Why is there something?

It's one of the most fundamental, yet controversial questions of our time, or of any time. How did the universe begin? Where did the universe come from and what are the laws of nature that govern the universe? The worlds most esteemed physicist, Stephen Hawking once said that "if we understood all the forces that created the universe, we'd understand the mind of God." Now Hawking and his co-author Leonard Mlodinow have changed that view. They believe that the universe could indeed have created itself from nothing and that surely means that perhaps other universes were formed before the Big Bang and that others still exist.  All of this mind bending physics is the essence of a new book by Mlodinow and Hawking, The Grand Design. My conversation with Leonard Mlodinow: