By Sheeva Azma
This blog discusses Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities and therefore may not be suitable for a general audience.
Ever since I learned that MIT professor Ed Boyden was in the Epstein files (969 mentions!), and found his Zorro Ranch plane ticket in the files, I have been obsessed with piecing together the details of his visit there. The Zorro Ranch is Jeffrey Epstein’s now defunct ranch which was located just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Per the files, Boyden visited the ranch with Martin Nowak, a Harvard professor and heavily Epstein-linked researcher (4,101 Epstein files mentions!) who is now on paid leave at Harvard as part of a second investigation of him.
The Zorro Ranch visit was meticulously organized, per what I have read in the files. I spent several hours ironing out the details from the Epstein files and news sources before I posted this reel about it all. I previously also posted about Boyden in the Epstein files in other reels, such as this one. If you keep scrolling, you can read a timeline of the logistics.
Did Boyden really visit the Zorro Ranch? It’s tough to know!
Perhaps it is because I, a woman in science, have so many good memories of my undergraduate program (where Boyden is currently a professor) that I audibly gasped when I found Boyden’s itinerary to go to the Zorro Ranch in the files. It definitely felt like the most dramatic thing I have ever independently discovered (not that I was the first person to do so). That includes the few things I have discovered in science (sigh).
Being an investigative journalist is the greatest application of my science research skills to date. However, it turns out that actually figuring out if someone did something is a really daunting task. Even though Boyden had a plane ticket to visit the ranch and Epstein emailed to tell someone that scientists were hanging out on the ranch that same weekend, as I learned making this reel, pretty much everything else is not known.
Without more information, it all feels like pure speculation. He could have gotten the ticket in his inbox and not gone, for instance.
Even weirder to me — though not that surprising, honestly, since I’ve learned about how power and influence works in science and in Congress — is that Boyden hid this information from coming to light. Though his name turned up in MIT’s Epstein investigation report in 2020, he released a public statement shortly thereafter saying that he only talked to Epstein for work purposes. In his apology, he listed out a bunch of places he visited Epstein, conveniently omitting that he had been to the ranch.
The way he worded that apology letter, he also sounded like he was cooperating to help the facts be known, thereby ruling out the possibility that he might be a more central character in the Epstein saga, what with his 969 mentions and all — there are so many emails and email chains to be had between Boyden and Epstein in those files, and by now, I have basically read all of them…
Another thing is, I’ve been learning about the ranch, and the more I learn about it, the more sketchy it sounds. It does not sound like a place to go to do science. If it was a good place to do science, I would also like to know more about that. Science is so sexist, it’s ridiculous, sometimes. Working on science while enabling trafficking should be a crime, if it is not already. No scientists who visited the ranch should be able to pursue taxpayer-funded science…for so many reasons.
Just what is known about Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, anyway?
If you’re not also totally peeved by this news (yet?), here are some things I’ve learned about the Zorro Ranch so far that might help you understand why I am so shocked:
- It was designed by a military contractor who built classified facilities at two nearby defense installations (there are so many covert and overt deception themes in the Epstein files that it makes me feel like I am reading some kind of magical realism novel, sometimes — do I just read too much Isabel Allende?).
- It was a huge place with bespoke everything, customized for the purpose of the compound, which is currently not fully known! The amount of maintenance that went into keeping everything in check, per the Epstein files, is indeed very exhaustive, as Last Page First has written.
- It had an ambulance on site, staffed with an EMT, presumably for injuries that may have occurred over the course of the activities there (if you know, you know — I am not going to spell all of that out here on our blog). My own research into the files showed that it also had two defibrillators onsite. (Epstein was obsessed with defibrillators and even randomly sent one to Woody Allen, who the New York Times described as “not sorry” for their friendship in late 2025.)
- According to the New York Times, Jeffrey Epstein told scientists that he “hoped to use the site for seeding the human race with his DNA.”
Notice that I have not even gotten into the criminal activities happening there by this point. These are already some pretty bright red flags.
So, now, here’s the criminal part — it’s the part that makes me insanely curious what Ed Boyden did there and what he’s like as a person, graduate thesis advisor, undergraduate research advisor, friend, etc. if he really went there. I don’t have all the answers as to what happened there, but here is my attempt at starting to understand it all:
- NBC News reports that, starting in the 1990s, “at least 10 women and girls” allege that they were groomed there, and others have claimed that they were assaulted. These women were often looking for a way to make money and often needed help making it to the next step on their career ladder.
- The state of New Mexico is investigating the ranch, following an “unverified tip,” the NBC News report says, that two girls died while having sex there.
I don’t have the mental bandwidth to delve any more deeply into the topic of what happened at this mansion compound thing (and it’s kind of irrelevant to the purpose of this post, which was to detail the saga of Boyden accepting this ranch invite in the Epstein files).
However, questions that pop into my mind reviewing this information are: Why were any scientists going there? What did the scientists do there? To what extent did taxpayer-funded research dollars make any of this possible?
Boyden is yet another scientist emailing Epstein. Why should anyone care that his ranch visit plane ticket is in the files?
Ed Boyden is a visionary in the neuroscience by any of the measures we look at to determine if someone is a science superstar these days (whether those are the right measures of scientific achievement, and how we should treat elite science achievement in general, is another conversation we’ve had on our blog before).
I feel like I should have met him at some point in my life, just because our social circles overlap so much, but I never did.
He skipped four K-12 grades, according to his own account! He graduated from a prestigious science and math magnet high school in Texas, then graduated from MIT, and promptly graduated from Stanford with his PhD just 4 years later.
Were it not for his Epstein ties, he’d be a stereotypical science genius type…and I’m sure, despite his ties, that he is that to many.
His Google Scholar says his work has 75.5k citations. He has received grant funding from the Department of Defense and has two active grants with the National Institutes of Health, and even won the highest prize in neuroscience.
I am obsessed with learning everything I can about the idea that scientists visited the Epstein ranch
I want to know everything about what Boyden did as his career intertwined with that of a convicted trafficker who had, by then, been released from jail (and supported by scientists through it all) for his crimes.
I am also obsessively curious about the day-to-day habits of Epstein and his friends as they pursued this double life of trafficking and science. In a way, it’s not a super productive question to look into as a woman in science. In another way, it has been an incredibly freeing deep dive into the unexplored social structure of science that has been causing ruin to all sorts of people’s careers in STEM for a really long time.
Timeline of Boyden’s alleged visit to the Zorro Ranch with “lots of interesting scientists”
According to the Epstein files, Ed Boyden and Martin Nowak visited the Epstein ranch in mid-2013. The visits happened in August 2013, per the files, though there are no “thank you” notes that prove it necessarily happened. However, the below information in and of itself, as documented in the Epstein files, raises many questions.
This is not a comprehensive list of every single email related to scientists planning an Epstein ranch visit. There were other scientists appearing in the files who meticulously plan their ranch visits via email, such as Geoffrey West of the nearby Santa Fe Institute, as well as Jack Horner, the paleontologist who inspired Jurassic Park…but that’s another blog post.
August 14, 2012 – Epstein’s assistant has a reminder about setting up a meeting inviting Ed Boyden to Nowak’s lab at Harvard, the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (EFTA02162367)
January 25, 2013 – Nowak, Epstein, and Boyden have a brief email discussion about talking shop. Boyden writes, “I would love to chat with you [Nowak] and Jeffrey at some other time, if that might work out? Would be great to talk about the technologies we’re trying to bring to bear on these complex problems of brain analysis.” (EFTA02149406)
April 19-29, 2013 – “Would love to meet with Jeffrey. Unfortunately I will be in Europe 4/30-5/4 for the Brain Prize ceremony (I recently was named a winner of the largest prize in the field of neuroscience),” Boyden writes Epstein’s assistant, who is trying to plan an MIT visit for Epstein in early May 2013 (EFTA00392002). They do end up trying to meet with Boyden after 8 pm on May 4, but the trip ends up being cancelled.
May 20, 2013 – Boyden and Epstein’s assistant exchange emails about an upcoming dinner he’s invited to at Epstein’s home in New York City. “Marvelous! My cell phone is [redacted],” Boyden replies in response to an email containing the details of Epstein’s address and cell phone contact (EFTA02138251). Plans are still underway to figure out what Boyden, Ito, Epstein, and maybe Woody Allen will eat for dinner.
May 22, 2013 – According to a Google Calendar invite, the dinner guests on this day included Joi Ito, Ed Boyden, Woody Allen, and Soon-Yi Previn, Woody Allen’s wife (EFTA02138255).
May 23, 2013 – Joi Ito, who then directed the MIT Media Lab, and Ed Boyden write Epstein with thank you emails. “Thanks for a really enjoyable conversation and your hospitality tonight. Look forward to connecting again and receiving you at the Media Lab on my turf. ;-)” says Ito.
Boyden replies to Ito’s email and writes to Epstein, “Yes, it was great chatting about all the ways neuroengineering is going to go in the coming years, revealing both fundamental mechanistic brain maps, and providing the control knobs for fixing brain disorders and understanding complex phenomena like consciousness. Would be great to talk about how then to make mathematical sense of these maps and control knobs… arguably the big stumbling block to date is the lack of good data, but that’s about to change, thanks to our current and future efforts! Then we will have many things that require deep mathematics to understand!” (EFTA01971379)
July 9, 2013 – Martin Nowak emails Boyden, Neil Gershenfeld, and others inviting them to a meeting at the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, as proposed by Epstein. Nowak writes in his message, “dear friends, jeffrey has suggested to have a small meeting on 28 july. ed and neil have indicated that this date is suitable for them. whit, i hope you can make it too. i suggest each person prepares a 20min talk. please expect to be interrupted frequently and questioned afterwards! the more discussion the better.” (EFTA01965974)
July 15, 2013 – An email from a redacted person cancels the July 28 meeting with Boyden, Nowak, Gershenfeld, Epstein, and others at the PED office in Harvard Square: “Hi Martin…I am afraid Jeffrey will no longer be able to come up to Harvard on July 28th…so sorry…” (EFTA02133949)
July 19, 2013 – Epstein’s assistant’s Google Calendar reminder reads, “Can Martin Nowak and Ed Boyden visit JE at the ranch in Aug?” (EFTA02133248)
July 22-23, 2013 – Epstein’s assistant reaches out to Boyden to invite him to the ranch: “Hello Ed…Jeffrey wants to make sure you are aware he would like to have you and Martin Nowak as his guest to his ranch outside of Sante Fe, New Mexico in August…might you be available to go visit for a few days? Sometime between Aug. 10th-Aug. 26th is probably best.”
Boyden replies, “Sounds like fun. 8/10 I have a commitment in Boston, but I’m free on 8/11. Then I will be on the road for NSF/DARPA meetings 8/12-8/16, then free 8/17, then off to China for a week long conference 8/18-8/26. On either side of each free day, there is a bit of buffer time too (e.g., for travel).” (EFTA00387146)
After Boyden replies, Epstein’s assistant writes to Epstein and says, “Below from Ed Boyden….doesn’t appear he has a ton of free time! Perhaps he could do Aug. 16-18? or
Aug. 26/27 (but you are to depart the ranch on the 27th for PB)” but I could not find a response from Epstein with the same email title. (EFTA01754706)
July 25, 2013 – Boyden hasn’t replied back as to whether he will attend the ranch or not, so Epstein’s assistant emails him once more and he replies, “Yes, thanks for the reminder — let me get back to you by late tonight! I was just mulling over this, actually.” (EFTA02131841)
“Sounds good! :)” replies the assistant. (EFTA02131853) She also forwards the email to Epstein.
July 29, 2013 – Ed Boyden writes back to Epstein’s assistant after several days, accepting the invitation to the ranch: “Hi Lesley, I’ve been checking out the schedule, since it’s been dynamic. How about flying down to New Mexico first thing on the morning of August 11th, and then leaving first thing in the morning on August 13th (to San Francisco, it turns out)? How might that look?” (EFTA00386545)
After some back and forth, the assistant replies, “ok, great. I want to investigate flights for you…be in touch.” (EFTA00386550)
A couple of hours after accepting the invitation, and while in the midst of travel planning with the assistant, Boyden emails unknown recipients, that evidently include his then colleague Joi Ito, about this Nature Neuroscience study about pupil diameter as a measure of norepinephrine. “Interesting” writes back Ito, cc’ing Epstein on the email. (EFTA01754748). “Pupil dilation is a reliable cue to sexual arousal,” write researchers in a 2016 paper who found that “sexually interested faces contained objectively larger and darker pupils than did sexually disinterested faces.”
August 1, 2013 – It seems that Epstein’s assistant has not written back to Boyden yet finalizing travel plans, so Boyden follows up, stating, “Just checking to see if this still looks good? I can also ask MIT’s travel agent to help… would be nice to figure out the plans.” The assistant replies shortly thereafter and says, “HI Ed!! I will let Jeffrey know you are following up!! Hope to be back to you later today or tomorrow!! I completely understand needing to know!” (EFTA00385999)
The assistant emails Epstein to advise on the logistics: “Ed is asking if he can go to ranch from boston early morning Aug. Ilth then leave first thing Aug. 13th morning to San Fran. the first class ticket I found was $1791.20 the coach ticket was $901.20.”
Epstein replies, “when is martin [coming]?” (EFTA00966798)
“Martin arrive on Aug 9 at 10:59pm and departs at noon on aug 13,” says the assistant (EFTA02722203).
Epstein replies: “have them both come on the 11th [ed’s] schedule.” (EFTA00966805)
August 2, 2013 – Travel plans are finalized for Boyden and a redacted person emails him an itinerary: “HI Ed! Below is your confirmed ticket to Jeffrey’s ranch! Martin Nowak will be taking the same flight out with you on Aug. 11th. Brice and will organize your pick up on the 11th and your return on the 13th. Below are their cell numbers. Hope you have a tremendous trip!” (EFTA00386089)
The itinerary is as detailed in EFTA00386089:
August 5-9, 2013: Epstein’s assistant writes to a man named Joshua Cooper Ramo and says, “Joshua, is it possible for you to have lunch on Monday Aug. 12th? Martin Nowak AND Ed Boyden will be at Jeffrey’s ranch this day…or if not lunch, breakfast or dinner on the 12th?” The man agrees to meet with the two scientists at 2 pm that day. (EFTA00385777)
August 10, 2013 – Epstein’s quest to convene more people during the scientist visit continues. He writes to Nowak and a man named Barnaby Marsh, “feel free to invite anyone from [Santa Fe Institute] for [Monday], lunch talk etc. , [Barnaby] suggeestions?” (EFTA01961260) The Santa Fe Institute, which is a research institute dedicated to topics such as physics and biology, is about one hour’s driving distance away from the Zorro Ranch.
August 11, 2013 – A gleeful-sounding Nowak writes Epstein from the airport, evidently on the way to the ranch: “i’m at the airport in boston!” (EFTA00678842)
Epstein writes back only with a link to a science article, which he cc’s to Joscha Bach. (EFTA00967414) Bach writes back with some comments about the article (EFTA00967496).
At 2 pm, Epstein emails Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, and says, “reid, I am on my ranch in santa fe, lots of interesting scientists visiting. why don’t you come a a day or two?” (EFTA00967409)
August 14, 2013 – After a few days, Hoffman finally writes back to Epstein. “Sounds super interesting… one mismatch is that my life is highly scheduled/planned at the moment,” writes back Hoffman about the scientist visit to the Zorro Ranch. “Unfortunately, this week doesn’t work. I hear from Joi that you live a life of great spontaneity (and perhaps optionality), so the scheduled life doesn’t tend to interface?????????? as well. But, I’m interested enough that I’d love to have you send me other invites/notes, and I’ll try to to make a visit work.” (EFTA00678852)
The Epstein files reveal a lot about Zorro Ranch visit planning, including for more scientists beyond Boyden
What do the Epstein files say about scientists visits to Epstein’s New Mexico ranch more generally? I dug into the details for a reel I published on the Fancy Comma Instagram. You can watch that here.
Here are some of the questions that have been rattling around in my mind since then: What’s it like to work in the lab with these scientists, or be advised by them? What are the scientists like in person? Did they really visit the ranch? Who all visited?
I want to caution you, the reader, here, by stating that I have not personally corroborated the information presented in the Epstein files emails. Where additional information, such as news reporting, is available, it has informed my research. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about the scientists who, according to logistical planning revealed in the Epstein files, may have visited the Epstein ranch. If you know anything, get in touch.
There’s oh, so much more to read about science in the Epstein Files
I’ve been looking into the role of science in the Epstein files since February 2, 2026. That’s when I found my own professor in the Epstein files — as well as several people from the Boston science ecosystem who were in my scientific circles back when I was an undergrad at MIT and then a neuroimaging research assistant. For all of that, peruse our Substack, Instagram, and/or blogs for more analysis on science in the Epstein files.
Why should anyone care? The social hierarchies and power dynamics of science shape what gets discovered and how it is used. That’s why it’s important to hold elite scientists to a high standard. Not being an awful person is the bare minimum. Who’s with me?!
Fancy Comma, LLC 