. I was working for the Baltimore Sun newspaper.

We were ready for a change. We were ready to move somewhere else and have a different kind of lifestyle.

And at that same time, I found myself thinking a lot about a new book idea.

I just published my first book, biography of the astronaut Alan Shepard,

and found myself drawn to NASCAR.

But not NASCAR, per se. really what I wanted to explore was,

where did this come from?

Where did this fascination with cars spinning around an oval at 200 miles an hour?

Where did this start? Where did it really start?

Began digging into sort of the origins of the sport itself.

That led me to learn a little bit about Bill France, whose family at that time owned the entire

sport, which was a shock to me.

But every version of the origin story of NASCAR that I came across started with Bill France

in about 1948, 1949.

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